Overwatch 2’s director Aaron Keller is back once again with another dev blog, and as one might expect, it’s primarily focused around the recently launched Season 5, including its new battle pass and upcoming game modes.
Keller first discusses Season 5’s tweaked battle pass, noting that nearly every skin in the pass is built around Season 5’s theme of high fantasy RPGs. Keller also calls attention to the general narrative slant in the pass and how this year’s mythic skin is broken up into four parts across its progression track. Finally, he points out that his team is still working out what “feels best” for battle passes, so don’t expect every pass to have the same arrangement.
Keller then talks about several new game modes that will be launching during the season, such as the creator-made Defeat the Demon Lord mode, Winston’s Beach Volleyball mode coming with the Summer Games event, a prop hunt-like mode known as Magic and Mischief, and a 5v5 ranked mini-season that will require premade teams of five players to queue in. It’s this mode that gets a lot more focus, as Keller explains that additional team-focused competitive modes could be developed if this min-season proves popular.
Lastly, the topic of “stomps” – when one team is absolutely dominated by another – was brought up in the post. Keller promises that the devs are collecting data on why this happens, but he also suggests that these events might not always be due to matchmaking bugs and instead are a result of the mechanics for certain match types like Control. “We are continually working on our matchmaker, but the biggest gains for perceived competitiveness in Overwatch lies in looking at our core mechanics and game modes and making adjustments here,” he closes.
