Report: Blizzard Announces Restrictions to Group Play in High-Level Competitive, More Changes to Come

Starting with Season 16 of Competitive Play, Grandmaster players (whose SR exceeds 4000) will only be able to queue in groups of two.

This news comes straight from Scott Mercer, Overwatch’s Principal Designer, who often posts to the forums to discuss changes coming to the game’s structure.

While many have called for changes like this for some time, high level players agree that more can be done to improve the game mode. Ranked is often a disappointment for high-elo players, who struggle with toxicity, gameplay sabotage, and poor matchmaking. This change could help with at least one of those problems, but it won’t be the only one coming to the game mode.

#1 Esports Consultant Rod “Slasher” Breslau alluded on Twitter yesterday that the duo-queue change is one of the first of several bigger moves coming from the dev team – including changes that have been oft-discussed in high-level circles. While it’s unclear which features Breslau is alluding to, a forced role queue or 2-2-2 compositional lock are potential options, among other changes. These changes are most likely separate from the recently announced Workshop feature, which allows you to develop custom settings and game modes.

blizzard has reduced overwatch grandmaster play to only solos/duos. This is a great step forward for the future of competitive overwatch.

sources tell me that this is the first of several bigger changes to overwatch, many of which I have talked about. It's about time. pic.twitter.com/tZ5q18XrUX

— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) April 30, 2019

Do you feel this change will help save competitive Overwatch? What more needs to be done? Be sure to let us know on Twitter @TGHEsports.

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