A First Look at the New Overwatch 2 Ping System

Overwatch players have long asked for a more sophisticated ping system, mainly for their ranked matches. Some players simply don’t want to join voice chat (and really who can blame them?) but still want to help our their team. Other titles like Apex Legends have utilized the ping system in order to enhance communication without ever needing a microphone. In Overwatch 1, players received a taste of what a ping system could be in the future, but it still lacked several key pieces to make it worthwile.

Well on Thursday March 24, the Overwatch 2 team revealed their plans for a more expansive ping system.

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With the new ping system, players can change the context of the ping based on where their reticle lies. Players can now make call outs with their characters voice, similar to what players had when calling out their ultimate percentage. Pings will stick on a location, depending on where, or what, the player highlighted. For example players can ping opponents, and the ping will remain on the target until they exit line of sight.

For characters like Sombra and Reaper, the ping will change to represent their last known position. The ping will also fall off with Tracer’s Recall, Doomfist’s Meteor Strike and Moira’s Fade ability. The goal is to give information to the teammates around a player, without giving a massive information boost to the team as well.

Players can also respond to certain pings. For things like ” I need healing” or “Group up”, players can respond with their own ping to say that they are together or if they aren’t in range to heal.

[Related: Here is the Overwatch League Season 5 Start Date] 

As the Open Beta slowly approaches, the developers mentioned in their post that the ping system is very much a work in progress. The system will go through a few iterations as more and more players have access to the latest tool. Players are already excited to see the improvements to a much-needed system, and as Overwatch 2 continues to improve, the newest ping system could be just what the ranked ladder needs.

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Featured image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment

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