Scott Mercer on Overwatch’s Competitive Mode

Back on June 28th, Overwatch formally revealed their Competitive Play mode via a news post. It’s locked until players hit level 25, in order to ensure all participants have at least somewhat of a solid understanding as to how play the game. Blizzard made specific adjustments to the maps in order to help facilitate competitive mode. But there’s new rewards for your efforts – such as Sprays, Player Icons, and Golden Weapons.

Speaking with VG247, Scott Mercer lets us in on what made the Competitive mode what it is. One of the main points the interview brings up is how to be an efficient Overwatch competitive player.

The matchmaker is trying to put you up against players of similar skill. So, hopefully not too much of the one-sided stuff that you’re taking about. In terms of making mistakes, some of the big ones are… like, the classic one is paying attention to the map objectives more! Players will get bloodthirsty and decide to chase down eliminations, instead of what they should be doing which could be escorting the payload to the end of the map. Another one is, we do have 21 heroes in our game and there are some circumstances where changing heroes would be a huge benefit. So, paying attention to what their team composition is; making sure that they cover a lot of the angles for their team, that’s another big one. A third one is, like, not playing together as a team – you don’t want to get separated.

When it comes to ranking, there’s no more Heroic ranks. Instead, Overwatch will have a Top 500 ranking. It’ll actively be kept track of, and it’s a title that players can lose if they fail to win a match. The Top 50o system turns on after a few weeks, giving gamers time to give a sufficient amount of data and statistics to work with. According to Mercer, there’s something in it for everyone.

One thing is that if a player does go in and plays all 10 placement matches, at the end of the season which is August 18th, there will be a unique Spray and Player Icon. This is just to say, ‘Okay, try it out. See whether you like it or not.’ For just trying, we give you a reward there. And then if you decide that this is a cool experience and want to keep on playing it, for every win you get you receive one competitive currency. If you have 300 of these, they can be used to purchase gold weapons, and these are to say ‘Hey, I’ve played a lot of Competitive Play, look at how shiny I am.’ Once you have the required amount, you can choose the hero – so if you play a whole lot of Tracer, choose her. You don’t have to choose immediately; you can just sit on it and make that decision whenever you’d like.

Scott says the gold weapons are permanent regardless of the season. The Spray and the Player icons are also permanent, with a new set being made for every season. Your skill level at the end of the season indicates how much competitive currency you’ll be rewarded as a direct result. Players in the Top 500 get a unique Icon and Spray.

Overwatch is out now for PC, Xbox One, and PS4. For all the latest news about the game, check their Website, Twitter, and Facebook.