Overwatch‘s competitive ranked mode (called Competitive Play) is now live, and it hasn’t entirely gone off without a hitch or twelve. Blizzard is attempting to address each issue as they come up, and they admit that they have several ideas how to make these ranked matches even better for all involved.
The first problem they had to tackle was with “leavers,” those who leave the match before completion. When that occurred, the Skill Rating would decrease for BOTH sides, as the game would note that that one side would have an extreme advantage over the other with the extra player. They have patched this issue so that Overwatch will no longer adjust the Skill Rating progress if someone drops out of the match.
At the same time, the game’s community manager acknowledged in the Overwatch forums that there have been problems with accurately explaining how the Skill Rating works.
Things like your team’s probability of success, your individual performance, and win/loss streaks can all affect how your Skill Rating is adjusted at the end of a match. These factors are there for a reason (to help make Skill Rating as accurate as possible), but we know that it’s not always clear right now why your Skill Rating is adjusted the way it is.
That’s a concern for us, because we not only want Skill Rating to be accurate, but also for it to make sense. The fact that it doesn’t is good feedback for us, and seeing how we can make Skill Rating feel better/be clearer is definitely something we’ll be keeping in mind as we look at ways to improve Competitive Play for future seasons.
Blizzard is also working on implementing a one-hero limit to each match, which will prevent matches against a team of Tracers or Torbjorns. This tweak is already at work in the Overwatch Public Test Realm and should make its way to the wild in an upcoming update. The developer notes, however, that this one-hero limit will not be part of Quick Play, just Competitive Play.
Another tweak coming is in regard to ties in matches, according to game designer Scott Mercer. Currently, ties in Competitive Play results in a Sudden Death round, and Blizzard is eager to kick Sudden Death to the curb in Season 2.
We definitely want players to feel like if they had a tie, their time wasn’t completely wasted. So we’re trying to find the sweet spot of a lot of players feel like, ‘Oh, well, we got something out of it,’ but at the same time not create situations where players might collude and create some nasty situations there. We’re still discussing that.
Have any other changes you’d like to see in Overwatch Competitive Play? Leave them in the comments below!
[Sources: GameSpot, Twinfinite, Battle.net]
