"Overwatch" is well-known for its tight shooting mechanics, varied and balanced characters, beautiful Pixar-style art - and the basketball hoop that appears in the starting areas of a few of the maps.
There are countless videos out there of players trying to exploit the game's physics engine in untold ways, using their guns, melee attacks, special abilities, and even their ultimates to shoot basketballs into the hoop.
Now, Blizzard seems to have finally caught on, and made an undocumented change to the basketball hoops that finally allow them to respond when a basketball is shot into them. As Twitch streamer AnneMunition discovered, making a successful shot into the hoop now causes confetti to burst out of the hoop.
Along with a celebratory horn blast - a development that has been celebrated on reddit by various commenters as "the content we've been waiting for," "literally playable," and has even been suggested as a replacement for the coin flip that chooses which team plays what side in Sudden Death.
Given the negative response to said coin flip by the community, it's not immediately clear whether the latter suggestion was actually half-serious.
In AnneMunition's video, it's clear that the other players in the game can also see the burst of confetti, making for a teamwide cause for celebration that certainly beats even the most hard-earned of overtime wins.
Whether this means that basketball physics are serverside, or that the confetti is simply triggered for everyone regardless of whether they actually saw the basketball enter the hoop, is yet to be tested. It's also unknown whether other objects besides basketballs can trigger the confetti.
More on the topic of basketballs, yesterday Overwatch chief Jeff Kaplan took to the official forums and noted that they're making a "big ball tuning pass," in response to allegations that the basketballs have had their bounciness turned way up after the recent patch.
