In a developer blog, the Overwatch 2 developers have offered up some stats that suggest that their recent tweaks to support have helped even out the game’s queue problems.
In the post, which took a deep dive into Supports and the team’s consideration for the role, stats were produced to show that queue times are getting better. That’s good too because playing Damage and Tank heroes in Overwatch 2 has seen queues of up to 10 minutes.
The post reads: “Queue times across the board have improved significantly since last week’s patch. While correlation might not always equal causation, we’re optimistic that support improvements had a lot to do with it.”
“Following Thursday’s update, players on average experienced 48% less time spent waiting for a match, gradually leveling off at around 22% improvement over the weekend.”
The post also added that Overwatch 2 is now experiencing faster queue times than Overwatch.
The last update for the game helped beef up supports, most notably Zenyatta who got a Leonidas kick, meaning he can push enemies away from him.
Support is on the way
However, despite the changes, and the increased popularity, Supports are still having a tough time in the 5v5 environment, especially in higher ranked games. The blog added: “Support heroes starting at high Diamond and above saw the highest jump in return visits to the spawn room. At these ranks, the increased pressure of a more skilled tank or damage player on the backlines has seemingly become too much for even high SR support players to handle effectively as compared with the live game.”
To this, the development team has committed to adding more “power and tools” to the role, and said, “the role remains our highest adjustment priority.” A couple notes were shared on what they are thinking including increasing Moira’s utility at the cost of her raw healing, and Mercy is getting a way to do her “super jump” more consistently.
However, the most encouraging thing about this update is seeing sustained communication from the Overwatch team. After years of being left in the dark, getting weekly updates about the team’s thinking and its current considerations is a breath of fresh air. Hopefully, it continues, because even if new content or patches for the game aren’t happening every week, it reminds the community that the game is still being actively worked on and that their discussions and comments are being heard.