What are the Best and Worst times in the day to play Overwatch?

General Discussion
1

When would you guys advise to boot up the game for the most likely shot at having a good experience and when would you say to avoid playing at all costs?

What are the actual experiences had with your matchmaking during those time’s specifically?

I’d assume stuff like this would be the case but haven’t played enough to get accurate data:

  • 10am-1pm is when the Afternoon/Evening shifts, Sick people, but mostly the No lifers play

  • 3pm is when the kids come home from school

  • 6pm is when all the 9 to 5ers hop on decently exhausted

  • 11pm and onwards is when matchmaking gives up on similar skill level matches

2

Halloween and archives,
oh you meant for Pvp, then idk

3

Ah yes Halloween O’clock, my favourite time

2 Likes
4

During Friday and weekends and also late of night are the worst times.

1 Like
5

I like to play in friday evening, because friday evening is the best time for entertaiment

6

My best games are usually between say 9 and midnight.

I occasionally play a few games when I first get in from work at like 7-ish, and maybe it’s because I haven’t eaten yet or haven’t relaxed after work. But those games are usually a mess.
Could be me, could be the team (most likely me).

But later in the evening the games are usually more solid.

7

Bear in mind that the answer to this question varies depending on where you are located within the region you play in. My answer as a UK player (west-most time zone in Europe) is going to be 3-4 hours different to someone playing from Russia, for example)

8

Then just say what the case for you personally what times you’ve found it enjoyable and what times it was the worst?

Surely 3AM Europe time where theres little to no one online except the weirdos would be the same as 3AM USA time where thered also be little to no one online except the weirdos?

9

The point I was making is that ‘3am’ for me in the UK translates as between 3am to 6am for other players in my region that I am playing with, while 3am in, say, New York translates as 12am-3am for the region.

So, If I say ‘10pm is great’ and a Russian person says 1am is his favourite time, we are actually talking about the same time!

Anyway, I like late evening best, early morning the worst, daytime is usually OK except during school holidays. Worst time to play is during free weekends.

1 Like
10

Afternoon. There’s no lifers but better teams

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11

Weekends are the worst, it’s when nearly everyone has free time simultaneously, so you get players from all across the spectrum in your games.

12

Ok we can run the list again
The worst times to play Overwatch, at least comp wise,
First and last week of any new season. Most of all the last week.
First week or so of large events/patches/new hero release.

As people who don’t really play much drop in and think nothing about just jumping back into comp, being they don’t view it as anything but QP+1 anyways.

Avoid the weekends or at least prime home from parties and still 1/2 drunk times
Holidays tend to remove a lot of players and have way more kids.

Then there are the less important issues, like all summer is a bit wonky and so is just home from school hours. Yet both are way less of an issue now due to Fortnite ruling the youth market.

Then I assume a special west coast only issue is that around 1am is prime KR VPN over into USA server times. So might run into players with wonky pings and language issues.

Leaving the prime nerd gaming hours to be the tiny window of like midweek, mid-day and early evenings.

2 Likes
13

I don’t subscribe to any good time bad time theory. But after midnight games usually take longer to find which can contribute to negative experience.

14

10am-3pm is probably most optimal to climb, not everyone is super serious, might get some players from other regions, but overall people are more chill and some people are waking up so can take advantage of that

anytime after 5pm, it a long very slow down spiral until 10pm for brief moment everyone is awake and peaks again, and games are fine, after 1am it’s just down spiral from there, peaks again around 5am because time zones, until 10am again.

Weekends are generally harder to climb

15

In my experience, weekends are abysmal for trying to climb, but I can’t figure out why.

Weeknights I can usually manage an 70-80% win rate.

Weekends it’s 20-30%. Every weekend. No exceptions.

16

[WHAT ARE THE BEST AND WORST TIMES IN THE DAY TO PLAY OVERWATCH?]

About 12am to 12am usually.