Overwatch Esports Viewing Gets a Much Needed Overhaul

Team colors, overhead map and enhanced replay system debut during the Overwatch World Cup at BlizzCon

After a week of hype from Jeff Kaplan, the newly announced visual updates to Overwatch esports broadcasts made their debut on the world stage during the Overwatch World Cup Quarterfinals. These tools promised to make watching the admittedly confusing esport a clearer, smoother, and more educational experience. How did the new viewing features help during their BlizzCon debut? Let’s take a look at how the observers, casters and analysts deployed their new toys.

*This article may contain spoilers for some Overwatch World Cup Quarterfinal matches.*

New HUD and Live Stats

The team-colored HUD helps viewers immediately recognize which team they’re watching in first-person, which helps tremendously when the camera makes frequent switches. Live stats give the viewers and casters more information for individual performances than ever before. You can see real-time data on damage and accuracy percentage updated with every shot taken.

A new colorful HUD and live stats pop-ups in-game.

Team-Colored Particle Effects

When each team has graviton surges, pulse bombs, and transcendences popping left and right, team-based particle effects and the new kill feed helps easily identify who’s making progress in prolonged team fights. This applies to shields, bullets, healing beams, pretty much every kind of ability and attack.

With so many animations, ability colors help track who’s who.

Team Uniforms

The new team skins really pop against the map environments and make character models clearly identifiable. Even when two of the same hero are right next to each other, there’s no mistaking one team for another as each match features ‘home and away’ colors — one a vibrant, strong color and the other a bright white.

Bright Red vs. Clean White? No mistaking these two teams.

Slow Motion Replay

Replays where observers can slow, pause, and adjust POV allow for a much more visible, all-encompassing recap of what plays happened. While the ‘easy queuing’ of these clips had a couple hiccups during the live broadcast, the tool seems to already be paying off by slowing down the extremely fast-paced action of Overwatch.

Slow Motion with White vs. Blue Particle Effects

Third-Person Smart Camera

The third-person auto-cam, primarily designed for twitchy characters like Tracer and Genji, wasn’t used as much as it could have been but when it was it seemed smooth and intelligent, positioning the camera perfectly behind the character while still capturing the enemy team movement in the background.

Genji strafes while the camera stays smooth.

Top-Down Map View

What started as a tool for casters to keep track of the live action, the top-down map view may prove to be the best tool to teach viewers map presence and positioning. As you can see below, it is a great way to dissect complex team fights even after the action is over.

Overhead Team Fight Breakdown

Did these updates make Overwatch esports easier to follow? How will these tools change heading into the Overwatch League? Do they even need to change? Let us know your thoughts!