As Overwatch 2 heads toward its third season, the developers have opened up about some of the game’s most-requested features including the ability to select maps and draft heroes.
Overwatch 2 players have had a rough time with Season 2 so far. The reign of one-shot heroes such as Roadhog and Sojourn has created a controversial meta and a lack of communication from the devs has left the community confused.
Despite promises to update ranked play and balance the game more frequently, players are still waiting for a formal announcement and eventual news of a long-awaited patch.
Amid the struggle, OW2’s Executive Producer Jared Neuss responded to a fan’s question about the possibility of a tournament mode, map selection, and hero draft coming to the game in a future update. Still, his statement may not sit well with players.
OW2 devs address tournament mode, map selection, & draft
According to Neuss, Overwatch 2 has many issues that need to be addressed before features like the ability to vote on maps get added.
“There are enough foundational issues to address that I think features like this (if we were to do them) would come much later down the road,” Neuss explained. “Gotta walk before you run, so to speak.”
The ability to vote what map to play on is very common in other titles such as Call of Duty, but for some reason, this has never been a feature in Overwatch as the game just puts players in whatever mode it chooses.
There are enough foundational issues to address that I think features like this (if we were to do them) would come much later down the road.Gotta walk before you run, so to speak.
— Jared Neuss (@OhReallyJared) January 20, 2023
A hero draft, while controversial, is another feature that other games have and could help players balance the game themselves by banning problematic meta heroes from being chosen on the battlefield.
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Meanwhile, a tournament mode has long been a popular request from players hoping to queue as full teams against other five-stacks in a truly competitive environment.
Despite these features seemingly not coming anytime soon, Neuss did reiterate that fixes to ranked are in the works and insisted that making the ladder better for players was a priority.
The biggest complaints from the community in Comp right now are related to Rank updates being confusing/unintuitive, team imbalance (roll or be rolled), general mm issues, etc.My point is that we need to get those things sorted to set the foundation for new features.
— Jared Neuss (@OhReallyJared) January 21, 2023
“The biggest complaints from the community in Comp right now are related to Rank updates being confusing/unintuitive, team imbalance (roll or be rolled), general mm issues, etc,” he added. “My point is that we need to get those things sorted to set the foundation for new features.”
Although these requested features may not be in development yet, the fact they weren’t ruled out is at least somewhat comforting. Hopefully, the team can speed up work on adding them as soon as they fix other issues plaguing Overwatch 2 going into Season 3.