Overwatch has been making a splash in headlines lately, from the kickoff of its Retribution event to the news that game progress might start being saved across multiple platforms. Just Monday night, a brand new competitive season went live in the game, adding a new ranked playlist designed specifically for Competitive Elimination players.
The new season of six versus six Competitive Elimination will run until May 7 at 7 p.m CT. Announced on the Overwatch forums by developer Scott Mercer, the mode is being added to the arcade menu and will feature previous elimination maps as well as Ayutthaya. As with the regular Competitive Play mode, players will have to complete 10 placement matches before beginning ranked play.
The mode will pit two teams of six against each other. Unlike a standard Overwatch match, however, there are no objectives to pursue. Instead, players must eliminate the enemy team before they get eliminated themselves. Additionally, once a player dies, they cannot respawn.
Mercer also explained that the game’s “lockout” rule is in place. This means that when a team wins with a particular hero, that hero becomes unavailable to them for the rest of the match. Multiple rounds are played, and the team with the most points at the end of the match wins.
Rise up the ranks and compete with the best elimination players in the world.
6v6 Competitive Elimination is live now! pic.twitter.com/NWzQGbjxFy
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) April 17, 2018
This week also sees Retribution event’s Rialto map being added to the PTR for testing before it is available for Overwatch’s competitive modes. This map has been popular in the Retribution PvE mode, so its arrival to the PTR is sure to make a lot of fans happy. Some Hanzo changes will also be showing up in the PTR sometime this month.
Arguably the most interesting bit of news that has been going around in the world of Overwatch is the possibility of the death of one of the game’s heroes. But heroes never die, right? According to a Kotaku interview with game director Jeff Kaplan, just because a character may die in some sort of story arc or lore, the character would not be removed from the roster as a playable hero.
Right now, players can partake in Overwatch’s Retribution event, which is running until April 30. If competitive modes aren’t your cup of tea, the event added a new PvE game mode in which Genji, McCree, Moira, and Reaper survive waves of Talon forces. The team must hold off enemies until they can be extracted from a botched mission. Blizzard also brought back the Uprising PvE mode from last year.