Hey everyone, it’s our first Director’s Take of the year! The team had a great break and we’re super excited for Season 15 and beyond. You might have noticed our recent announcement for Overwatch 2 Spotlight, and I can’t wait for you to see what we have coming up during the first few Seasons of this year. So, for this blog, I want to spend a little time looking at some of the changes we made last year, talk about how they went, and how we want to improve them for the coming year – all while shamelessly plugging Overwatch 2 Spotlight! Let’s get into it.
We started last year with a set of changes targeted at moment-to-moment gameplay and our competitive systems. We made a set of broad changes to our core PVP gameplay by rebalancing our heroes’ health pools, changing projectile sizes and reworking passives. We also completely overhauled our competitive system. We think that the idea of a yearly refresh to the game was successful and are looking to have a major update to the way it plays every year. However, we want to go even bigger in 2025. Details to come in Spotlight as well as the next Director’s Take blog!
We are pretty happy with the new direction of Competitive Play. The game is now more approachable for new players and it’s easier than ever to group up with your friends and play together in Competitive. This approach to doing a rank reset worked well and gave players—both new and seasoned—a new skill tier to reach. However, Champion has proven to be a little too difficult for our top players to achieve. As we approach Season 15, we’re looking to adjust how players rank into different skill tiers after we reset the ranks again. Our highest ranks will shift to include a larger percentage of our total player population, and we should see more players earn the right to call themselves Champions! We’re also looking to introduce some new systems to our competitive play, the first of which will be announced in a few weeks.
We’ve heard two primary complaints about 2024’s Competitive weapon reward, Jade Weapons. One of the biggest criticisms we’ve heard is how our Jade Weapon variants are getting vaulted at the end of this season. Competitive Weapons are intended to show your involvement in our Competitive Queues per year. As time goes by, you will have a different set of weapons based on how often you play comp each year. Keeping Competitive Weapons limited to the year gives them the ability to tell that story. Some of you have been hoping for a weapon skin that has a higher end look to it, and we’ve got something for 2025 that is pretty spectacular. So, while Jade Weapon Variants are going away for now, we’ve got an amazing new weapon variant to collect in 2025 that will be out of this world!
Additionally, we also love the response to Drives and think it’s a great way to end each season, which is why for this final season of the 2024 season we’re offering double the Competitive Points you can get.
Okay, now let’s look at heroes. The three heroes this past year have been some of our most mobile and 3-dimensional heroes yet. Our quirky and adventurous archaeologist, Venture, quite literally got underneath opponents and shook things up. Juno glided into the scene with a unique vertical range to keep her allies healthy. Finally, Hazard brough a new level of anarchy as our first tank that can wall climb. Each of these heroes has introduced a level of verticality that really makes battles more dynamic, and we want to continue bringing new heroes that can be engaging for both those of you using them and the opponents playing against them.
Looking ahead to 2025, we’re looking into how we can make all of our heroes more engaging and unique for players. This is something the team is wanting to change up and look forward to sharing more… soon. Did I mention that you’re going to want to check out Spotlight?
We also ran our first 6v6 events last year and early this year. These took the form of 6v6 Role Queue, and 6v6 Min 1 Max 3. The Role Queue version accounted for nearly 10% of all play hours in the game for most of its event run. For reference, our Role Queued Quick Play mode accounts for roughly 35-40% of play hours (this was lower during the 6v6 tests). There’s definitely a demand for a mode with this team size, but it’s still uncertain how large that demand is. We’re going to run a mini-competitive season of 6v6 starting midseason 15. It’s still a little early to say what 6v6’s place is in Overwatch with a decent amount of people playing it, I think that it’s probably here to stay in some form, but so far, we’re not ready to swap the core format of the game.
Speaking of game modes, we want to take a moment on what to expect for Clash in Quick Play and Competitive. This past year, we introduced Clash, which was inspired by the original Assault maps, but gave players a chance to attack and defend throughout the course of the match. Clash has had some really good matches, but we’ve also seen a lot of constructive feedback. Right now, Clash has a few problems, with some matches having a team steamroll and ending much faster than a typical Overwatch game. It can also be confusing as to which point is active for some players. So starting in Season 15, Clash maps are going to be removed out of Competitive Play, as we take the time to look at these maps and work to find ways to deliver the best Competitive experience for all of our players. We'll keep you updated on the progress we make there. In the meantime, we are going to keep Clash in Quick Play and other unranked game modes.
2024 was a huge year, but I know 2025 is going to be even bigger and I can’t wait for the team to share more in Overwatch 2 Spotlight on February 12 (it was hard to write this one last time, I promise)! So, until then, let’s make a great game.