Overwatch retools competitive mode, apologises to aussies

Overwatch is gearing up to tinker with competitive play once again, according to a new dev video from Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan. He explains that the biggest change in season six will be that it’s shorter: two months, not three months. A one-month season, he says, feels too short, but three months has turned out to a bit of a drag, with engagement being much higher earlier on, hence a two-month test to see how it goes.

Concurrently, competitive points will be rescaled to the new season length, skill rating decay at the lower tiers of play is under review (five games per week down from seven, and decay reduced from 50 to 25), and higher-tier matches should see better skill ratings, stronger balance, and longer queue times to make that happen.

Meanwhile, Blizzard has apologized to Aussie fans who accused it of “cultural insensitivity” for some goofups in the Junkertown map — specifically, the use of American slang where Aussie slang would more properly be used (take-out instead of take-away) and a voiceover line (“they thought they could take our land“) that observers suggest is oblivious to Australia’s historical and modern relationship with indigenous people and their territory.

“I’d like to offer a direct apology to the entire country of Australia,” Kaplan wrote on Reddit. “Please forgive our cultural insensitivity. We will fix this in an upcoming patch (the sign travesty will most likely go live for some period before being fixed).” He then goes on to make a joke about coffee, the combination of which suggests Blizzard is chiefly talking about the take-out error.



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