In his latest Developer Update, Aaron Keller reveals that the recent Season 3 of Overwatch 2 has been embattled with a series of puzzling missteps. Players have experienced difficulty making groups with friends and found themselves facing off against opponents in higher ranks than expected, resulting from “poor comprehension” in Ranked mode. That’s where Season 3 steps in, as it is the destined game changer and combatant against all the anomalies.
The new Ranked mode suffered from poor comprehension. There was confusion around players’ real rank and how that translated to their skill level, difficulty forming groups with friends, and a negative impression of the matchmaker when players of different ranks were put in the same match (even if their skill levels were similar). We will be implementing some changes in S3 and quite a few more in S4 all aimed at creating more clarity in the system. More details on short-term changes and long-term vision will be coming soonTM.
Get ready for a wild ride! Several changes are in store in upcoming game seasons to bring more clarity and rewards. Keller has heard feedback from players who say that they can’t obtain what they want fast enough – Season 3 tackles this issue head-on as it introduces new ways for gamers to gain sought-after items, with even more coming our way by next season.
We’ve gotten feedback from players that the game doesn’t feel rewarding enough to play and that players can’t earn the items they want in a short enough period of time. We’ll be making a change in S3 that should address some of these complaints. This is a first step. We will have more details to share about this next week.
With the meta rapidly changing in games every few weeks, players are debating how best to address “frustrating one-shot hero mechanics” and their prevalence. Blizzard continues listening for feedback on these topics and hopes to build a game that both satisfies the desires of old-school fans while meeting new trends with open arms – which is not an easy task by the eye.
One-shots and frustrating hero mechanics are being discussed a lot in the community and on the team. This is an ongoing discussion, but the topic has a lot of nuances that involves the frequency of those mechanics, trade-offs for using it, the overall power level of a hero, how often the hero is played, as well as things like a hero’s fantasy. Know that we’re listening here, the feedback has been great and very welcome, and we’ll come back to this when we have more to share.
Ultimates and their cost will also be tweaked, as Blizzard plans to lower the ult refund when swapping heroes to 25%.
There are a fair number of changes to ult cost in S3. We’ll be lowering the ult refund when swapping heroes to 25% as part of this tuning pass.
