When Quick Play teammates fail, it’s Overwatch itself that’s the real MVP. It’s on your side, impeccable design upping your game and celebrating your wins. But in the freshly patched Competitive mode? It suddenly does a 180 on everything it stands for: it becomes your worst enemy.
Reach level 25 and you unlock Competitive mode. First, you play ten placement matches and, depending on your personal performance and victory rate, you’re given a skill rating anywhere between one (the merest hint of a pulse) and 100 (godlike). Receive your shiny badge of numerical honour, and it’s off to proper ranked matches.
Overwatch’s matchmaking system is as quick and accurate as ever. Teams with the same overall rank averages are pitted against each other. If playing solo, you’re placed among a team of similarly skilled players. Wins help fill your skill bar – you climb up the ranks and also bag “competitive points” (used to purchase gold weapons. Drool). Lose, and you’re punished by your skill meter dropping.
But it’s not just losing that Competitive mode likes to punish you for. It also enjoys ripping off your badge and stamping on it, seemingly for the giggles. Your teammates play badly or rage-quit, and replacements aren’t subbed in like in Quick Play. If your server connection drops out (a common occurrence, in my experience) and you can’t rejoin the match in time, that’s an auto-loss. Your match ends in a tie? Learn to hate the Sudden Death coin toss. It plonks you on either attack or defence on a capturethe-point map, then slaps a timer on proceedings and laughs maniacally at the chaos that ensues.
It’s hard to be happy either way. Defending tends to be the more difficult job, and feels like the short straw – but attack’s not exactly exciting when you’re met with an opposition who are now an impenetrable turret-wall of Bastions and Torbjörns. I’d give what’s left of my unfairly battered rank badge for a balanced King Of The Hill round.
There are upsides. As expected, the quality of ranked play is generally higher, with people using their mics and comms wheel. Some of my matches last over half an hour, and breathless Overtime clashes on the point are all that more intense knowing there’s something at stake. Blizzard is taking feedback on board. What worries me, though, is that Competitive mode itself feels at odds with Overwatch’s core values: instead of bigging you up, it brings you down – and unjustly so.
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from
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