With today’s (May 22) patch, we made Rialto available in competitive play instead of waiting until the next competitive season on July 1.
In the future, our plan is to make new heroes and maps available in competitive play two weeks after their initial release.
I’m hoping for the best
Good god, thank you so much!
The Brigitte delay was the worst.
Everybody concluded that she is OP after playing against her for 5 minutes in FFA, and for the next two months the forums and Reddit were nothing but an echo chamber about how Brigitte will be the death of Overwatch.
It was painful.
And in the end the delay didn’t achieve anything: there were no significant balance changes until after Brig was available in ranked for hundred thousands of played ranked matches, and when Brig finally hit ranked, many people still had no idea how to play with or against Brigitte, and some were even trying her for the first time in ranked.
It was like every new content release ever, but now with two months of complaining before.
Thank you for this…
So heroes aren’t banned in Comp for an entire season anymore?
Thank you. Waiting almost 2 months for it was really annoying.
We don’t have to wait for a whole 2 months now!
Thank god. The two and a half month wait was silly, and as mentioned by others, didn’t end up improving balance in the slightest. Brigitte was the most exciting hero to join the roster by far, and she will be remembered as the only hero that got screwed in this aspect.
Thank you for listening to the players in this.
Can you leave the brawl in for those two weeks for optimal practice instead of just 6 days then?
Sounds reasonable! A wizard endorses this with his stamp of approval! Ignore that it looks like Genji’s head with a crossed-out circle over it, I assure you that’s not indicative of anything.
I’m still not used to the change in checkpoint 2 of Blizzard World >.>
As long as things are balanced to the best of their ability & it seems like it will be healthy for the current game, I’m all for it
This is good to know. I was crazy shocked when it came up in a comp match earlier. A guy on my team said, I’ve never played this map.” We lost.
Thank you! This is better than waiting between seasons.
I think the two week delay is smart, and ample time for people to practice if desired. This should be considered for OWL as well in my opinion.
That’s great news. I think it is probably one of the more widely accepted maps of late.
It is an interesting conundrum, a slower release before things go to comp, or getting something out to as wide an audience as possible. It looks like a faster release cycle may be the way to go with some of these things, assuming you have people ready to fix any broken windows.
As it should have been all along!
Having to wait over 6 weeks for Brigitte to be playable in Competitive was pointless and excruciating.
Very glad to hear that will not happen again with future heroes!
Now, can we have unranked Competitive mode to practice new heroes in instead of Quick Play (because the only thing you learn in Quick Play is how much you come to despise the “it’s just Quick Play bruh” attitude!)