Overwatch‘s “High Bandwidth Mode” Rolls Out on PC

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Hopefully, there will no more being shot by Hanzo’s bullshit little arrows when you KNOW you made it around that corner.

If you’ve been following the Overwatch community, one of the game’s biggest complaints was its considerably low tick-rate – a mere 21hz compared to the usual 60. Well after testing a “High Bandwidth” mode, and announcing that it would be hitting live servers, the mode is now completely live on most of Overwatch‘s servers.

“[We] are currently in the process of rolling out high bandwidth support globally for PC. This process may take a few weeks for all regions, but once fully deployed all games including those in Quick Play and Competitive Play will be running in high bandwidth mode by default,” wrote Blizzard in a forum post. The new refresh rate for the game will be a healthy 63hz.

However, it does come with an important caveat. “Since we know that not all internet connections are equal, we’ve also added in tech that will automatically and adaptively scale down your update rate if we find your connection can’t keep up.” Simply put, if you’re interet connection is slow or unstable, you’ll be put back down to the 21hz refresh rate.

“Similarly, because high bandwidth servers (as the name suggests) will increase your bandwidth consumption, we’re also looking to add an option to self-limit your update rate in a future patch.”

As for console gamers, Blizzard says it is “exploring” options into bringing the high bandwidth mode to Xbox One and PS4.

Source: Battle.net

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