Blizzard admits Overwatch 2's new Ranked mode "suffered from poor comprehension"
"We will be implementing changes in S3 and quite a few more in S4."
Blizzard has outlined what changes it has planned for Overwatch 2's third season.
In a brief blog post shared on the official website, director Aaron Keller admitted that the new Ranked mode "suffered from poor comprehension", acknowledging that there was "confusion around players' real rank and how that translated to 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".
"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," Keller said.
"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," Keller added. "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 also reflected upon balance frequency - "bug fixes to hot fixing should enable us to address balance faster and would have enabled us to tune Hog earlier" - and says that whilst there are still plans for an initial and midseason patch, this will give the team "the full ability to fill in between those as necessary".
"One-shots and frustrating hero mechanics are being discussed a lot in the community and on the team," Keller said. "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."
Finally, players have been told to expect "a fair number of changes to ult cost in S3" as Blizzard "lowers the ult refund when swapping heroes to 25 per cent as part of this running pass".
After 10 days, Overwatch 2 had 25 million players, and thanks to Activision Blizzard's third-quarter financial report, we know that the game clocked up 35 million players in its first month.
Blizzard has begun deploying audio transcription to help combat abuse and toxicity in Overwatch 2's voice chat.