With a new set of patch notes for Overwatch, Blizzard has announced a new set of features aimed at making your play experience even smoother and more enjoyable.
The biggest new draw is the Endorsements feature. As explained by Blizzard, think of this new reporting tool as the opposite of the existing tools. Instead of reporting toxic or problematic players for negative behavior, Endorsements will work as a tool for positive reinforcement.
Players can see their Endorsements as an overall rating on their player profile, and see at a glance what kinds of players are in their game. If players manage to maintain a high Endoresment ranking, they may be eligible for periodic rewards from Blizzard, no details on what these might be though. Maybe free loot boxes or skins for the most well-behaved players.
I just hope this feature isn’t abused to the point of being useless by griefers and trolls, because it’s a great idea overall.
Endorsements give you a way to acknowledge other players for having a positive impact on your gaming experience. We have ways to report people for poor conduct, but now, if you have teammates who coordinated well, a leader who gave great direction, or even someone who was just being positive you can now let them know how much you appreciated it with an endorsement!
Blizzard has finally added a new Looking For Group tool as well. The new feature will allow solo and party players to queue according to their desired interests in play. If you want to play a certain mode, or you prefer silent voice chat, there are options for those things and many more.
Looking for group allows you to find like-minded players before you queue to make sure you have the kind of Overwatch experience you want! Things like specifying what game mode want to play, preferring voice chat, and knowing that a player wants to play a certain role before you go into battle together goes a long way toward solid hero compositions and team work.
But it’s not just new features meant to improve the team experience that are being added in the new update, some existing content is getting some attention as well.
The hero categories are being shifted around as well, with Offense and Defence heroes are now grouped into one new category known as Damage. One major part of this change is that some heroes, like Symmetra, being tweaked to focus more on DPS over support.
One final batch of tweaks concerns some basic layout changes on certain maps.
Check out the features trailer down below.
