Overwatch Year 2
We’re quickly approaching Overwatch’s first anniversary, and what a year it’s been. Within the game’s first year, we’ve enjoyed tons of new seasonal events and brawls, got subjected to the cruelty of that awfully drawn out Sombra ARG, and saw the introduction of two new maps, and three impressive heroes. Not to mention the various buffs and nerfs that numerous characters have received along the way, as well as big changes to the game’s competitive skill rating system after its first season.
It’s been a strong first year for Blizzard’s latest and hottest team-based shooter, but there’s always more room for improvement and other elements that can help to enhance the Overwatch experience even further. Without further ado, let’s run down some of the major additions and elements we’d love to see in the game during its second year.
More Heroes and Further Tweaks to Existing Ones
Without a doubt, we’d absolutely love to see more heroes get added to Overwatch’s already astoundingly diverse roster. The current lineup is fantastic, but seeing new heroes get added into the mix is always fun. Ana quickly rose through the ranks as the game’s most powerful support healer, and served as a strong counter to other healers like Zenyatta and Lucio. Orisa’s introduction to the game was also a significant one, as players quickly found that she could be a worthy substitute for Reinhardt, who had essentially become a necessary pick for most team compositions in competitive play. While Sombra hasn’t enjoyed quite as much popularity as the other two, she’s also a powerful hero in her own right and can be deadly when used well.
That said, we’d also like to see Blizzard continue to tweak and refine existing heroes. To this day, Mercy is widely considered the weakest support hero due to the passive play style that’s encouraged for those who play her, and her lack of utility as compared to other heroes. Other characters like Mei and McCree haven’t been in the spotlight for quite some time either due to there being objectively better and stronger picks in the roster, and it’d be nice to see them return to form once again.
Also, consider this a personal request: please un-nerf D.Va, Blizzard. Her nerf hurts every day.
New PVE Brawls
All of the seasonal brawls released so far have been a ton of fun, but the most recent Uprising event is probably the best one yet. Not only did it allow players to band together to shoot down a horde of brainless robots, it also fleshed out Overwatch’s lore and universe even further. We all know that the Omnic Crisis was a major turning point in the game’s history, and it was definitely nice to be able to relive a small part of it through the Uprising brawl.
PVE brawls like this one can help to give players more insight into the Overwatch universe, and we’d like to see them become bigger and better in the game’s second year. The Uprising event was fun, but it could’ve been even better if the brawl ended in an epic boss fight with a much stronger Omnic. Of course, relaxing brawls are also welcome; Junkenstein’s Revenge was a great way to get players acclimated to Ana’s kit after she was just released, and other PVP brawls like Capture the Rooster and Lucioball helped to expand the game and prevent it from feeling like just another FPS game where you try to kill the other team.
Permanent Non-Event Items
Seasonal events and items are nice, but you know what would be even nicer? Blizzard adding fresh cosmetic items into the game every now and then. The developers have already done this with the popular sitting emotes that released during the period of Symmetra’s buff, and the already classic Game On emote for D.Va. However, as far as skins go, we’ve only seen two new permanent non-event skins over the course of the game’s first year, and they were both for Reinhardt.
We already know that Blizzard is planning to release new maps this year, and we really hope that these maps will have story connections to various characters, just like what Eichenwalde is to Reinhardt. Along with story connections for the maps, it’d also be pretty damn nice to have special skins included for characters associated with that map.
You did a great job with Eichenwalde, Blizzard, and we’d really love to see more of that in year two.
Solo Queues
This last one might be a bit of a controversial one, but we’re bringing it up anyways. A dedicated solo queue option in competitive games would relieve a lot of headaches for players who might not be able to get a full team to group up with when playing ranked matches. While the game’s current matchmaking system does a great job of breaking teams up evenly, you will still get instances of having a team of six solo players up against a team with four grouped players and two solo players, or even a full party of six.
A solo queue would also allow players to play competitive matches without having to worry about trolling groups or players who are partnering up with more skilled players to carry them through the matches. Of course, solo queuing does bring about its fair share of problems as well, such as the breaking up of the player base. Having two separate queues in the game means longer wait times overall, but we feel that this would still be a beneficial addition to Overwatch.
What other changes or additions would you like to see in Overwatch during its second year? Let us know in the comments down below.
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