Overwatch 2 Introducing 'Wide Group' for Comp, Harsher Penalties for Leavers

10.04.2024 - 23:34 / gamerant.com / John DiCarlo

Blizzard has confirmed new social features coming in Overwatch 2's Season 10, including Wide Groups that allow friends with different Competitive ranks to play together, more penalties for leaving a match early, and a revamped Streamer Protect option. Blizzard also teased more Overwatch 2 social improvements coming sometime after the next major update.

Overwatch 2's Season 10 is set to launch on April 16 when the Mythic Shop, balancing changes, and more will be introduced to Blizzard's team-based hero shooter. One of the update's most anticipated additions is Venture, a Damage hero who can tunnel underground with one of their abilities and send out damaging shockwaves with their ult. While Blizzard has already announced plenty of gameplay-centric changes coming in Season 10, it seems major improvements in other areas are coming as well.

In Season 10's Competitive mode, groups with players in the Bronze to Diamond tiers who are more than five divisions apart can queue together as Wide Groups, while groups with Masters who are more than three divisions apart and groups with Grandmasters or Champions who are separated by any divisions at all can also queue as Wide Groups. Blizzard says that the Wide Groups queue will likely come with longer wait times, as the system tries to find opposing Wide Groups with a matching skill distribution. Also, post-match results from Wide Group games come with a new modifier that aims to prevent lower-level players from being unfairly boosted by higher-level friends. And solo players don't need to worry, as they will never be matched into Wide Group games.

Also coming in Overwatch 2's April 16 update are more penalties for early leavers. For Unranked games, two new penalties will be added: a five-minute suspension for leaving two games out of the last 20 and a 48-hour suspension for leaving 10 games in the last 20. For Competitive games, players who leave 10 matches at any point in the season will receive a Competitive ban for the remainder of the season.

Season 10's last social feature benefits Overwatch 2 streamers and regular players alike. The Streamer Protect option is being relabeled to Hide My Name and allows users to hide their usernames from other players in the lobby, instead of only hiding usernames on their own client. Users who enable this feature will have their BattleTag renamed to a generic title like Krusher99, GarlicBread, or other references to the Overwatch community. After a match, players will still be able to see everyone's real usernames in the social menu.

Blizzard teased more social features coming to Overwatch 2 beyond Season 10. These include faster reporting, improvements to Avoid as Teammate, and more counters to disruptive chat users.

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