Hello everyone, Season 10 is in two hours. I am about to get started with warm-ups myself. This post will serve as a few reminders that I like to share with everyone to maximize your competitive experience including a few technical tips and a few rule reminders.
What’s new in Season 10?
- Brigitte (Support Hero) is now available to be selected for Competitive Play. (On an esports note, I have not seen word if Brigitte will be eligible for play in Overwatch League Stage 4.)
- Rialto (Escort Map) is still in testing in the Public Test Region, therefore will not be eligible for Competitive Play this season.
Now is the best time to make sure everything on your equipment is up-to-date and working.
- In general, Overwatch is best known to be working with the latest driver for your graphics card. Click here for the instructions to updating your latest graphic card driver..
Important! Now from what I have been told right now, there have been some recent but rare reported issues that the latest NVidia driver (version 397.31) has been causing some issues with certain NVidia graphic cards resulting in “General Error (0XE0010160)”. If this is happening, roll back to the previous graphics card driver. I myself use a GTX 1070 and have had no crashes myself, but I still wanted to share this. - Remember if you are looking to squeeze out every ounce of system performance. I maintain a guide in the Technical Support forum with great tips.
- Remember to test your connection thoroughly to ensure no connection problems exist. Best way to do a quick test is by turning on the NetGraph (Ctrl+Shift+N) and bounce around the Training Range for several minutes. If you see excessive and large blocks of orange scrolling across. There may be a connection issue and you will want to troubleshoot your equipment or run connection route tests like WinMTR. (Remember to post in the Technical Support forum if you need help with test results or troubleshooting).
Reminder about Competitive Penalties
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| Example of what a seasonal ban from Competitive Play looks like (simulated image) | Example of what a permanent ban from Competitive Play looks like (simulated image) |
- Anyone who was season-banned in the previous Competitive Season should be eligible to play again unless it was their third-season ban. If you are allowed to play Competitive again, I cannot help but emphasize anyone who was banned due to disconnections or game crashes to thoroughly troubleshoot your system if you have not already. Remember a season-ban from leaving competitive games is permanently on your account record and getting three season-bans results in a permanent ban from Competitive Play. It was my observation throughout the last season, both here on the forums and on social media, there was a very high number of players who got a season ban and some have even got a permanent ban. I do not want to see this happen to any player merely due to technical issues. So please make sure you have resolve any pre-existing issues before even starting to play Competitive again.
- Players who are Permanently Banned from Competitive Play cannot play Competitive Play on that account ever again. Remember that Competitive Bans are not the same as Account Actions and therefore are not appealable.
- If a player is serving a suspension from an off-season Competitive Leaver Penalty, they must wait until that timer expires before playing in Season 10. However, I do believe all players who are not permanently banned from Competitive Play are automatically returned to good standing short of any season-ban marks on their record.
- Players who have account actions (account ban, account suspension, account silence) will still have that action against them. (Remember the discussion of your specific account actions is prohibited here on the forums, so remember to file an appeal instead).
Thanks for reading and best wishes for your season 10 campaign! Cheers!