Blizzard randomly makes Overwatch heroes unplayable every week

Overwatch’s competitive mode gets a system where Blizzard makes a number of heroes unplayable every week. Players cannot influence which heroes are not selectable, as is the case in many other esports titles.

Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan detailed this change in a developer update. These so-called Hero Pools only come out for the Competitive Play mode, where it’s all about rising in rank. According to the developer, this introduction will improve the quality of the gameplay, the diversity of the heroes and the strategies during matches. The company hopes that the meta, the term used for the current game modes, tactics and heroes that work best at that time, will not stagnate too much and that players will also make other choices. This change will go live with update 1.45, expected sometime in early February. Whether it will be a permanent addition is still unknown.

The Hero Pools will also become part of Overwatch’s professional esports league, where they will be available March 7, at the start of Season 21. The Overwatch League is going to implement “a version of the Hero Pools,” according to Kaplan, indicating that it will be slightly different from the variant introduced via the Competitive Play mode. In the Overwatch League, at least a new tank, a support, and two damage heroes are made unavailable every week. The playable heroes are randomly selected from a group of eligible heroes, taking into account the playing dates of the previous two weeks. Only heroes that are played regularly can be taken from the next Hero Pool. A hero will never be unplayable for two consecutive weeks. This system is not set up for tournaments, playoffs or the Grand Finals. Incidentally, Blizzard recently announced that the Chinese Overwatch League games for February and March are being canceled due to the Coronavirus.

In addition, with patch 1.45 Blizzard introduces a new option in the main menu of the game: the Experimental card. The existing Quick Play, Arcade, and Competitive options are the main “playing cards” or game modes in Overwatch, and occasionally add this temporary experimental mode, which Blizzard uses to test gameplay changes. The mode is different from the separate public test realm, which is mainly intended for detecting bugs. This separate environment is not accessible to all players, nor is it accessible from the main menu of the game.