Overwatch 2’s Competitive Mode Is Seeing More Action In Season 9 Than Previous Seasons
Despite the controversy surrounding Overwatch 2 Season 9’s major gameplay changes, players seem to be really digging it, at least according to game director Aaron Keller. In his latest letter to the community, Keller reports an increase in interest in competitive matches compared to previous seasons.
According to Keller, players are now spending 45% of their time in Competitive Mode and 32% in Quick Play. Prior to Season 9, players 35% of player time was spent in Competitive and 40% in Quick Play. Keller notes that the numbers don’t indicate a lull in quick play but rather an increase in overall competitive matches since the season began.
To keep the trend going, the developers already have another round of changes lined up for the hero shooter. These include the removal of grouping restrictions with the start of Season 10 and matchmaking improvements to better match groups with a wide gap in skill level with similarly skilled opponents. Players can also look forward to additional features for the competitive progress screen, role-specific titles, and the top 500 most-requested features and changes.
Not to be left out, Quick Play will also be getting “moderate” adjustments to gameplay. The team will also be making better use of the Quick Play: Hacked feature to test planned changes and adjustments since there hasn’t been enough players on the experimental branch to give them accurate data.
“Only about 18% of our players ed this queue, and out of those, the overwhelming majority would only play 1 match before going back to their preferred modes,” Keller explains. “It's difficult for anyone, devs or players, to make an assessment of a game-wide change in just one match. The other piece of we heard was that big disruptive changes to Quick Play didn't give players an option of playing their favorite mode if they didn't like those changes.”
Season 10 isn’t scheduled to begin for another few weeks, so you don’t have to worry about more game-changing updates for the time being. Meanwhile, the developers rolled out a small update last week that mostly focused on fine-tuning various heroes that became slightly more powerful than planned. You can learn more about that here.
