A deep dive into how respawn waves work in Overwatch 2

In an effort to reduce the frequency of players running in one-by-one and never grouping up in public lobbies, due to a lack of team coordination, the Overwatch 2 developers added Group Respawn in Season 7. To understand how the system works and what the gameplay implications of the system are as-is, let's take a look at how it works in an example team wipe.
Visuals:
‪@KarQlips‬
• The NEW GROUP RESPAWN ...
Music:
LEMMiNO - Blackout
• LEMMiNO - Blackout (BGM)
CC BY-SA 4.0
#MadeWithMotionCanvas
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
00:19 - Overview
00:59 - Example Teamfight
03:55 - Conclusion

[@CactusPuppy]

ERRATA: - Group Respawn is disabled in Overtime, so in the scenario presented, the Illari and D.Va would not have their respawn times adjusted. The Motion Canvas code used to generate the graphics for this video can be found at github.com/CactusPuppy/group-respawn-motion-graphics

[@KarQ]

This has shown up on my algorithm. It's time for this to blow up

[@CactusPuppy]

Praying to the algorithmic gods right now

[@timstephenson8877]

so in theory the ana could have waited a whole 5 more seconds to respawn if everyone died within one second of everyone

[@CactusPuppy]

The worst-case scenario for the amount of time added to one player’s respawn in regulation time without Push Forward spawns pans out to be 1 player / number of players in the group * 5 second window, repeated for every possible size up to the number of players on the team, so (1/2 + 1/3 + 1/4 + 1/5) * 5 seconds in 5v5, or about (1.2833… * 5) = 6.4166… seconds

[@Thewinningsheep]

And this kids, is why you should go to school

[@metaphoricallyspeaking]

Very nicely done! 👏 Animation, pacing and explanation was all on point!

[@Orciwan548]

I prefer they leave it alone. I don’t want an extra two seconds on respawn so I can spawn at the same time. If the team is getting wiped I’ll wait if not I want to be back as fast as possible to help the team.

[@heelmeplz]

Great video! I love the graphics to assist the explanation!

[@atomiclight8574]

I always appreciate some good motion graphics

[@jonathanhult3555]

You deserve way more views, great video!

[@Alomare]

my whole family now knows your voice because I blasted this full volume in the living room. How do you feel about that?

[@CactusPuppy]

Group Respawn has the potential to kick in whenever you hear my voice. At the tone, please leave a message.

[@Lottow]

Great video, clean editing! Think its a underrated system, hope it gets added to comp as well

[@Facha115]

thanks for bringing some light on this new feature!

[@jmmz1529]

If you're a puppy shouldn't you bark?

[@NotMuda]

CactusPuppy recomendation? pog!

[@jolly_gman]

I’m honestly not at all sure about where I stand in regards to the possibility of this being added to comp. It feels like it would be a nice quality of life thing but also takes away some of the basic tactical skill expression of staggering or grouping up

[@CactusPuppy]

For intentional staggering (e.g. stalling a baby DVa kill), I don’t think this does anything, since teams usually waited longer than 5 seconds to eliminate the staggered target. As for grouping up, that skill would still be necessary in situations where two or more waves of players are created, since the waves would be 5 or more seconds apart

[@lilwintery6434]

idk i think adding it to ranked won't change much of anything imo, but i think it will help the lower ranks where people stagger themselves by not waiting for their team, i don't think there is much skill expression in grouping up this way, it's just like if you don't do it you're prob throwing you can still stagger enemies if anything it takes more skill now because you have to wait out the 5 sec timer from when the last person was killed, also staggering is kind of a thing you do when your winning and you just want to win more and the devs have said snowballing is something they want to fix

[@silvamlon]

very nice video, you a way better editor than i am

[@CactusPuppy]

This is factually not true, but I appreciate the compliment

[@RubiksMoon]

interesting, and here i was thinking that the 2nd person would just be piggy back to the first person respawn, not averaged like ti actually is lol

[@CactusPuppy]

The goal with this first iteration was to keep the average respawn time consistent to avoid having player show up faster in general after dying! I think this is a pretty good implementation.

[@knyt0]

This feature is so terrible unless you have a lucio on your team, most heroes have a different speed so you end up on the frontlines staggered anyways (which doesn't even matter).. it feels so terrible when you get a denied touch or loss because you had to wait for someone to spawn, and you had a game saving ult I'm sure this feature works fine in very low elo, but it makes no sense in higher rated games (yes qp has elo)

[@lennywhere]