‘Overwatch’ Ranked Competitive Mode Still Coming In June, Character Tweaks Planned

The planned release of the Overwatch ranked Competitive Mode at the end of June is still on. Blizzard Entertainment accidentally scared fans of the hero shooter by announcing a different release date for the update to deliver ranked play to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC owners but corrected the mistake Wednesday.

Competitive Mode was originally added to Overwatch at the tail end of the beta. However, it was pulled out of the game for additional work by the Blizzard development team. The studio announced it would be added back into the shooter toward the end of June in a Facebook Q&A session. Game Director Jeff Kaplan announced the planned release of the update with some hesitation, though. This led to the following response on Twitter that caused a bit of an uproar among the game’s community.

Blizzard eventually caught the mistake and deleted the offending Twitter post thanks to the reactions from the community. It also posted a correction and apology for the erroneous release schedule.

Sorry about this! Competitive Play will be coming later in *JUNE*, not July. Apologies again for the error. ?

— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) June 1, 2016

For those who aren’t familiar, Overwatch currently matchmakes players simply based on their availability and connection quality. There is no attempt to pair players of similar skill, or even in-game, level with one another. So, it’s not too surprising when you see a brand new player going against others that have leveled up to the 30s or 40s.

Competitive Mode is a ranked playlist hopper geared towards matching players of similar skill level against one another, akin to the skill tier system in Rocket League. It allowed players to rank up through various divisions and tiers in month-long seasons with rewards such as sprays, icons, and voice lines.

The developers are continuing to change and tweak things from what was pulled from the beta and what is coming in the June release. For examples, the Competitive Mode seasons will be extended from one month to three months. The actual runtime of the season will be closer to two and a half months, with the extra couple of weeks used to give players a breather and Blizzard a chance to make any necessary tweaks to the mode.

Additional game modes will also be added to Overwatch as part of an on-going push to add more content to the shooter. New modes are being prototyped by Blizzard both internally and through the Weekly Brawls playlist. The latter option grants the developers a chance to experiment and test different gameplay ideas before dropping them to the standard playlists.

Those aren’t the only changes coming to Overwatch. Blizzard is also looking at improving the highlight system, though the date this is improved is very much in the air.

“The game will temporarily archive 5 highlights from your last play session. Playing only one game will only result in one highlight. Highlights are not currently saved if you close the game and come back. Our hope (and what we’re working toward) is to allow players to save highlights or export them to a video format someday,” Kaplan explain on the Overwatch forums.

Balance changes to characters are also incoming. McCree, D.Va, and Reaper will all be addressed in upcoming Overwatch updates.

Principal Designer Geoff Goodman touched on McCree’s flashbangs being too powerful against high health targets like Tanks and barriers.

“I don’t have any concrete changes yet, but I’m going to be testing some things internally to see how he plays,” he said.

Goodman also admitted D.Va’s damage output is on the low side by design to compensate for strengths of being mobile and hard to kill.

“That said, I do think the is some room for some D.Va improvements, but these are unlikely to take the shape of increasing her damage output significantly,” the designer explained.

Meanwhile, Reaper won’t be receiving any nerfs or buffs, but developers will make it easier for teams to spot the one that is on their team. His teleportation ability causes a red swirl of smoke that looks the same for both teams. Kaplan revealed that this will be changed in the June update so allied Reapers will have a blue swirl effect instead.

[Image via Blizzard Entertainment]