The announcement ofOverwatch 2has not slowed the progress and changes of the originalOverwatch, as it continues to experiment with new modes and bring new heroes to the table. With theupcoming hero Echoready to satisfy players' craving for a new way to experience the game, upcoming changes toOverwatch’s Quick Play mode will hopefully answer their craving for a way to get into a match that’s actually fun, or at least not one-sided.
In a regularOverwatchmatch, players must stick with the same group of players, who are shuffled between teams as the game progresses and different players fall behind or surge ahead in terms of kills and deaths. The teams flip between being on the offensive and defensive sides of the objective for a series of rounds, until one team is ultimately the winner. Obviously, leaving in between rounds puts the team with the leaving player at a serious disadvantage, but it’s no fun to stick around when it becomes obvious the game is already lost.
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Quick Play mode was created to try and answer the prayers of players who wanted to drop in and out of games quickly without having to commit to a full match, allowing players to leave when they felt like it with only an XP penalty. The open spots on the team would be filled by players in a backfill, waiting for a match to open up. Much like therecently implemented hero bans, it was a good idea, but not one that satisfied players thanks to bringing its own unique problems. Fortunately, Jeff Kaplan recently announced that the devs will soon be rolling out a slew of updates that will, if not eliminate, certainly help to mitigate players' frustrations.
The biggest problem being addressed is being brought into a game from backfill that is basically over already, or in some cases, actually over. Kaplan has stated that with the fixes going through, entering a game directly into a “Defeat” screen will hopefully become nothing but a bad memory. There are also fixes being put in place to shorten wait times for individual hero roles, particularly for heroes focused on dealing damage, a role that often has a wait time of over 10 minutes. Just as theOverwatchhero pools are meant to keep the game from being stagnantover time, so too will the re-vamped Quick Play mode hopefully help to keep individual players' experience from growing too stale.
Of course, there are problems at the moment that have nothing to do with the actual state of the game but are sure to impact players anyway. The biggest concern remains theCoronavirus, which has caused the cancellation of theOverwatchLeague’s March and April eventsand will be a problem for the foreseeable future.
Nonetheless,Overwatchplayers are using the time to dive even deeper into one of their favored passtimes, and the already mighty fanbase may grow even closer with this crisis.
Overwatchis available for PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
