Blizzard Entertainment released a hotfix today that included the reintroduction of a pair of problematic maps that were bugging out matches due to an exploit players became privy to.
Paraíso and the Antarctic Peninsula have been reinstated in today’s patch that claims to have fixed an issue allowing players to escape the spawn room before the start of games. While leaving the spawn room always led to players getting immediately put back in spawn, it could also cause performance issues for the lobby if done repeatedly.
The patch notes also mentioned fixing an “issue causing low FPS performance when specific heroes were in certain areas.” That issue was likely a part of the overall bug that players had been exploiting causing the maps’ removal in the first place.
Paraíso was the first of the two maps to be taken out of the game on June 8 due to numerous reports of an exploit that Mercy players could execute, and less than a week later, Antarctic Peninsula was also removed temporarily.
Related: Blizzard backtracks on major Overwatch balance change just 2 weeks after adding it in
Along with adding these maps back, the new patch includes a few balance changes to heroes. Blizzard nerfed Cassidy and Mei’s newly updated crowd control abilities and gave a buff to Lifeweaver’s Thorn Volley. While the mid-cycle season five patch is just two weeks away, it seems there were enough substantive changes necessary that Blizzard decided to give players a little bit of a surprise by giving them hero changes just a couple of weeks after the new season.
