Blizzard has shared early impressions of the Overwatch 2 beta and outlined what changes are coming as a result of player feedback.
The biggest change is coming to support heroes, with Blizzard accepting feedback that there’s much more interesting new content for tank and damage players to explore.
“We believe the most effective way to tackle this issue is to add exciting new support heroes to the game,” Blizzard said in a blog post.
The development team is also working on updating current support heroes though, similar to how Doomfist and Orisa received reworks, which could be added to this beta but will more likely be inclusions in later testing periods.
Blizzard also confirmed that more brand new heroes will be joining Sojourn ahead of the official PvP launch, alongside more maps and features. The beta’s UI, including menus, player profiles, and so on will also receive “a significant amount of overall polish and refinement” ahead of the full release.
The refreshed scoreboard – which removed both the Fire and Medal systems from Overwatch 1, and presents stats more traditionally – will be staying put, but Blizzard has further tweaks planned. A “damage mitigated” section will be added to track things like the amount of damage blocked or reduced by abilities including Ana’s Nano Boost and Baptiste’s Immortality Field.
Blizzard also clarified that, like the overall UI, the current scoreboard is not final and the development team is regularly testing different styles and layouts.
Finally, major changes are coming to ranked play but Blizzard didn’t give much information about what these will be. “We’re planning some significant overhauls of our core ranked and competitive mode systems,” it said, but “those are not yet ready to test publicly at scale.”
The sequel has certainly proved popular so far with Overwatch gameplay hitting its peak Twitch viewership following the beta’s launch.
The closed test began on April 26 and runs until May 17, giving select players a chance to try out the new hero Sojourn and four new maps, plus revisions to older characters such as Bastion and Sombra.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.