Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has opened up about some of the challenges facing the free-to-play shooter, acknowledging that there's been "confusion" about the new Ranked mode and confirming that the team will be "implementing some changes" as we move into Season 3 and beyond.
On the official website, the Overwatch 2 director said that whilst the team may not be able to provide "all the reasoning and detail", the hope is that by providing regular updates, players can get an insight into what the team is "thinking and planning".
Keller also revealed that as well as an initial and midseason patch, players could now expect to see bug fixes in hot fixes so Blizzard can "address balance [issues] faster".
"The new Ranked mode suffered from poor comprehension," Keller said. "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 soon.
"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," Keller added.
That's not all, though. Keller also advised that "a fair number of changes to ult cost" are on the way in season 3, and the ult refund when swapping heroes will change to 25 per cent "as part of this tuning pass".
"One-shots and frustrating hero mechanics are being discussed a lot in the community and on the team," Keller said in closing. "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."
In case you missed it, Blizzard recently confirmed that it was "still finalizing" how the game's story mode will be rolled out.
In an interview, Keller gave a small update on the game's campaign, which was originally supposed to be released alongside Overwatch 2's multiplayer mode last October. According to Keller, Blizzard is "still finalizing" how its future content will be rolled out, but we do know that the single-player mode is set to be released sometime this year.
Here's the full Overwatch 2 support tier list to help you pick a main.
"Cut to about 3 o'clock in the morning, I end up on the piano, the bars kicked us out, and I spent the weekend nursing a hangover": Troy Baker on the 9-hour bender that taught him how to bring Indiana Jones to life
Stalker 2 first post-launch patch is here and includes over 650 fixes for everything from quest blockers to crashes, but GSC Game World isn't done yet
