Overwatch's Loot Boxes And Highlights System Being Overhauled In Welcome Ways

Blizzard today shared some significant updates on the way to how Overwatch's Loot Boxes and the Highlights system currently function. Although the changes don't yet have a release date, they come as very welcome news.

Game director Jeff Kaplan offers a rundown on what's changing in the video below. Although the focus is primarily on Highlights, the Loot Box changes might be more significant. Kaplan says the forthcoming update will "drastically reduce the rate of duplicates that you'll get out of any Loot Box." He says the adjustment is significant enough that it will be "immediately evident."

By reducing the number of duplicates, players will then be missing out on the Credits that are handed out when you receive an item you already own. As a result, Blizzard will compensate by increasing the amount of Credits that Loot Boxes offer as rewards. "We'll make sure your credit intake is at least the same, if not more, when all of this is done," Kaplan says.

As for Highlights, Blizzard is finally implementing a system that allows these videos to be saved permanently. Kaplan describes this as a "complete iteration and evolution" of the feature. The existing setup--where the game recommends a top five to you--will continue to exist and actually now keeps these clips for 24 hours, rather than letting them potentially disappear if you exit out of the game.

But more important is the Recently Captured section. During the course of a match, you can "bookmark" a moment by pressing a Capture key. This then sends the match's highlight to your Recently Captured area, where up to 32 can be stored at a time. Once you're there, you can save these as video files, either on your console or PC.

If you're playing on PC, you can opt to have videos recorded at higher-quality settings than your PC might be able to actually play the game at. In other words, you can record 4K, 60 FPS videos, provided you have the necessary amount of storage and are willing to wait the extra time for these high-quality recordings to process. Kaplan notes Blizzard has other ideas to continue improving this feature in the future.

As noted above, there's no date yet for when these features will be made available to everyone. Before that happens, though, you'll be able to check them out in an upcoming PTR update on PC.

Earlier this week, Overwatch received a big patch, the main component of which was a new map. It also made some significant balance changes, targeting Roadhog, McCree, and Reaper.