Overwatch’s highlight and loot box systems getting major overhauls

Overwatch players have been begging for a more robust highlight feature since the game was released last May—and the time’s finally come. A new highlights system is currently in testing on the Overwatch public test region.

But wait, that’s not all. Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has another surprise. The loot box system will also see some generous improvements.

Kaplan detailed the new systems in a Developer’s Update posted to YouTube today. Overwatch will continue to deliver a series of highlights that are collected automatically while playing, with the promise that they’ll stay available for 24 hours. Players will also be able to capture their own highlights, too: Players can bind a key to capture a highlight, or multiple keys to capture multiple highlights.

After the victory or defeat screen, the game then registers the game—and its highlights—and sends the highlight to a new section in the Highlights tab, called Recently Captured. Depending on what system the highlight was captured on, different export options will be available.

On console, Overwatch will default to whatever is set for the console, then the highlight is sent to the Xbox or PlayStation media library. On PC, the highlight will go to a directory in Windows, but players will have different quality options available. Even if a highlight was captured on a low-end system, Kaplan said, the video will still be able to be exported at 4K quality, if you choose so. Of course, the bigger the video file, the longer it’ll take to generate the file, Kaplan added.

The Overwatch development team will continue to iterate and upgrade the functionality over time.

Loot boxes are getting an upgrade, too. First, players will begin noticing a drastically reduced amount of duplicates in loot boxes in Overwatch when the update goes live. But because duplicates give players Overwatch credits, Blizzard is adjusting a second feature: The amount of credits players receive from loot boxes will be increased. “On average, players should be earning just as many credits, if not slightly more, from loot boxes than they did prior to these changes,” Blizzard said in a blog post.

Both the highlights feature and the loot box adjustments are available on the Overwatch PTR. Keep in mind, however, that loot earned on the PTR does not transfer over to the live game. Because the PTR is PC-only, players on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will just have to wait to test them out.