On July 18, in what was one of the most news-packed weeks in Overwatch’s history, Jeff Kaplan and the Overwatch team dropped another huge bombshell: Role Queue. This comes as a part of a larger announcement that OWL and OW will move to a 2-2-2 role lock where players will be forced to play two supports, two tanks and two DPS players. Role Queue, specifically, will allow players to queue in a certain role in both Competitive Play and Quick Play.
The entire announcement can be seen in the video below or on the official announcement on Overwatch’s website.
In role queue, players will have a different SR for each of the three available roles. This prevents a player that would usually excel at DPS from moving over to support, struggling, and lowering their SR. Players will, instead, play five placement matches on each role to be placed in that role’s SR. The image below shows what this may look like in-game.
Image Courtesy of playoverwatch.com
Additionally, players will, at times, be incentivized to play certain roles more if the demand for that role is higher than others. This will not only allow players to have shorter wait times but can also potentially offer them loot boxes for playing games in a certain role. Likely, this will be the case for tank and support players.
August 13 to September 1 Overwatch will have a beta season to give players a chance to test role queue in between season 17 and 18. Until then, PC players can practice role queue on the PTR, however, Jeff Kaplan warned today on stream with Seagull that this may be a less than accessible PTR experience due to the variable MMR players will have.
In order to better accommodate Brigitte in a 2-2-2 world, the developers have changed her kit in an effort to make her more of a true healer. Below are the changes they have made in order to facilitate this.
Image Courtesy of blizztrack.com
To help reduce the number of ultimates used each fight, the developers wanted to make them more expensive to earn. For how high impact they are on fights, this will likely reward players who are more skilled in positioning and mechanics over players who simply rely on big ultimates. Below are the changes with the developer’s comments.
Image Courtesy of blizztrack.com
It also looks as if Overwatch’s 31st hero has been released. Mexico’s Overwatch World Cup Twitter account tweeted out images containing Sigma but no official word has come on his release. This would likely come to the PTR in the next two weeks if confirmed.
Image Courtesy of OWWC Mexico
All in all, this week has contained more Overwatch and OWL news than fans have ever experienced. Between the 2020 OWL homestand announcements, the release of the 2019 Summer Games event and the announcements detailed here, the future is looking brighter than ever for Overwatch and Overwatch esports.
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Featured Image Courtesy of playoverwatch.com
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