Overwatch 2 dev discusses hot topics raised by the community, including changes to ranked

Aaron Keller, an Overwatch 2 dev, has released some details regarding up-and-coming updates, as well discussing hot topics within the community, including the changes that are expected for ranked mode since a lot of players are frustrated at the moment with the way the game appears to be playing.

In the post on Overwatch’s website, Aaron says, “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.”.

Currently, it appears that on Overwatch 2, the rank system seems a bit all over the place. It’s not uncommon to be matched with players either far too good for the rank they are currently placed in or the complete opposite and far too poor for their rank. As referenced, Aaron refers to “difficulty forming groups with friends”. A lot of players, including myself, have seen too many one-sided games due to this and I believe the changes to ranked mode will be welcomed by the community.

Another point raised heavily by the community is the reward system within the game. Although a lot of items can be obtained simply by playing, the grind in order to do this seems too much and often, the lack of new skins as part of just simply playing, is not good enough. Aaron says, “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.”.

Further on, he mentions changes to the ult cost in S3 and says, “We’ll be lowering the ult refund when swapping heroes to 25% as part of this tuning pass”. As well as this, Aaron also mentions about the current “balance frequency”. He mentions, “Bug fixes to hot fixing should enable us to address balance faster and would have enabled us to tune Hog earlier in S2. We’re still planning an initial and midseason patch each season, but now have the full ability to fill in between those as necessary”.

I think it’s fair to say that balance in a game like Overwatch 2 is vital. We have seen it far too often where characters like Hog and even Moira have proved far too overpowered for long periods of time, to the point of where they were picked pretty much every single game. Hopefully the increase in balance frequency and hotfixes can improve this and make the game a bit more enjoyable going forward.

In the final part of the blog, he goes on to say, “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” and finally thanks for the community for on-going feedback, “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”.

Finally, Aaron responded on Twitter to a user who sent over a screenshot of the current loading screen asking for further details on this:

It is a welcomed change to see devs being transparent and updating the community. Hopefully we will see more updates in the coming weeks.