❘ published: 2023-03-10 T22:33:26
❘ updated: 2023-03-10 T22:33:35
The latest Overwatch 2 patch has made balanced matchmaking a higher priority for competitive matches than for Quick Play games.
Overwatch 2’s matchmaking has faced heavy criticism since its launch, with many users experiencing unbalanced gameplay with bronze players in GM lobbies.
Although these issues have been addressed by developers many times, who say the matchmaker is still in the works, the latest patch on March 7 made some big changes to help with competitive integrity.
a New blog post By Game Director Aaron Keller reveals that until then, Matchmaker was the same with Quick Play and Competitive, but now that’s all changed.
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Overwatch 2 updates the differences in fast-paced gameplay and competitive skills
According to Keeler, when players line up for matches, the matchmaker will look for players of equal skill level – but will often have to expand to players with greater skill differences.
“Over the past week, we’ve made changes to the system that have significantly reduced the skill gap between players in a match for both high and low MMR matches,” he explained.
More changes to OW2 matchmaking to come.
Keeler further stated that in Season 3, they adjusted how the matchmaker expanded over time, but ended up removing their control over each queue’s behavior, meaning the skill differences would be the same in Quick Play and Competitive.
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It’s not clear why developer control over queues was removed, but it’s back now and it’s much stricter than before.
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“In the patch we released on Tuesday, we implemented the first of a series of system changes (more to come in Season 4) that give us back the flexibility to adjust these modes separately and give us new ways to tune the system,” he revealed.
“This week we will be adjusting these values to narrow the skill gap in Competitively as much as possible while keeping an eye on wait times for this mode.”
Ranked matchmaking has become tougher.
Of course, this may result in longer queues for ranked players, but that may be a small price to pay for better quality matches.
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Hopefully, we’re one step closer to mastering ranked play in Overwatch and can finally put the horrors of seeing gold medals in the top 500 games behind us.
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