Overwatch 2 game director Aaron Keller has posted a new Developer Update on what to expect in Season 3 (which recently saw skins like Kiriko’s leak). Keller acknowledged that Ranked mode suffered from “poor comprehension.” Whether it’s the inability to make groups with friends, a negative experience by facing players in other ranks despite being of similar skill, and so on, there’s been a lot of confusion.
In Season 3, there will be “some changes” and “quite a few more in Season 4 aimed at creating more clarity in the system. More details on short-term changes and long-term vision will be coming soon.” Keller also acknowledged feedback that the game didn’t feel rewarding enough, with players unable “earn the items they want in a short enough period.” Next season will introduce change to address this, but it’s only the “first step.”
More details will be revealed this week. As for the Ultimate Refund on hero switching feature, it’s going from 30 to 25 percent in the next tuning pass.
“Balance frequency is a big topic. Bug fixes to hot fixing should enable us to address balance faster and would have enabled us to tune Hog earlier in S2. We’re still planning an initial and midseason patch each season, but now have the full ability to fill in between those as necessary.”
Discussions are still ongoing regarding one-shots and “frustrating hero mechanics.” “The topic has a lot of nuances that involve the frequency of those mechanics, trade-offs for using it, the overall power level of a hero, how often the hero is played, as well as things like a hero’s fantasy. Know that we’re listening here, the feedback has been great and very welcome, and we’ll come back to this when we have more to share.”
There’s no start date for Season 3, but based on the length of each season, it should begin next month. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.
Overwatch 2 is available for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, PC, and Nintendo Switch. Check out our review of the base version here.