Overwatch has received a new update along with the Lunar New Year event. The Lunar New Year ‘s Event has brought festive skins to the game & a lot of in-game rewards per week. Speaking of the new update, it bears the version number 1.44.0.0, and it has been released on all the major platforms including PS4, Xbox One & PC.

Speaking of Overwatch, it is one of the best team-based multiplayer first-person shooting games and it has been developed by Bizzard. The game was released in 2016 & since then it has been running strong.

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Overwatch game features over 30+ playable characters and they are called Heroes. Well, during the Christmas Eve Yule Log stream, Overwatch Director, Jeff Kaplan, has possibly teased a new hero, Junker Queen, while playing Lego. However, it is still unknown when the new Hero will be added to the game.

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Cut to now, the latest update of the game has provided a feature update : Party Flex for Role Queue. Now, party members who queue for any game mode with Role Queue enabled can select multiple roles, indicating what they’re willing to play in the next game.

Your other party members’ role choices and Competitive Play skill ratings may affect which roles you are eligible to choose, or which role you can play. The latest update has also fixed the bug that was causing Sigma’s Shield to fail to deploy. Patch 1.44.0.0 has also brought many other enhancements & bug fixes which you can check below.

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Overwatch patch 1.44.0.0 update notes

Custom Game Options

The Lobby section of Custom Game Settings has a new option “Data Center Preference”. This option provides the game creator with more control over where the game will be hosted. The default “Best Available” choice automatically provides the creator with the best quality connection available to them.

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We only suggest choosing a specific datacenter if no single datacenter can simultaneously provide the best connection to all players. This is usually only the case when the players participating in the custom game are located in different geographic regions of the world.

Spectate and Replay Updates

  • Added a new hotkey, “Spectate toggle 3P camera side”, which changes the shoulder you’re looking over for the player you’re spectating while using the simple third-person spectator camera option
  • Added a new hotkey, “Toggle normal / simple 3P spectator camera”, which toggles between the two third-person camera modes while spectating
  • Updated the death camera to quickly shift from where you were looking to where your killer is, to make it easier to see if you were killed by someone behind you or to your side
  • Updated the simple third-person spectator camera position for several heroes to have them cover less of the screen
  • Fixed an issue that caused zooming in and out while in the simple third-person camera to appear choppy
  • Transitioning into or out of first person no longer causes the camera to clip inside the hero’s head
  • Fixed several camera smoothness and popping issues

HERO UPDATES

Baptiste

Immortality Field

  • Maximum duration reduced from 8 to 5 seconds
  • Cooldown increased from 20 to 25 seconds

Amplification Matrix

  • Ultimate cost increased by 20%

Mei

Endothermic Blaster (Primary Fire)

  • Slowing effect now reduces enemy movement speed from 20-70%, down from 30-90%
  • Slowing effect duration reduced from 1.5 to 1.0 second

D.Va

Boosters

  • Cooldown decreased from 5 to 3 seconds

Orisa

Fortify

  • Damage reduction reduced from 50% to 40%

Hanzo

Storm Bow (Primary Fire)

  • Maximum projectile speed reduced from 125 to 110

at mid-range.

Doomfist

Rising Uppercut

  • Recovery time increased from 0.2 to 0.35 seconds

BUG FIXES

General

  • Fixed a bug that caused toggle crouch to work inconsistently when high precision mouse input is enabled
  • Fixed a bug that caused a small number of games containing very high-skill players to have greatly reduced SR gains and losses

Workshop

  • Fixed an issue preventing Go To Assemble Heroes from working in Assault and Hybrid
  • Fixed an issue preventing Sombra Dummy Bots from being able to hack health packs

Maps

Temple of Anubis

  • Fixed a bug where some heroes could get stuck behind one of the rocks outside of point B

Eichenwalde

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Wrecking Ball to become temporarily stuck when using his Piledriver in a specific location
  • Fixed a location where Doomfist could get stuck

Junkertown

  • Fixed a bug that allowed some players to stand on a wall near the final checkpoint
  • Fixed a bug that allowed Sombra’s Translocator and Baptiste’s Immortality Field to land in an unintended place between the stairs and wall near point A

Dorado

  • Fixed a bug that caused the ivy growing on the wall between points A and B to block projectiles

Rialto

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Winston and Sigma to become stuck between the wall, bridge, and gondola outside of Point A Watchpoint: Gibraltar
  • Fixed a bug that caused Baptiste’s Immortality Field to disappear when thrown in a specific spot outside of the first Attacker’s spawn

Heroes

Baptiste

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Immortality Field to not deploy or get destroyed while deploying in some situations

Mercy

  • Fixed a bug that caused Mercy’s gold staff and pistol to disappear while using Valkyrie when viewing in 3rd person

Tracer

  • Fixed a bug allowing players to swap heroes while using Recall

Sigma

  • Fixed a bug that could cause Sigma’s shield to fail to deploy

Symmetra

  • Fixed a bug where destroying Symmetra’s teleporter during construction briefly allowed her to make another without going on cooldown

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Vaibhav Chawla
704 Posts

An avid follower of the latest technology & gaming trends. Looks for positivity & happiness around. Follows the mantra "Work Hard & Play Hard." A sports enthusiast, and Federer fan. I believe in myself & currently enjoying the journey of life.

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