Overwatch Competitive Play Announced

A few days ago Blizzard Entertainment released their latest mode for those Overwatch players who like to play a little harder, Competitive Play. In short competitive mode is a way of ranking the players in terms of skill (or at least as best they can) those who climb the ranks within the gaming season can enjoy in-game unlocks and a certain amount of fame.

If you’ve bought Overwatch and want to jump in to competitive play, you’ll have to put some time in first. To enter Competitive Play you have to be level 25. You can join in groups but you have to be within 50 levels of each other.

When you start, you’ll need to play ten matches which will ultimately determine your skill, given as a number between 1 and 100. This ranking changes as you win or lose matches. Get a rank 100 and you’re in the top 1% of players etc. There will even be a seasonal leaderboard showing the top 500 players.

So, if you are skilled, or maybe a little more likely, lucky enough to be one of the higher ranking players you will get an animated variant of the Competitor spray and two unique player icons; one for being in the top 500 and one season-specific icon, which is certainly better than a kick in the bread tray.

Don’t worry if you prove to unworthy for those rewards as anyone who completed their 10 placement matches will receive a unique player icon and spray that match the season. So no-one leaves empty-handed.

Though with all these rewards there is greater emphasis on player conduct and the penalties are much harsher when you don’t comply.

Anyone leaving within the first two minutes of the match will cancel the entire match. A little harsh for everyone else, I suppose. On the flipside, if you leave before the end of the match you can’t join another one until that match has finished.

These penalties might sound harsh and unforgiving if you have been accidentally disconnected. If you are disconnected from the match make sure you reconnect within a minute. When you do everything carries on as it would have. If not, then all the other players still in the match have the choice to leave the match without a penalty. However it will still count as a loss.

Hopefully, people won’t start being dicks and deliberately ruining matches but some people are just gits.

So, as fun as this sounds. Overwatch Competitive Play is not going to be something I can jump into straight away. I’m only level 16 and I’m not quite ready to see my skill shown as a humiliating 1. Although, if you want to show the world your skill, well Competitive Play is just the way for you to do that.