Hey all! Hope you’re having a great time with Season 17, spending time with your squad exploring the alleys of Aatlis and the mean streets of Stadium.
To us, the Overwatch experience is at its best when it gives you the tools to shape your own gameplay. Whether you’re customizing your Hero mid-match or deciding which rewards to grind for, we want Overwatch to feel more like a toolkit than an instruction manual. It should be something you can explore, experiment with, and make your own.
Over the last year, we’ve put a lot of focus into expanding that toolkit and implementing new ways to customize your play time. Today, I want to talk about what we’ve done, what’s coming next, and how it all ties back to that all-important sense of player agency.
We believe that giving you more agency leads to a better game—one that feels more personal, more strategic, and more rewarding. We want you to feel as if you have some ownership in the direction the game takes and how you experience it.
What You Play
Player choice is a guiding principle for us, but it wasn’t always central to how we built Overwatch. At launch, the only mode available was Quickplay! We later added Competitive for a greater challenge. These two modes created a simple and effective system, but we knew Overwatch could grow beyond those limitations.
These days, you have many more options to choose from, including both Ranked and Unranked 6v6 queues as well as our newest mode, Stadium. Those additions demonstrate the delicate balance we’re always trying to hit: listening to what players are asking for, while also finding moments to surprise you with innovative ways to dive in. Right now, Overwatch has five main ways to play, with a sixth—Unranked Stadium—coming in Season 18.
Player choice starts with deciding which kind of Overwatch experience you’re looking for, and we think this current mix hits a sweet spot. There’s something fun for just about every kind of player, from the most casual beginners to high-skill strategists. And if you're someone who likes to bounce between modes, that’s covered too!
That said, having lots of choices is great...until you start to get winded picking what to order off the metaphorical menu. When you look at all the other ways to play, like Arcade modes or Hero Mastery, things are starting to seem a little cluttered. We’re planning to take a fresh look at all of Overwatch’s offerings to see where we can simplify and streamline, such as improving navigation between screens, or a revamped Arcade experience. The goal is to make it easier to find what you love and to focus our support where it matters most.
How You Play
Mode choice is just the beginning! Some of the most meaningful decisions happen once you're in the game, which is where a lot of our recent features come into play:
- Perks let you choose how your Hero plays during a match and can be used strategically to counter an enemy team or player.
- Hero Bans and Map Voting give you more opportunities to decide what kind of match you’re walking into.
- Stadium Armory lets you totally reshape how a Hero works in that mode, encouraging you to push abilities and counterstrategy to the limit.
These kinds of systems allow more room for creativity, strategy, and personal expression. They also add a layer of depth we felt Overwatch was missing and give us more ways to keep things fresh from season to season.
On that note, we have a big update to Perks coming in Season 18, and we’re already thinking about what else we can do to give players more control mid-match. This kind of work is tricky; we want to offer more meaningful choices, increase strategy and depth, and really deliver on the power fantasy of each hero. But adding all of that can easily make the game feel too complex. Our goal is to find smart, seamless ways to bring more choice into moment-to-moment gameplay, ideally without stacking on new systems or adding friction for players.
Why You Play
Choice doesn’t stop when the match ends. One of the most meaningful areas of player agency includes all the ways you tailor your experience outside of active matches: through progression, rewards, and connecting with others.
Our team is taking the first steps toward long-term improvements in this area in Season 18 by making changes and adding meaningful rewards to our progression system. Rather than overhaul big systems like progression, we’re looking to build gradually by adding more ways for you to earn cool stuff, chase your chosen goals, and feel rewarded for your time. A good example of this was the recent reintroduction of loot boxes.
We've also heard feedback that you're missing certain features that brought personality to matches, like the old end-of-match voting cards. Even if you can’t be hailed as the MVP every game, that kind of social expression matters, and we may have some ideas on how that could return. We're also looking at changes to the endorsement system and iterating other ways players can recognize and interact with one another in positive, supportive ways.
At the end of the day, our goal is to give you the freedom to engage with Overwatch in the way that fits you best. To support those choices with solid and meaningful rewards.
We don’t make these decisions in a vacuum; we’re always listening. Our community team scours social channels and forums. We run surveys in and out of the game. Our analysts keep tabs on player choices and how you’re “voting with your time.” And yes, we play Overwatch, too! All of these methods help us understand how you’re using the tools we’ve built and what else we can add to the kit. We’ll keep listening, keep evolving, and keep adding ways to make Overwatch yours.
Thanks for reading. Let's make a great game!