Crazy Overwatch Workshop update makes heroes the size of skyscrapers

You can now customize the size of heroes in Overwatch thanks to a new Workshop mode update and the results are equally terrifying and adorable.

The Workshop in Overwatch has paved the way for some genius creations over the months. From remakes of fan-favorite game modes to great practice tools, there’s always something new and exciting.

Blizzard has constantly been adding tools since the creation suite first launched and players now have more freedom than ever before. The size of heroes can now be adjusted no different to any other setting in the Workshop.

This means that you could pit a giant Reinhardt against a minuscule Reaper. Or even have two massive Pharah’s battling it out in the sky. The possibilities are wide open, here’s how it all works.

A Public Test Region update that launched on July 15 gives the Workshop an assortment of new features. At the click of a button, you can now manually adjust the size of any hero in the game. Not only does the physical appearance change, but Blizzard also paid attention to other hilarious details.

If you’ve set a character to a tenth of its regular size, the pitch of their voice will change to match. If Mercy is shrunk, her voice lines will be delivered in a higher pitch than normal. Conversely, if she’s 100 feet tall, her voice will be much deeper than usual.

A video shared by developer Derek Mulder on the Overwatch forums revealed just how far players can take these new features. New modes can be created that change the size of a hero with every shot. Other ideas can have a team of smaller characters trying to evade one giant boss.

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These new size changes also impact more than just character models. Everything from abilities to emotes also grow or shrink depending on the setting. One of the more notable animations comes from Orisa. Thanks to her puppy emote, a giant dog can now crash land onto any map in Overwatch.

In terms of abilities, shields certainly stand out as the most alarming. A towering Reinhardt could easily block off entire sections of a map with his shield. Meanwhile, a huge version of D.Va could essentially absorb all projectiles of the map with her Defense Matrix.

A whole new world of possibilities has opened up with the latest PTR update. The full patch notes are as follows:

GENERAL UPDATES

New Feature: Priority Requeue for Backfilled Games

If you join a game after it has started to replace a player who has previously left, you are considered to have “backfilled” into that game. After finishing a game where you backfill, you are now granted a priority requeue the next time you queue to play. You will see a small icon on the interface to denote this status. When you queue for a game with priority requeue status, the matchmaker tries to prioritize finding an appropriate game for you. This normally results in significantly lower times waiting in queue.

Custom Games Updates

New Features

• Lopsided Teams

Developer Comments: Lopsided Teams allows you to further customize how many players can be on each team in a custom game. While you are still limited to 12 players in total, you are now free to choose any number of slots on Team 1 and Team 2. For Workshop users, this affects how many dummy bots can spawn on each team. If the total number of player slots is 12, that defines how many dummy bots can spawn on each team (e.g. a 4v8 mode would allow for 4 dummy bots on one team and 8 on the other). If the total number of player slots is less than 12, additional dummy bots may be added to either team as long as the total number of players is within 12 (e.g. a 4v0 mode would allow up to 8 additional dummy bots on either team). We’re excited to see what asymmetrical game modes you all come up with.

WORKSHOP UPDATES

New Actions

• Set Ammo
• Set Max Ammo
• Set Weapon
• Set Reload Enabled
• Disable Game Mode HUD
• Enable Game Mode HUD
• Disable Game Mode In-World UI
• Enable Game Mode In-World UI
• Disable Hero HUD
• Enable Hero HUD
• Disable Kill Feed
• Enabled Kill Feed
• Disable Messages
• Enable Messages
• Disable Scoreboard
• Enable Scoreboard
• Set Ability Charge
• Set Ability Resource
• Set Jump Vertical Speed
• Disable Nameplates
• Enable Nameplates
• Start Forcing Player Outlines
• Stop Forcing Player Outlines
• Start Scaling Players
• Stop Scaling Players
• Start Scaling Barriers
• Stop Scaling Barriers
• Enable Movement Collision With Environment
• Disable Movement Collision With Environment
• Enable Movement Collision With Players
• Disable Movement Collision With Players
• Start Modifying Hero Voice Lines
• Stop Modifying Hero Voice Lines
• Add Health Pool To Player
• Remove Health Pool From Player
• Remove All Health Pools From Player
• Set Player Health

Developer Comments: We’re pleased to bring you the ability to scale players to very small and very large sizes, but it comes with one notable caveat: Scaling players to very large sizes and moving them into spaces where they don’t easily fit can impact server load and potentially cause your instance to shut down. There are two ways to mitigate this: First, you can choose one of the Workshop maps. These are designed for experimentation and can accommodate very large players. Second, you can use the “Disable Movement Collision With Environment” action. This will cause the player to pass through walls and ceilings, though the player can still stand on floors if the “Include Floors” option is set to False. (Collision with floors does not have the same server load implications.) When in doubt, you can display the Server Load values in the HUD in order to determine how scaling is affecting server load.

New Values

• Ammo
• Max Ammo
• Weapon
• Is Reloading
• Event Was Environment
• Current Array Index
• Input Binding String
• Ability Charge
• Ability Resource
• Mapped Array
• Workshop Setting Toggle
• Workshop Setting Integer
• Workshop Setting Real
• Last Created Health Pool
• Health of Type
• Max Health of Type

Developer Comments: The Workshop Setting values allow you to expose tunable values of your script to their own special section in the Custom Game Settings. With these settings, you can specify the min, max, default, and types of data (Integer, Real, Toggle) you’d like to expose to users. If one or more of these values are used in your script, a new autogenerated Workshop Settings card will appear in the settings menu, allowing you to tweak these value overrides prior to launching the game mode.

BUG FIXES

Heroes

Brigitte

• Fixed a bug with the hero information description for Repair Pack

Moira

• Fixed a bug that caused additional Biotic Orb impact VFX to become delayed if bouncing multiple times

Orisa

• Fixed a bug that caused some of the VFX for Orisa’s “Oh!” highlight intro to not appear properly

Pharah

• Fixed a bug that caused the rocket launcher weapon to disappear in 3P if her Rocket Guitar emote is interrupted

Reinhardt

• Fixed a bug that allowed two Reinhardt’s to collide during Charge and not knock each other down

Sombra

• Fixed a bug that could cause Hack to mispredict or appear to take longer to complete in higher latency situations

Symmetra

• Fixed a bug that allowed turrets to be placed within map geometry in Junkertown

Zenyatta

• Fixed a bug that caused an animation pop after casting Orb of Harmony or Orb of Discord

Workshop

• Fixed a bug causing Disable Built-In Game Mode Completion to fail in Elimination
• Fixed a bug causing Set Max Health to apply the percentage change to your current health unnecessarily
• Fixed a bug causing pasted Conditions to count extra towards the total element count
• Fixed a bug preventing Ashe’s self-knockback from Coach Gun from triggering Dealt/Received Knockback Events
• If the Last Of value is given an input value that is not an array, it now returns the value given to it instead of 0 (matching the behavior of First Of)