Blizzard has announced that a ‘Competitive Play’ mode is now available on Overwatch. According to the press release, Competitive Play is designed for those who truly want to put their skills to the test, and offers a more serious experience than Quick Play or Weekly Brawl! modes.
It’s worth noting that Competitive Play will be locked until level 25.
Before starting the competitive career, every new player must first complete 10 placement matches in order to obtain their initial skill rating. This rating will be a number between 1 and 100, with higher values indicating a greater skill level. Skill ratings will be visible at the beginning of every match. As you compete, your rating will increase or decrease with each win or loss based on a number of factors, including your own performance and the skill of the other players in the match.
Competitive Play will consist of four seasons, each lasting two and a half months. During that time, players can increase their skill rating and battle their way up the ranks before the stats are reset at the end of the season. This is followed by a two-week offseason, after which a new season will commence, beginning with a new set of placement matches. The names of these seasons, along with their schedule, will mirror the seasons in the northern hemisphere—and the Summer 2016 season is already underway!
In addition to experiencing the thrill of victory, players can earn new rewards that are only available through Competitive Play. At the end of a season, anyone who has completed the 10 placement matches will receive a special spray and player icon, with a new set of designs being released every season. On top of that, the weapons locker is about to get a little shinier. As you win matches, you’ll earn Competitive Points. Based on your performance, you’ll also receive a number of points at the end of the season. These Competitive Points can be exchanged for cosmetic Golden Weapons for your heroes. At some point during each season, we’ll also activate a leaderboard system that will highlight the top 500 players on your platform.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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At the risk of coming off as a hater, I just have to type this, & then that’s that;
As a WoW Veteran (2004-2010), I still know, & remain in touch with my fair share of WoW players, most veterans, some still active. As such, I tend to hear about things, whether I want to or not sometimes even. Yesterday I was notified that Blizzard had, & not for the first time either, pulled one of their idiotic “we changed something for the sake of changing things” acts.
What did they change? They arbitrarily decided to remove a camera console command that players have been using for over 12 years now, suddenly, randomly, out of the blue, without any warning or feedback requests, “because.” (They did provide a reason, to be entirely honest, but like so many other excuses they’ve vomited out over the years, it’s completely obvious bullsh*t).
This isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this either, mind you, & it won’t be the last. For that matter, Diablo 3 has also been subjected to this treatment over & over, as anyone who has been foolish enough to pick up the game & try it can tell you. Even now, today, it continues to be subject to a ridiculously cheap balancing stratagem that focuses around letting developers have a very simple & straightforward time balancing things, instead of constantly crunching numbers every season to see what works & what breaks.
Now no doubt you’re wondering “what exactly is so bad about this?” Well, this stratagem just so happens to have (purposefully) caused even the most well-geared of players to cast aside their Legendary-grade items in favour of green-level (common) items because of their set-piece bonuses, which is what Blizzard is now balancing around, “because effort.”
Which brings me to the point I want to make here; if you have already, or are considering picking up Overwatch or any other Blizzard game; you have been warned. The developers (Blizzard) are insane – they routinely disrespect their fanbase, they routinely change things for the sake of change, & sooner or later, development resources are going to dwindle no matter what state the game is in, in favour of microtransaction-based real-world money store items instead. The promises they make are very often blatant lies which are not to be trusted, even if they showcase video footage & claim a certain feature/map/other is in Alpha, or Beta, or whatever (see Diablo 3 & the developer’s claims that they were “working on implementing” Arena PvP for years on end for example), & they ardently, systematically refuse to listen to community feedback when it comes to situations in which they blindly believe they know better no matter what we say or do, etc. etc. etc. (it is extremely difficult to get them to change their minds about something once they announce it, especially if it’s a change that they’re particularly in love with, in which case it takes nothing short of an overwhelmingly negative response to get them to retract, which regardless doesn’t happen very often, unfortunately).
No matter what they say, claim, or promise; do not fall for their very often empty promises, flat-out delusional claims &/or aspirations (ex. annual WoW Expansions – been hearing about that one for over a decade now, always at the cost of actual in-game content, of course), do not give them a pass on something because “it didn’t work out” (oh, they love to use that excuse), & most importantly; don’t ever give them (more) money until you’ve successfully confirmed that the product in question is as advertised. Oh, & whatever you do – stay away from their Official Forums if you want to hang on to your sanity.
P.S. Expect Overwatch to slowly begin dying development-wise as soon as they announce their next project, if not earlier.
F*ck, I’ve read it all.
Me too…going to take a nap after this. Damn! (for real I need one)
I’ve had just woken up, reading all that made more dizzier than normal lol.
are you talking about the camera distance reduction? im all for it. yes i play wow to. it makes it harder to pillar hump in arena is that what the issue is?
Blizzard loves to cater to the casuals, and make their games more and more casual as time goes on, until the hardcores don’t even recognize it anymore.
are you seriously making this post because blizzard lowered the cap of max camera distance?
also, why should you care so much about additional development for overwatch? its a shooter so it shouldnt need much further development other that some other maps and whatnot
No, I’m making this post because of the endless years of bullsh*t the Blizzard fanbase has endured, the camera max distance factor reduction being just the latest entry in a long, long list of such haphazard changes brought on by Blizzard “because we can.” If I had a time machine, I’d have gone back & made this post after the massive disgrace that was the Draenor Flying debacle, but unfortunately I don’t have one, so I’m making it now instead.
Diablo 3 didn’t really need much development after they fixed the major Diablo 3 1.0 issues with Diablo 3 2.0 either, yet that didn’t stop Blizzard from f*cking that up either, did it now?
Don’t you worry, I can guarantee they’re already planning Overwatch Expansions which will feature major (& largely completely unnecessary) gameplay revamps, “because.”
the camera thing from what i just read, was for balance purposes. the game wasnt meant to be played from such a distance and to put the camera like that you had to mess up with some variables, it wasnt just a slider you found on the graphics options. if youre using commands to alter variables to suit your needs on an online game, then you really cant be surprised when that goes away.
as for diablo 3, i never bothered with it due to several reasons like paragon levels, no PvP (extremely late and very crappy so it doesnt count, also kinda hard to balance thanks to paragon levels) no lobbies, no servers , the auction house, etc etc. so i cant speak about the latest issues with it :p
anyways i only play starcraft out of blizzard games, and while they might be greedy (like all the other companies) at least they keep updating their games and the such. i cant even think of another big company that does that
Regardless of how “it was meant to be played,” players have been using this console command for over 12 years now. Removing it from PvP for balancing purposes, I can understand. Removing it from PvE, after all this time, instead of just amplifying the settings panel’s camera slider, was a ridiculous call.
As I said already, it’s yet another case of a PvP/PvE change affecting PvE/PvP respectively, because Blizzard once again refuses to separate the two & balance them separately, as they should be doing as of many, many years now.
This isn’t a case of “the last Patch broke something, & now we’re fixing it,” this is a case of “12 years later, we randomly decided to “fix” this thing, & we know you won’t take it well (they said this themselves) but we don’t really care anyway since we’ve decided we don’t like you using it, so f*ck you.”
Agreed on Diablo 3, especially the PvP thing. Remember that Arena PvP video they showcased, & their repeated claims that they were “working on implementing” it up through D3’s launch? They kept claiming that all the way through RoS development too, right until they finally admitted that it wasn’t happening, “because it didn’t work out.”
At which point they (finally) gave us that half-arsed alternative instead, “but it’s ok, because it’s basically the same thing, anyway…….” (their own words, paraphrased) Yeah, no.
As for updates; granted, they do decent post-launch support, but their patches can also vary considerably in quality & quantity both. Not to mention, the only reason they’re still patching SC2 at this point is because of eSports. As long as they keep making money on the eSports front, they’ll have an incentive to keep the game fresh. Once that stops, they’ll also stop.
Likewise with Diablo 3. They’re keeping it going because they’ve got another (final) expansion planned. Shortly after that launches however, unless they finally introduce some real competitive PvP into D3 (PvP which they can actively make money off of), they’ll abandon it.
youre probably right but again, i think youre over reacting a bit.
its their game and while obviously a bit of a d*ck move to remove
something people were used to, at least its for balance issues and well
a new expansion is coming out and sometimes worse changes were
implemented without even a good excuse. as for the balancing
thing in PvP, now at least theyre adding PvP talents and normalizing
gear so i guess theyre finally getting to it? :p
dont get me wrong, ive come to dislike blizzard as well but i still think theyre one of the best out there when it comes to polish and design in the AAA industry . i do feel theyre going downhill as of late but oh well
I really hate Blizzards rock, paper, scissors “balancing” instead of skill. i hope this game dies a flaming death, back to CSGO i go.
So Overrated getting overbalanced…
the competitive nature of this game is a joke compared to unreal tournament and CSGO
Wow, they actually did separate PvP Talents…… I’m actually amazed.
I fully agree on achievements (& rewards in general). Remember Glory of the Raider? The 3.0 Raid Instances Meta-Achievements. Their Mount rewards were removed with 3.1. People moaned so hard, they never did it again. I remember that achievement you mentioned too, Insane in the Membrane. IIRC they removed one of the old Troll Raids in 4.0, thus breaking the achievement in the process, so in order to keep the achievement functioning they opted to gut it by removing the now-broken reputation/s.
On the other hand, while they did provide plenty of warning for some things, they’ve failed to provide proper warning for others. Near the end of Pandaria, they announced they were removing the entire Legendary Cloak questline. Not just the Legendary rewards, but the entire questline, with only so much warning. Beyond the idiocy involved in removing the entire questline (considering how much effort they vested into it, & how it’s a part of WoW history, & how even now, you can still do those bloody AQ Gate Quests (can’t you?) even though the Sceptre doesn’t have a purpose anymore), they failed to give any sort of real warning for the Cloak removal, which was disgraceful.
It’s stuff like this, the inconsistencies that get to people the most, IMO. Beyond the whole “Blizzard knows better than you what you want” arguments (see there still being no Official Vanilla Servers, because according to Blizzard “you (read: we) don’t really want them. You think you do, but you don’t.”). Well, the inconsistencies, & the bullsh*t excuses they try to throw at us constantly because like so many others in the Industry, they operate under the delusion that we’re just a bunch of f*cking retards who don’t know anything about anything.
This one guy replied to the camera console command change with this, & IMO it applies perfectly to the vast majority of Blizzard’s arbitrary changes in general;
“Before the change:
90% of people don’t care
10% of people are happy to zoom out
After the change:
90% of people don’t care
10% of people are pissed off
Net result: great success.
Well spent development time.”
Like I said, they altered the camera commands 12 years ago in early Vanilla because they were so powerful, people were zooming out so far they could see stuff they weren’t supposed to see. That, I could understand perfectly, but they themselves 12 years ago decided “ok, let’s let them zoom out this far, with console commands” only to arbitrarily change their minds on that now, 12 years later, suddenly, out of the blue, because “we feel.”
(Seriously, Blizzard’s “feels” are probably the single most destructive thing to ever happen to WoW)
Nostalrius was a major misstep for them, agreed, & their subsequent excuses over it are so ridiculous, it’s hilarious. “Oh yeah, we own the Warcraft IP, but even so, we can’t license it out to a 3rd Party Server Host, because….. uh……. well, we just can’t.” I.E. “we don’t want to, because we don’t want people seeing what an experience Vanilla was compared to the joke we’re offering now.”
“Oh, & we probably operate under some delusion that since Nostalrius wasn’t asking for a subscription fee, they were somehow cutting into our ever-dwindling profits, because Vanilla = Draenor/Legion, even though it really, really doesn’t.”
Did you hear the story about how Draenor Flying was “just a button push away” for over a year, even though in truth it actually wasn’t? 😀