It almost seems like yesterday that Season 10 of Overwatch Competitive Play kicked off. Whether or not you were able to climb the daunting SR ladder, everything in Competitive Play has reset.
While players who competed in last season’s Competitive Play received a player icon and spray based on the King’s Row map, this season’s Competitive Play reward icon and spray seem to be based on the Lijiang Tower map.
Amongst many new changes, including the announcement of new hero, the developers of Overwatch have clearly been hard at work. With last week’s Patch 1.25.01, new social features “Looking for Group” and “Endorsements” were added.
Having received an ecstatic welcome, Overwatch players are hailing the new Looking for Group feature as a saving grace.
Per Overwatch‘s Principal Game Designer, Jeff Craig:
A long-awaited feature that we’ve being dying to get in the game. 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.
Since the game’s inception, players have only been able to singly recognize their peers and opponents with fleeting voting cards for select feats. Looking to improve on this and going hand in hand with the new Looking for Group tool are Endorsements. Again in the latest patch notes, Craig states:
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!
After using the looking for group tool and feeling the positively charged air around endorsements, there’s no turning back. Endorsements include ups for: Shot Calling, Good Teammates, and Sportsmanship. You can use the Looking for Group tool to jump into Season 11 of Overwatch Competitive Play today on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. Even if your matches don’t turn out great, you can always try anew and will receive the Group 20% XP bonus no matter what.
One thing to note for top-tiered players per Blizzard: “Starting in Season 11, players must have Blizzard SMS Protect enabled on their account while completing minimum of 50 matches in a region to be eligible for the Top 500 (PC only).” This seems to be a direct counterattack against “throwing” and “boosting”.