Overwatch to Limit Teams to One of Each Character in Competitive Mode

Overwatch's Competitive Play is only a couple weeks old, but developer Blizzard is already thinking of ways it can make the mode better. One of the first things it plans to implement is a one-hero limit, which prevents teams from having lineups with multiple Bastions, Torbjorns, or any other hero that might drive you just a little bit crazy. The new limit in Competitive Play is live on the Overwatch Public Test Realm and will make its way over to the main game in a patch soon.

GameSpot got the opportunity to talk to Blizzard principal designer Scott Mercer about Competitive Play. He told us about the one-hero limit and said that although the change is coming to Competitive, players who want to stack their team full of the same hero won't be limited in Quick Play.

"The big thing for Competitive Play is we're going to turn on one-hero limit, so players will not be able to stack more than one of the same hero within a Competitive match. It's not going to affect Quick Play at all, but it is something we're going to turn on for Competitive."

Another point of conversation we had with Mercer was Competitive's implementation of ties. Blizzard plans to ditch Sudden Death in Season 2 and instead allow matches to end without a win or loss. Mercer said the developer plans to make sure ties don't make players feel like they didn't get anything for their efforts.

"We definitely want players to feel like if they had a tie, their time wasn't completely wasted," Mercer said. "So we're trying to find the sweet spot of a lot of players feel like, 'Oh, well, we got something out of it,' but at the same time not create situations where players might collude and create some nasty situations there. We're still discussing that."

Mercer also discussed an upcoming patch with us, which delivers balance updates to "quite a few of the heroes." The patch notes are not yet available, but he gave us a few examples of what we can expect when it goes live.

"There's been a lot of talk in the community about how D.Va and Zenyatta felt a little bit underpowered, so we're making changes to them," Mercer explained. "Zenyatta is getting a little more shields, and he goes a lot faster when he uses his Ultimate.

"D.Va's Defense Field, instead of clicking it and it lasting three or four seconds and having a long cooldown, it's now something where you can toggle it on and off and there's a meter that runs that."

On top of all that, Mercer talked about the new hero, Ana, who uses her healing sniper rifle to deliver health to her teammates and ongoing damage to her enemies. All of her gadgets simultaneously help her team and hurt her opponents. You can see her in action and find out how to play her for yourself here.