According to Blizzard, there will be no further public test until the “Early Access” launch of Overwatch 2 on October 04, 2022. We also learn what insights the developers gained from the last beta.
Overwatch 2’s second beta ended a little while ago, and you may be wondering if there will be a third test before launch on October 4th, 2022. Jon Spector, commercial leader and VP for the Overwatch franchise, responded to this question via Twitter an answer:
“We know players are eager to dive into the game and we’ve received many questions about the possibility of a third public beta. While we will continue to test OW2 internally on a daily basis, we do not plan on further public beta testing. With all the valuable feedback we got from our alpha and the 2 public beta tests, we will focus on releasing the best game possible on October 4th.“
Findings from the last beta
Speaking of valuable feedback: On the Overwatch 2 official website the Blizzard developers recently published an extensive article that revolves around the findings from the second beta phase. The focus of the test was, among other things, to evaluate the hero adjustments made in advance. In addition, the designers were curious about the feedback from the consoleros who were able to play Overwatch 2 for the first time.
Here are some of the takeaways from the article:
- While there were differences in win rates for specific heroes on console and PC, overall the developers were happy with the hero balance in the beta on both platforms.
- It was noticeable that the hero win rates on consoles were closer together than on the PC.
- Junker Queen was played seven times as often as the average tank in the beta (unsurprisingly given that it’s a new champion).
- Both Junker Queen and Sojourn saw an insane amount of use in the beta, but not only was Queen well above a 50% win rate, she was also well above all other heroes. So Blizzard has to adjust the balance again and weaken the new champion a bit.
- Some players found Queen difficult to distinguish from other heroes, and even harder to target given her “smaller” stature (compared to other tanks).
- In fact, she took the second least amount of damage of any hero in the first week of the beta!
- Some beta testers also found that the Queen’s Command Shout was an extremely effective ability that was difficult to counter.
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