Overwatch 2 Aims to Fix Progression, Make Support More Fun; Pre-Paid Phones Now Accepted

The launch of Overwatch 2 has been a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand, going free-to-play has attracted a lot of new people to the game, on the other, there have been many justified complaints about gameplay changes, progression and rewards, and a lack of content. As we head toward the launch of Overwatch 2 Season 2 in December, Blizzard is promising a number of short and longer-term updates. These include changes to progression and battle passes, a push to make playing support more fun, and more. Here’s the rundown of what you can expect over the next few seasons…

Rewards And Progression

“With the arrival of Season 2, we’ve changed up our rewards so that each event has a skin you can earn by playing, in addition to the other cosmetic rewards we already offer. We’re also going to continue our Twitch drops programs so that you can earn skins and in-game goodies by supporting your favorite creators. While we're working on the long-term plans, we want upcoming seasons to feel more rewarding than Season 1.

For Season 3 and beyond, we’re looking at a mix of Battle Pass changes, more interesting Challenges to pursue, and more exciting play-focused progression systems for you all to dig into. We’ll be able to talk about some of these changes soon, but other changes may take more time to lock-in.”

Queue Times

“With the move to 5v5, we’re seeing longer queue times than we’d like for both tank and damage players, and while there’s no silver bullet for this issue, the team has a LOT of ideas that we want to experiment with in the upcoming seasons. Many of these ideas are focused on the support role and how we can make it more fun and more rewarding to play. We’re discussing targeted support hero reworks, game system updates, and even some role-wide changes to improve support quality of life.”

Competitive

“We’ve been making some adjustments to the matchmaking system, and we implemented some changes that should help the system more accurately determine a player’s skill tier and division. While this change is already in-game, you can expect the effects to be even more noticeable at the start of Season 2. The Competitive system is more than just matchmaking, though, and we’ve heard your feedback about unexpected rank changes, rate of feedback and more. This is a topic that I can't do justice with just a paragraph or two, so you can expect a deeper dive on our plans soon.”

Hero Balance

“Multiple heroes saw balance changes and adjustments in the patch. We’re already planning ahead for more changes at the beginning of Season 2. We'll be talking more about those Season 2 changes (including some for your favorite cybernetically-enhanced Canadian) soon but we want to see how the current set of updates for this mid-season patch play out first.”

In addition to everything listed above, Blizzard has also made a change to their controversial phone number requirement for new Overwatch 2 players. Pre-paid plans are now accepted, so go grab those burner phones kids. An update, which includes the aforementioned balance changes to Genji, D.va, and more, has also been released – get the full patch notes here.

Activision Blizzard has faced a series of lawsuits and other legal action on the heels of a suit filed by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) alleging widespread gender-based discrimination and sexual harassment at the Call of Duty publisher. You can get more details on that unfolding story here.

Overwatch 2 multiplayer is free-to-play on PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, and Switch. Season 2 kicks off on December 6.

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