Overwatch 2’s Season 4 update to bring more transparency to competitive queues

Overwatch 2’s devs have announced that Season 4 will bring an update that will show the average rank of both teams in competitive queues. 

Ever since the release of Overwatch 2, its matchmaking has been plagued with difficulties. In some cases players have even reported instances of Bronze teammates appearing in GM lobbies. And while the devs have tried to fix it, things still aren’t exactly up to snuff just yet.

In a March 16 Q&A stream on Overwatch streamers Eskay and Jay3, devs talked to them about the problems that matchmaking has been facing. And amid the conversation, Morgan Maddren, a Senior Software Engineer at Blizzard, announced they will be adding a new feature to ranked queues to help provide more clarity.

Moving forward in Season 4, Blizzard will be displaying the average ranks of both teams during the loading screen as you enter the game. This, Maddren hopes, should alleviate some of the community’s problems as it allows players to see exactly what sort of lobby they are in. 

“We hear players’ feedback that they want to kind of get a sense of what kind of lobby they’re in, and we want to provide back from that feedback,” Maddren said.

The news was immediately met with excitement from Eskay, Jay3, and the Twitch chat. An update of this kind should make competitive queues much more transparent in the long run.

He also mentioned that the dev team is still unsure if they want to show individual player ranks once again, which used to be a feature in Overwatch 1. It caused quite a bit of trouble in the original game, he claimed, which is understandable as the lowest-ranked player can often be singled out as a black sheep. 

Maddren also admits they might have some difficulties gauging the average ranks in GM lobbies. As Eskay put it, the difference in skill of a Top 500 player and a GM 4 is substantial, but they could be placed in the same lobby.