Overwatch: Halloween Update brings buffs to Soldier:76 and a Profanity Filter to the game

Halloween is here! After teasing the long-awaited event during the Grand Finals of the Overwatch League, Blizzard has pushed the Halloween Terror LTM to the live servers with the 13th October update, alongside more changes, including buffs to Solder: 76.

Looking to make the hitscan hero a more viable pick, especially at high-level play, the devs have decided to remove his bullet spread, adding recoil to compensate instead.

This is not the only change coming to the game, as an "Improved Profanity Filter" is finally being added, claiming that they are looking "to give players more control over the types of words they see. Instead of a simple On/Off Profanity Filter, there are now three levels of profanity filtering provided, called Friendly, Mature, and Unfiltered."

Take a look at the full patch notes below.

Overwatch 13th October Full Patch Notes

(Photo: Blizzard Entertainment)

GENERAL UPDATES

 Feature Update: Improved Profanity Filter

• FRIENDLY – We’ll do our best to filter all words currently identified by our constantly-updated list as obscene, vulgar, or offensive. This is the most family-friendly setting.
• MATURE – You may see some obscene or vulgar words with this setting, but we will filter language identified as extremely offensive.
• UNFILTERED – Nothing will be filtered. Please be aware that you may see extremely offensive language. This setting is not recommended.

Along with the new three levels of filtering, we now will allow players to have different profanity filter settings for each communication channel. These channels include:

• GENERAL CHAT
• MATCH CHAT
• TEAM CHAT
• PARTY CHAT
• WHISPER

As an example, you could use the stronger FRIENDLY profanity filter option for more public channels such as GENERAL CHAT or MATCH CHAT, but use the MATURE option for the more private PARTY CHAT.

 PLEASE NOTE: Using Any of the profanity filters doesn’t make it okay for players to use offensive language, and we encourage you to report these examples if you encounter them.

Feature Update: Elevator Adjustments

Elevators will now wait at the bottom of their track until a player boards the platform. After a short delay, the platform rises rapidly upward. Once the elevator reaches the top, it pauses briefly before returning to the bottom.

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We've received quite a bit of feedback about the unreliability of the looping elevators in Hollywood and Volskaya Industries. In an effort to improve that experience, we have re-designed the elevators in both maps so that they no longer endlessly loop. We hope that this change will make elevators a quicker and more reliable form of vertical transportation while granting nearby players fair warning that the elevator is in use through updated sound effects.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES

Competitive Team Deathmatch

Season 3 of Competitive Team Deathmatch has begun!

HERO UPDATES

 REINHARDT

 Earthshatter

• Added a voice line stating, "For the Crusaders!", that allies will hear when Reinhardt uses Earthshatter

SOLDIER: 76

 Heavy Pulse Rifle

• Bullet spread removed
• Constant recoil added
• Bullet damage reduced from 20 to 19
• Ammo increased from 25 to 30

SOMBRA

 Translocator

• Improved smoothness of Sombra's First Person camera when Translocating short distances to a Translocator that is in view

WIDOWMAKER

 Grappling Hook

• Grapple will now bounce off a surface if the distance between you and the hook is under 2 meters, canceling the hook and not costing any cooldown

WRECKING BALL

 Grappling Claw

• Improved target detection to help with the consistency of connecting to walls

BUG FIXES

 General

• Fixed a bug that caused highlights saved from Experimental games to not load properly
• Fixed a bug that caused heroes to load slowly when switching heroes from the Hero Select screen
• Fixed a bug with skill ratings not appearing in the Career Profile for Competitive Arcade seasons
• Fixed a bug with the "All Seasons" option not appearing within the Career Profile menu

Heroes

 Baptiste

• Fixed a bug that caused Baptiste’s eyes to not blink during his idle animation

D.Va

• Fixed a bug that caused the spray menu to display "Empty" in the top slot while a spray is equipped
• Fixed a bug that displayed the Korean flag incorrectly on the Taegeukgi skin

Echo

• Fixed a bug with Echo's Duplicate voice lines not playing in the correct language

Lúcio

• Fixed a bug that caused Lúcio's legs to unintentionally extend when landing on uneven terrain

Pharah

• Fixed a bug with the Lifeguard skin model not displaying properly on low texture quality settings
• Fixed a bug that caused Pharah's eyes to not animate properly when equipping the Lifeguard skin

Reaper

• Fixed a bug that caused Reaper's shotgun pattern to still be affected by random rotation

Reinhardt

• Fixed a bug that prevented "Storm, Earth and Fire" achievement from triggering

Zarya

• Fixed a bug that caused beam hit effects to display incorrectly on barriers

Custom Games

• Fixed an issue with the Door Health Scalar custom games setting for Junkenstein
• Fixed an issue with the Difficulty custom games setting for Junkenstein

Workshop

• Fixed a bug with Ashe’s Dynamite in hand to not scale to the size of the projectile
• Fixed a bug with Brigitte’s Whip Shot not displaying properly when triggered rapidly without a cooldown
• Fixed a bug that caused Reinhardt’s Earthshatter to not consistently hit targets when model scale is increased
• Fixed a bug where Ashe's B.O.B. would not smoothly scale up/down with Ashe
• Fixed a bug where Call Mech placed the location of the new mech incorrectly at varying scales