Duplication Entities with No Team

This is an enemy Mei wall. If I shoot it, it breaks. This is a friendly Mei wall. If I shoot it, nothing happens. Overwatch doesn’t like friendly fire and prevents an attacker from damaging a target if they are on the same team.

This also applies to Echo’s duplication ultimate; enemy duplicated walls can be destroyed while friendly duplicated walls cannot. But once the Echo duplication ends, I can destroy the friendly wall. Why? When Echo duplicates another hero, she becomes a new entity. Although this new entity is distinctly separate from the Echo entity, it still inherits the team variable of the Echo.

Furthermore, any objects created by this duplication entity will also inherit its team variable.

This dependency ensures that each newly created entity is on the same team as its owner. And this works great… up until duplication ends. When this happens, the duplication entity is destroyed and a 3 second timer begins counting down the destruction of any objects created during the ultimate. During this brief period of time, the wall is trying to inherit its team variable from an entity that no longer exists. As a result, the wall’s team is set to the default value of “All Teams”. This is a legitimate team value used in free-for-all game modes — such as deathmatch — but in regular game modes this value can cause wacky behavior, since typically only “Team 1” and “Team 2” are used.

To avoid confusion, let’s just refer to this value as “No Team” since it better reflects the behavior we’ll see going forward. Because friendly fire is prevented by checking whether or not both combatants are on the same team, an entity with no team can receive damage from everyone. Team 1 can destroy the wall since the wall isn’t on Team 1, and Team 2 can destroy the wall since the wall isn’t on Team 2 either. Interestingly, this problem only occurs with three abilities. The first one is Mei’s wall, which we’ve already seen. The second is Life weaver’s petal platform. And the third is Life weaver’s tree. Every other deployable object in the game functions just fine after duplication ends. Perhaps this is unsurprising, otherwise we would notice this problem much more often. It’s unknown why these three objects are the only ones affected by this bug, but one possibility is that certain entities are given their team variable by reference while others are given their team variable by value.

Passing a variable by reference gives the entity a pointer to the original variable.

Think of this setup as having only one “real” team variable; the wall’s team variable simply references Mei’s, so any changes made to Mei will also affect the wall. On the other hand, passing a variable by value creates a “copy” of the variable that exists independently of the original. In a setup like this, there is no link between each entity’s team variable; any changes made to Torbjorn’s team does not propagate to the turret. But this is just speculation on my part; the true cause for these behavioral differences could lie elsewhere.
Before I go, there is one more thing I want to cover. Earlier I said there are only three abilities that can become team-less — but I have deceived you! There is actually a fourth ability affected by this bug.

Well, there was a fourth ability. Life weaver used to have a passive named “Parting Gift” that was removed only 14 days after his release. This passive would drop a health pack that would heal the player who collected it — and this mechanic was uniquely affected by not having a team. See, the amount of healing given by parting gift depended on which team the gift was on. If the gift and the collector were on the same team, it would heal 250 HP. But if the gift and the collector were NOT on the same team, it would only heal 75 HP. A gift with no team does not match Team 1 or Team 2, so any player in the server who collected it would only receive 75 HP. This was one of the more interesting side effects of this duplication bug, but with the removal of parting gift it is no longer possible to witness.

Though with future hero releases, the hope for more interesting duplication quirks is not dead yet….

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