Overwatch was one of the hottest new additions to the Esports scene back in 2016, with the OVL(Overwatch League) being worth millions of dollars. Even the regular competitive scene of Overwatch enjoyed millions of players joining in to play the ranked game mode against other players to test out their skills.
With the introduction of Overwatch 2, Activision Blizzard has introduced some massive changes to how the competitive system works. We will be taking a look at all of these and what they mean for the future of competitive Overwatch.
How To Unlock Competitive In Overwatch 2
Players who do not have previous Overwatch accounts will have to go through the process of unlocking Competitive mode. They will primarily be guided by the game with a proper tutorial and given instructions on how to proceed. Usually, unlocking competitive entails playing around 50 games of Quick Play mode so that players are able to learn the ropes.
Veteran players with previously existing accounts will already have the game mode unlocked. This will allow the matchmaking system to learn about the skills of new players and pair them up with appropriate teammates and opponents. The system is geared towards reducing matchmaking frustration as much as possible for both veterans and noobs.
Placement Matches
After unlocking Competitive Mode, you will have to play a series of placement games before you receive a rank. Placement games will be finalized the moment you get either 7 competitive wins or 20 competitive losses. Keep in mind, your initial placement rank will be in the lower tiers of the competitive ladder.
Competitive Tiers
The team at Activision Blizzard has opted to divide the competitive ladder into a larger number of categories to place players in. In addition to this, they have decided to remove the Skill Rating(SR) number that was generally associated with a player’s individual rank.
This is meant to reduce frustration from constantly seeing the number fluctuate every game. This will also provide players with a more accurate representation of their skill level. The tiers will be divided from Bronze to Grandmaster as usual. Each tier will have 5 internal divisions, with 5 being the lowest and 1 being the highest.
The top 500 players will not have divisions in their ranks and will simply be unlocked every 2 weeks into a season. Each tier reportedly has around a 100 SR range and will be updated with every 7 wins or with every 20 losses.
Skill Decay
Skill Decay refers to the system of reducing a player’s ranking if they have not played competitive games recently. Skill decay was also a feature present for the top percentile of players in the original game.
Activision Blizzard has apparently fine-tuned this decay to help adjust players into their appropriate ranks by changing some of their internal ranking modifiers. This will allow players to both drop and gain ranks more quickly so it is more representative of their actual skill level.
Scoreboard and Game Reports
These are two brand-new features that Blizzard has implemented in order to help players assess their game performance more accurately, both during and after the game.
Scoreboard
Rather than the old game end screen showing only your highest stats, the scoreboard system has been implemented to allow you to see every player’s performance in a more traditional Kill/Death/Assists manner.
You can use this feature in the middle of the game to appropriately judge yourself and your team’s performance in order to adjust whatever is needed. This scoreboard will provide some much-needed information transparency and, coupled with the new ping system, will allow for much more planning and coordination for your team.
Game Reports
A new game report feature will also be added to the career page. This will act as an in-depth review feature for your past games and will provide you with useful statistics from your games across different game modes. You will be able to view key moments and figure out the parts of your play that may need improvements.
The goal of this feature is to allow players to review their own performance and observe their own progression over time. They will also provide you with hero-specific performance figures to allow you to gauge which heroes you may excel with or which ones require further practice. All in all, it is a very handy tool for players looking for ways to improve their performance.
Competitive Rewards
Season-specific sprays and rewards are being removed in favor of more player-specific titles. You will only earn these titles once the season officially ends, and they will be representative of your performance over the course of the season. Do note that you will lose the title after the following season and will have to earn a new one.
Golden Weapons for heroes can still be bought with competitive points, the same as before. 3000 competitive points will net you a golden weapon for any character of your choice. You can earn 15 Competitive Points per win and 5 Competitive Points per draw.
However, a change they are looking to implement is a cap on the total number of golden points you can earn each season, depending on your highest rank. This is done to increase the prestige of golden weapons.
Wrapping Up
That concludes our list of all the major changes coming to the competitive Overwatch scene with the release of Overwatch 2. Fans of the game surely have reason to be excited about how the brand-new matchmaking systems will impact their game experience. Best of luck to everyone looking to climb the competitive ladders.
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