Overwatch Is Working On Making E-Sports Easier To Watch
If you’ve ever spectated a match in Overwatch you probably have an idea of how hard it is to follow the action. Blizzard Entertainment is working to improve your e-sports viewing experience with a number of welcome changes and updates. Game Director Jeff Kaplan talks about these changes in a 
“We realized that there’s a lot of challenges with Overwatch and e-sports in general. And probably the top thing that we hear on the development team is that sometimes, watching Overwatch e-sports can be very challenging to follow the action and know what’s going on. So, for the past few months the Overwatch team has been extremely dedicated to working on improving the viewing experience for all of us so that when we’re watching things like Overwatch World Cup or the upcoming Overwatch League, it’s an amazing, great, experience.”
First on the list is team uniforms, home teams will have darker colors while away teams will have lighter color palettes. Tracer rounds and explosions will also match a team’s colors so you know who’s shooting who. Blizzard will also be introducing a top-down interactive map that shows all of the action at once including ultimate status and status effects, a third-person smart camera, kill feed cinematic replays, an automated tournament interface for tournament organizers, and an auto-pause system when a player is disconnected.
Kaplan says that this is just the first step in giving e-sports broadcasters and viewers a better overall experience. “It’s important that people recognize that this isn’t the final step,” he says. “This isn’t the moment where we say: ‘Hey, here are all the things that we’re working on and we’re done.’ In fact, we’re looking at Overwatch World Cup as one major milestone on our long journey to continuously improving the e-sports watching experience.”
You can watch the full developer update below.
