What’s New in Overwatch’s Year of the Dog Event? Everything You Need to Know

Capture the Flag and Competitive Capture the Flag

What’s New in Overwatch’s Year of the Dog Event? Everything You Need to Know

Overwatch’s Year of the Dog event sees the return of the Capture the Flag mode that appeared during last year’s Chinese New Year event. Year of the Dog also brings an all-new competitive variant which, as you might expect, aims to offer a more competitive experience with placement matches, skill ratings tiers, competitive points, and all the rest.

Blizzard has made some gameplay changes to the event-only game mode as part of its inclusion in Year of the Dog. We’re gonna break it down for you real quick:

• Flag pickup is now instantaneous, but once an enemy drops you, they won’t be able to pick up the flag for five seconds.
• Flags return after 4 seconds.
• Flag return is not interrupted by taking damage.
• Mobility and invulnerability skills drop the flag.
• Music plays while carrying the flag (how nice).
• Sudden death will break ties at the end of a match.
• When time runs out, the round starts over, the flags are moved closer to the center of the map, and the first team to capture wins.

There’s also a whole new map designed specifically for the mode, but we’ll get to that a bit later.

Maps

What’s New in Overwatch’s Year of the Dog Event? Everything You Need to Know

Overwatch’s Year of the Dog event doesn’t just add the aforementioned CTF-oriented map for players. You’ll also get to run around a festively-decorated version of the Lijiang Tower map. It’s not much, but it’s enough to get you in the festivities as you unload your ult on some unsuspecting fool.

As for the new map, Ayutthaya is based in Thailand and has been built from the ground-up specifically for Capture the Flag. In the developer update video for the event, Jeff Kaplan provided a quick description of what fans can expect from it.

“One side of the map is ancient and shows some temple that’s very gorgeous. And the other side is very bright and beautiful and very modern, and we think you’ll enjoy it.” Not a lot to go on in terms of how it might impact gameplay, but it’ll certainly make for a more exciting CTF experience than the standard ones.

Skins, Emotes, and Highlight Intros

What’s New in Overwatch’s Year of the Dog Event? Everything You Need to Know

As always, perhaps the most hyped part of each and every Overwatch event that rolls around are the new cosmetic items that are added into the game. This time around, there are over 170 items from skins to emotes, highlights, player icons, sprays and voice lines exclusive to the event. Part of this is made up of cosmetic items from last year’s lunar event, allowing players to grab something they thought they’d lost forever.

All of the cosmetic items that have arrived as part of Overwatch’s Year of the Dog event will only be available until March 5.

For more on Overwatch’s Year of the Dog event, be sure to search for Twinfinite.