Overwatch 2 head Aaron Keller attempts to clear the air surrounding competitive matchmaking drama
This may require a little bit of player patience.
The Overwatch 2 season three mid-cycle patch this week looked to address some concerns that players have expressed regarding matchmaking on the competitive ladder.
Matchmaking has been a popular conversation piece in the game for a long time. But in a post to the games blog today, OW2 game director Aaron Keller aimed to put players who feel like the new patch maybe hasnt immediately resulted in a higher match quality on the ladder at ease.
Showing off data and graphs that might confuse some players initially, Keller dove into some nuances of matchmaking before effectively telling players to be patient for the next couple of weeks as the developers take advantage of the midseason patchs changes to fine-tune competitive mode matchmaking.
Your Matchmaking concerns are not lost on us. We will continue daily work towards optimizing its functionality and keeping you updated every step of the way.
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) March 10, 2023
Read the latest blog from Game Director @aaronkellerOW to learn more.https://t.co/eHIeO7gXF0 pic.twitter.com/kVolkJtof0
In the patch we released on Tuesday, we implemented the first of a series of systemic changes (more are coming in Season 4) that give us back the flexibility to tune these modes separately and gives us new ways to tune the system, he said. Competitive can once again have its own set of parameters for how wide the skill gap can be that are separate from our other modes. This week we will be tuning these values to tighten the skill gap in Competitive as much as possible while keeping an eye on queue times for that mode.
Along with making it so that comp matchmaking can be tweaked by itself, Keller added that devs can use changes from the patch to also tweak the ways that matchmaking works for parties.
Were now able to get similar parties together in a way that minimizes role delta, which has resulted in significantly lower party queue times, he said. It also concentrates wide parties together, which has made a dent in our player MMR delta.
Related: Overwatch 2 season 3 midseason balance patch: Winners and losers
Following the midseason patch on March 7, many players raised questions about what was going to happen with matchmaking, and a couple of devs from Blizzard even addressed the situation during a livestreamed developer chat on both Twitch and YouTube.
Though Kellers post probably didnt provide all the closure that every player would want, its a clear attempt by the developer to make it known that they hear the feedback and are working on it.