Overwatch 2 Season 17 Adds Map Voting and Rounds Out Stadium's Roster
The next season of Overwatch 2 is pretty packed with content compared to other odd-numbered seasons, and developer Blizzard is going all-out with its investments into Stadium mode and player choice for the game.
Season 17 is chock full of charming retro vibes, featuring a mythic skin for D.va, the resident gamer hero, an 8-bit Reinhardt skin and new heroes for Stadium, the most important mode in Overwatch.
A new map is also arriving for one of the game's most underutilized core game modes, although you can choose not to play it if you don't want to thanks to the debut of the map voting system.
As always, Season 17 will also introduce a suite of new events and ways to earn free cosmetics. Here's what you have to look forward to when the update launches on June 24.
Players will have equally-weighted votes to choose their next competitive map.
Blizzard/Screenshot by CNET
Map voting is the next way to empower players during matchmaking
The Overwatch 2 developers have been hard at work the past few seasons, fine-tuning the game to make each individual match feel more fun.
Between tinkering with a limited return to the 6v6 match format by adding back the second tank player, adding hero perks that personalize Overwatch's cast of characters and implementing competitive mode hero bans, Blizzard is creating more ways for you to feel like you have a substantial impact on the outcome of your games.
The Season 17 update will further empower you by letting you exercise some influence over what map you'll play on. That doesn't mean you'll be able to choose a map before you queue for matchmaking, but it does mean you won't necessarily get stuck playing on Havana five times in a row.
Starting in Season 17, you'll be presented with three maps before the game starts. Each player has an equally-weighted vote for which map they want to play on -- once everyone has voted, the game randomly picks one of the votes and then locks in that map.
You won't have complete control over what maps you play on, but you're going to have some choices now -- Blizzard's matchmaking is starting to skew toward giving you more power to choose what maps and heroes you want to see in your games.
Sigma will unlock even more ways to mitigate damage and take to the skies in Overwatch 2's Stadium mode.
Blizzard/Screenshot by CNET
More heroes make the jump to Stadium
Stadium's roster of characters grows closer to encompassing the whole cast from the core game. Sigma, Junkrat and Zenyatta are making their debuts in Overwatch 2's MOBA-like mode, giving you a chance to pick up a fresh character no matter what role you enjoy playing.
New versions of Esperanca (a Push map) and Samoa (a Control map) will be coming to Stadium, letting you duke it out in bite-sized rounds in a wider variety of colorful environments.
The Stadium Forge will also launch at the beginning of Season 17, allowing you to create and save item loadouts in order to test the effectiveness of certain hero builds in the late game. No longer will you have to roll the dice on buying up items and hoping they synergize well together -- now you can test them out before bringing them into the heat of battle.
Season 17 will start everyone on equal footing with the first Stadium rank reset, ensuring that you have the most competitive experience possible when these new heroes and maps launch.
Morocco looks lush and green in the new Overwatch 2 map, Aatlis.
Blizzard/Screenshot by CNET
A brand-new core map for an underutilized game mode
Overwatch 2's new map, Aatlis, will see players fighting from lush gardens to train stations in Morocco. It's a Flashpoint map, so fights will move from one control point to another in one of Overwatch's largest combat arenas.
Flashpoint launched with two maps (New Junk City and Suravasa) all the way back in Season 6, and no new maps have been added to the pool since then. While Flashpoint isn't exactly a fan-favorite game mode, it'll be nice to get a new map to spice up the pool after almost 10 seasons of playing on the same two massive battlefields.
In the Season 17 blog post, Aatlis is described as being "built for tighter fights, cleaner rotations and fast paced momentum," so there's a chance the map's design makes fights flow quicker than in previous Flashpoint offerings.
Reaper's mythic weapon skin is launching alongside D.Va's mythic mech.
Blizzard/Screenshot by CNET
Double mythic skins at launch, alongside the opportunity to earn some free loot
While the mythic hero skin usually comes out at the beginning of the season, the mythic weapon skin usually comes out later. This isn't the case with Season 17.
D.Va's Horang skin blends Siberian tiger imagery with special visual effects to give her and her mech unique customization options. Reaper's Steel Death shotgun skin is appropriately edgy, adding razor-sharp scythe blades to the barrels of the hero's guns.
Both mythic skins will be available at the launch of Season 17, though players will have to choose only one to invest their mythic prisms into -- there's only just enough of the currency in the battle pass to afford one of these new skins.
The launch of Season 17 will also kick off with the chance to earn new rewards in the Powered Up event, where players who complete 17 matches in Quick Play, Competitive or Stadium modes will earn four epic loot boxes (and subsequently, a free legendary skin).
Sombra is the star of the show. Again.
Blizzard/Screenshot by CNET
Hacks and Hijinx limited-time mode hones in on what makes Overwatch so fun
Blizzard really loves theming their events around Sombra, it seems. First we had Quick Play: Hacked experiments -- now the computer genius anti-hero is the star of Hacks and Hijinx, a new mode that begins on July 15.
This limited-time experience is a 6v6 playlist that will see you square off in core Overwatch modes while new match modifiers come into play during each round. One round might implement low gravity while the next might change health packs scattered around the map into ultimate ability-charging power ups.
With this mode, Blizzard wants to hone in on the chaos and confusion that differentiates Overwatch 2 from other games. Each round will have a new modifier that will force players to adapt with strategies and hero picks that can take on the challenges ahead.
It's almost time to get powered up in the new arcade game-themed season. Overwatch 2 Season 17 will be released on June 24.
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