Blizzard Entertainment confirmed Tuesday what many Overwatch fans had been anticipating. The Summer Games event is returning for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC gamers this year and it will drop in one week’s time.
The three-week Overwatch Summer Games 2017 event is set to kick off on Tuesday, August 8. Blizzard has had a year of lessons learned and has some new tweaks planned from how skins are awarded to how Lucioball ball is played. Game Director Jeff Kaplan shared the details in a video posted to YouTube .
Skins and Loot
The 2016 Summer Games skins will return for the 2017 version of the Overwatch event. Additionally, there will be new skins for various characters. The ones confirmed so far are for Junkrat, Mercy, Widowmaker, McCree, plus some other “silly stuff.”
Blizzard is changing up how the Overwatch Summer Games skins can be awarded. They can be unlocked via the credit earned from matches with the 2016 skins at the normal price of skins (1,000 credits) while the 2017 skins will carry a premium price (3,000 credits).
Overwatch players will also benefit from the recent loot crate changes for this event. The amount of duplicates from crates has been greatly reduced, which should give a greater opportunity to get desired skins from last year and this year.
Lucioball
Lucioball is also returning with some notable changes after Blizzard gathered feedback from last year’s Summer Games. The Rio stadium will return and will be accompanied by an all-new stadium set in Sydney, Australia.
Gameplay of the spin off event has also been tweaked to remove the ability to “boop” opposing players out of the way. Some players were using it to knock the goalie out of the way for easy scores and many found the mechanic frustrating in general.
The changes extend to Lucio’s ultimate ability. It will no longer pull the ball to the player. Instead, the ultimate will make Lucio move faster, jump higher, and “boop” the ball faster.
Lucioball will also get competitive with a separate Copa Lucioball playlist, which will operate much like the current competitive playlist with 10 play-in games followed by a ranked season for all three weeks. Those who complete the 10 qualifying games will receive a special spray and those who reach the top 500 in their region will get an additional special spray.
What do you think of the return of the Overwatch Summer Games? Sound off in the comments below.
[Featured Image by Blizzard Entertainment]
