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Overwatch’s Competitive Play mode is returning to the fight

Since the launch of Overwatch last month fans have been enjoying themselves running around with friends pew pewing at the baddies. Overwatch has been great for players of all skill types with less focus on comparison and more on excitement and progression. But soon players will be able to take it to the serious level.

Earlier today the official Overwatch Youtube channel uploaded a video with the director Jeff Kaplan discussing the upcoming updates. For those who have been keeping up with the game’s news a couple of the things he brings up will sound familiar but the main point of the video is how Competitive Play will be different from its release in open beta.

What to expect if you don’t feel like watching 11 minutes of Captain Kap’? Well let’s start with his description of what Competitive Play is.

“The default way to play Overwatch is in Quickplay and that is where we want you to be able to sort of casually, as easily as possible, get into a match of Overwatch and just have fun, just play the game however you want to play.”…”But Competitive Play is an area where players who want to take the game a little more seriously can focus their efforts”.

Makes sense but what changes are coming for those who were playing in the Open Beta or for those who are interested? Well I won’t hit all of the points but here are some of the more important bits.

Competitive Play seasons will follow the real world seasons in the Northern Hemisphere for near three months with a couple of weeks of rest time in between. Within these seasons players will be competing to be ranked higher than one another in a combination of MMR ranking and skill rating that is between 1-100. This is rather than a compared progression that was originally in the open beta and felt less comparative.

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Going into matches everyone will be able to see a player’s skill rating publicly along with other information such as whether or not other players are in a premade (group) or not. Sometimes players will be of a similar skill but sometimes it will be lower skilled players in an attempt to give underdogs the change to rise up without creating a huge risk for higher leveled players.

Best of all there will be rewards for players who excel in Competitive Play. Not like skill effecting rewards, but more like cosmetic rewards such as sprays, player icons, and colored weapons that will show off just how awesome you are.

Will the new Competitive Play be better than it was prior to the game’s release? We can only hope. Luckily Kaplan and the rest of the development team have been very genuine about how they are treating the game. “We want this game to be as great as you do,” Kaplan says, “and we’re in there right alongside you not only monitoring the system, listening to the feedback but playing as well.” If the system does end up being a little worse than everyone expected then it sounds like it can only become better over time so no need to worry!

We don’t have a date on when Competitive Play will be patched into the game but until then keep breaking it down!