Michael Gwilliam
❘ Published: 2023-03-10T22:33:26
❘ Updated: 2023-03-10T22:33:35
The latest Overwatch 2 patch has made balanced matchmaking a higher priority for competitive matches than quick play games.
Overwatch 2’s matchmaking has been heavily criticized since its inception, with many users experiencing one-sided matches with bronze players in GM lobbies.
Although the issues have been raised many times by the developers, who say the matchmaker is still a work in progress, the latest March 7th patch made some big changes to improve competitive integrity.
A new blog post from Game Director Aaron Keller reveals that the matchmaker used to be the same for Quick Play and Competitive, but now everything has changed.
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Overwatch 2 updates the differences between Quick Play and Competitive Skills
When players line up for matches, Keller says the matchmaker looks for players of the same skill level — but it often needs to be expanded to players with larger skill gaps.
“Over the past week we’ve made changes to the system that have significantly reduced the skill gap between players in a match for high and low MMR matches,” he explained.
Blizzard Entertainment More changes to OW2 matchmaking are coming.
Keller further explained that in Season 3 they changed the matchmaker extension over time, but ultimately lost their control over per-queue behavior, meaning the skill differences in Quick Play and Competitive would be the same.
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It’s not clear why developer control over queues was removed, but now it’s back and tighter than before.
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“In the patch we released Tuesday, we implemented the first in a series of systemic changes (more to come in Season 4) that will give us back the flexibility to tune these modes separately and give us new ways to tune the system.” , he reveals.
“This week we will be adjusting these stats to try to close the competitive skill gap as much as possible while keeping an eye on wait times for this mode.”
Blizzard EntertainmentRanked Matchmaking is getting much stricter.
Of course, this could very well lead to longer queues for ranked players, but that can be a small price to pay for higher quality games.
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Hopefully we’re one step closer to perfecting Overwatch ranked play and finally putting the horror of seeing gold in top 500 matches behind us.
