Matchmaking issues are addressed, and a senior Overwatch 2 developer describes the particular challenge of balancing matches between lower-ranked players.
The difficulty Blizzard has in providing fair matchmaking for players with lower rankings was explained by an Overwatch 2 developer. The game's poor matchmaking has drawn a lot of criticism, which the developers have been working hard to address. However, the developers of Overwatch 2 find it challenging to solve the particular issue that lower-ranked players pose.
Blizzard's wildly popular multiplayer hero shooter, Overwatch, will be replaced by Overwatch 2, which will debut in October 2022. The original Overwatch servers were shut down a few days before the new game's launch. At first, Overwatch 2 received negative and positive reviews, with some critics claiming that the new game lacks some of the originality and charm of its predecessor. Nevertheless, Overwatch 2's 35 million player mark just one week after launch proves the game's popularity.
Since the beta, Overwatch 2 has frequently received criticism for its subpar PvP matchmaking. Many players have been complaining about being matched with opponents of drastically different skill levels recently, which has made the situation particularly bad. But Blizzard developers are working to fix the problem; Game Director Aaron Keller recently revealed two updates that should fix some of the issues. When questioned about matchmaking for lower-ranked players, he responded that it was more challenging because of the much wider range of skill levels among lower-ranked players in the same bracket.
The matchmaker had some configuration issues that caused an increase in these matches over the past week. We think these have been addressed and tomorrow's changes should improve it more. Sorry for the trouble and thanks again for all the reports and feedback! 🙏
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) February 28, 2023
According to Keller, a configuration problem with Overwatch 2's matchmaking software was the cause of the recent increase in unbalanced matches. Two fixes were released on February 27 and 28, respectively, by the development team in an effort to address this. While it's possible that this won't completely fix the issue, it should make Overwatch 2 matches much fairer than they were before.
We will attempt to bring it down for all players and should have more controls to do that with our mid season patch. However it’s harder to do that for lower ranks since it’s possible for players to form groups with wider skill ranges.
— Aaron Keller (@aaronkellerOW) February 28, 2023
The streamer and YouTuber Shawn Games quickly reacted to Keller's tweets, thanking him for the information while also posing a follow-up query. The author of the content enquired as to whether Blizzard intended to extend the matchmaking range to all players rather than just the top 500 ranks, as it currently does, to within four or five ranks. Keller responded that Blizzard was making an effort to do so and would have more resources available once the upcoming mid-season patch for Overwatch 2 was released.
Keller also addressed the challenges of balancing matchmaking for players with lower rankings at this point, though. Therefore, despite the senior Blizzard employee's apparent confidence in his team's ability to enhance Overwatch 2's matchmaking, users shouldn't anticipate a complete resolution.
Overwatch 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
Source: Daniel DeAngelo