This Week In Overwatch 2: New Map, Better Challenges, No Map Pools

This Week In Overwatch 2: New Map, Better Challenges, No Map Pools

This week's Overwatch 2 roundup isn't about something wrong with the game, or complaints from players. This week is about the game's future. It's been rough for the devs ever since the hero-shooter launched, whether it's unbalanced Heroes, boring game modes, or battle pass related issues. The constant flow of negative news couldn't have been easy on anyone. However, it seems Blizzard has plans in place to make the game into the hero-shooter we deserve.

New Control Map, Antarctic Peninsula Revealed

Season two will see the introduction of a new Control-type map called the Antarctic Peninsula. The key areas of this chilly new map will be Mei's lab, an underground tunnel system, and a fully accessible icebreaker ship. What sets this map apart is that it's designed with the 5v5 format in ming, and features a lot of verticality.

"It's just super rad to fight inside an abandoned ship as large as an icebreaker," said art director Dion Rogers. "We've got cool tunnels and the engine room – you can get a lot of direction from it, because you can see the bow of the ship and you can see where the captain's chamber is. If you're working together, you can call out a lot of very key areas where people are."

Next Update Will Make It Faster To Climb Ranks In Competitive

In one of the more bizarre changes that the devs made to Overwatch 2, you have to wait seven wins or twenty losses to see your SR change, rather than after every match. This is frankly a weird one by Blizzard, as you'd ideally want to know where you stand after every match. Thankfully, this is about to change.

As of the start of season 3, your rank will change every five wins or 15 losses. You'll still have to put in some work before your rank can be properly seen, but at least it's less. Blizzard also said that more changes will be coming to this system in the future.

Future Challenges Won't Force You To Play Game Modes You Don't Like

Perhaps among the biggest complaints about Overwatch 2 is its challenges. Challenges are one of the few ways that you can earn in-game credits to buy new cosmetics, but Blizzard has made these challenges pretty tough, and concentrated on specific game modes that not everyone may want to play.

However, director Aaron Keller has finally addressed this, saying, "We’ve changed our values here. We’re shifting direction to include more challenges that let you play the way you prefer, while still introducing event game modes. Some of the event challenges will reflect these changes in Season 3."

Getting Rid Of Map Pools In Season 4

As of season four, Blizzard will also be getting rid of map pools. The feature was put in place so that players could experience new maps, but it didn't quite have the desired result, and everyone ended up hating it.

"We aimed to provide a bit of freshness each season and concentrate the number of maps that people were playing, however player sentiment around map pools was pretty low, the map roster doesn’t have enough maps where we truly need them, and the impact they had on seasonal identity was fairly low," said Keller.

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