In the Lab this week we finally come to circle back to do a strategy revisit on some of the key moments in OWL Pre-season, cover the 2017 Winter Wonderland, Season 8 competitive changes, and also a new PTR patch coming up! News & Blue Posts: Game Night -- DEC. 29th Omnic Meta: (Homepage) Console Meta: Dec. 14th 2017 OWL Recap will be moving to it’s own home. Overwatch League Skins & Tokens Starting in early 2018 the home uniforms for the 12 OWL teams are added. You can “acquire these for any hero” and will provide monetary support for the league League tokens only used for in-game OWL content. You can buy whichever team skin you want. Every Player will have enough tokens for 1 OWL skin in the first month Opening OWL week starts Jan. 10th Season 8 Changes - Scott Mercer Limit on the max SR difference between the highest SR & lowest SR player on the same team. “During the month of December we will be quietly testing the effect of more restrictive SR limits to both match quality and queue times. With the data and player feedback from testing, we’ll then come back from our holiday break on January 2 and apply a finalized set of values for Season 8.” Removing Personal Performance SR Adjustments for Diamond tier players and above Below is the performance based SR before Diamond If you have a higher than 50% chance to win a match, you gain less for a win and lose more for a defeat. Conversely, if you were an underdog in a match than you gain more SR when you win and lose less SR when defeated. New players experience both higher gains and higher losses than players who have completed a lot of matches. You gain less SR for a win than you lose for a defeat as you more closely approach the system’s mathematical upper limit 5000 SR. (So at very high SRs you do need a greater than 50% win rate to keep your SR stable.) A measurement of how well you personally performed during the match. If you perform well than you gain more SR when you win, and lose less SR when defeated. The reverse is also true. SUMMARY: The adjustment does create a lot of positive system wide effects including rewarding players who make the effort to play well, punishing inactive players, and more quickly providing fairer matches for new players or those who decide to play a new hero or role. So we spent quite a lot of time examining data over multiple seasons, checking a lot of math, reading a LOT of community feedback, and then doing some deep soul searching about this. Especially at the higher levels of online competition where every point of SR matters, we want players to not be distracted and worry about how to optimize around the personal performance adjustment. They should just be trying to WIN. So after we get back from the holidays on January 2nd we’re going to turn off the personal performance SR adjustments for players in the Diamond skill tier and above. Winter Wonderland 2017 Patch Dec. 12th to Jan. 1st is the Winter Wonderland Event 7 New Skins: Avalanche Bastion, Rime Sombra, Beachrat Junkrat, Snow Owl Ana, Casual Hanzo, Ice Fisherman Roadhog, & Alpine: 76 Soldier Each Skin with a corresponding player icon 2 New Emotes:Legendary Orisa Puppy & Epic Zenyatta Snowflakes New Reinhardt Shield/Snowball Highlight Intro New hero “Toast” Victory Poses Heroes that were not here for 2016 now have an ornament and Christmas Spray All previous event items are available for normal credit amount Developer Update Promo Dec. 12, 2017 Patch Mei’s Snowball Offensive Returns to Arcade New Arcade game: Yeti Hunter 5v1 Super Winston vs. Mei’s (ultimate is now a giant Junkrat Trap) Player Warning Update: Players being reported will receive an in-game message letting them know that they have been reported, along with a warning concerning continued negative behavior. Players who report someone for poor behavior, resulting in a disciplinary action, will now be notified with an in-game message when the issue has been resolved. Players can now clear new item notifications