There will be a significant amount of overall polish and refinement added in the form of enhanced UI, bug fixes, and more! Between now and then, we plan to add more content including heroes, maps, and features. Importantly, this beta is just our first public test leading up to the future Overwatch 2 PvP release. The same is true for other UI elements including the headshot indicators in the kill feed and refining the audio mix. And as the golden gun system has not been completed in this Beta build, what you’re currently seeing in-game does not reflect a deliberate shift in the design aesthetic but rather an incomplete feature.
For example, elements like menu screens, player profiles, multiple time of day conditions for classic maps, and the full set of hero 2.0 looks are areas our team has been working hard on that we are not yet testing publicly.
We’ll talk about balance in more detail in a separate section, but our approach to balance will be to make rapid adjustments to hero power levels, and we’ll deploy our first Beta balance patch in a few days accordingly.īecause this beta test focuses primarily on gameplay and balance as well as stability, several other features and aspects of the game that you are seeing in this test are still a work in progress. While we will continue to adjust the rules of Push, players seem to be really enjoying this new game mode and our other new maps. We believe 5v5 is a significant adjustment for players, and we have been happy to hear consistent and positive feedback about players having more fun, feeling a greater sense of impact in their matches, and enjoying a faster pace of combat and engagements.
The main goals for our first Beta were to test our shift to 5v5, the new maps and Push game mode, overall balance, and build and server stability. For this week's update, we have four main topics to cover.
As we committed to more regular communication with our players, we plan to share a weekly update with you about what we’re learning and how that impacts our development plans. We’re carefully listening to your feedback during this Beta test. Throughout week one of our first Technical Beta for Overwatch 2, our team has been galvanized by all the enthusiasm and positive energy from so many participating players. In this highly replayable mode, players can level up their favorite heroes and earn powerful customization options that supercharge their abilities in co-op play-such as altering Reinhardt’s Fire Strike to ignite nearby enemies or modifying Tracer’s Pulse Bomb to cause a devastating chain reaction-granting the extra edge they need against the overwhelming odds. The battle continues in Hero Missions, where the Overwatch team will be called upon to go beyond their limits as they deploy across the planet, defending cities against robot invasions, taking on elite Talon agents, and battling the villainous forces laying siege to the world. As the story progresses, players will team up as different sets of heroes and fight to defend the world from the omnic forces of Null Sector, uncover the motives behind the robotic armies’ attacks, and come face-to-face with rising new threats around the globe.
Players will take an active role in the Overwatch saga as a new global crisis unfolds through a series of intense, high-stakes four-player missions. In the sequel’s action-packed cooperative Story Missions, players will experience the advent of a new Overwatch as Winston, Tracer, and other members of the original Overwatch join forces with a new generation of heroes. Players will also battle each other in the next evolution of competitive Overwatch play, which carries forward existing players’ accomplishments and loot collections and features the current complete Overwatch roster, a new generation of heroes, new internationally recognizable maps that widen the scope of the world, a new Push map type, and more. In Overwatch 2, players will take on the roles of the world’s heroes in cooperative missions that challenge them to team up, power up, and stand together against an overwhelming outbreak of threats around the globe.