by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Competitive Mode is now available on the PTR and with it are some fundamental changes around the how competitive mode will work now compared to how it worked in beta.

You can access competitive mode by hitting the Play button and you’ll be met with a new card on that screen for competitive play. As long as you are level 25 or above you can join. At the beginning of each season you will need to do 10 placement matches which will then determine your skill level.

It’s been announced that each season will last roughly 2 and a half months. It appears season 1 is scheduled to end August 18th. For competing in the season you will earn a new player icon, a player spray, and competitive points which you can use to purchase the gold guns. A gold gun will cost you 300 competitive points which means you will have to WIN 300 games in order to purchase just 1 golden gun. You do earn competitive points in your placement matches.

When entering a match, you will see the players of each team and what their rankings are or if they are in their placement matches. This will also be the screen that you will see if any players are in a group, this is shown for both teams. The skill level ranges from 1-100 with 100 being the best. The first image below shows everyone is in their placement matches currently. The second image shows my skill level after I finished my placement matches and who on the teams are grouped up.

Some people will be a little disappointed that there are no limits to the same number of heroes you can have on your team. Personally I think this is great since the game was designed to allow for this and is a pretty central part to the game. I would hate to see them limit heroes for competitive mode.

Each match is played on attack and defense. So if you are on the attacking team and play, that is round 1. Defense is round 2.

On payload maps the points are awarded by how many checkpoints you have hit with the payload. So if you are attacking and you reach the first 2 check points but not the 3rd, then your team scores 2 points. You only get points on attack. For payload maps distance is also taken into account so if the defending team gets their payload further, they will end up winning the game.

If both teams get their payload to the finish line you will enter what is called sudden death. One team will be attacking and another defending – the attacking team must get to the first check point in the allotted (and shortened) timed while the defending team must stop them. Whoever wins that struggle wins the match.

For Assault maps like Hanamura, the attacking team will gain 1 point for getting the first point, and then an additional 2 points for getting the 2nd point (3 points total).

For Control Point maps it is a best 3 out of 5 instead of 2 out of 3 like in quick match.

Once you finish your match on the placement matches you will see your win/loss record in your road to receiving your skill level. And as I stated earlier, if you win, you will receive competitive points.

Also, once your game ends, you will be taken back to the start screen where you will have to re queue for the next game by going through the play -? competitive play process again instead of it queuing you automatically.

Once you complete your placement matches you will receive your skill level. 1 being the lowest you can get with 100 being the highest you can get. When you win you will receive points toward getting a higher rank and you will lose points by getting a lower rank. Depending on a few factors such as if you are favored or not in the match will depend on how fast you can go up or down.

As you can see here, I didn’t go up very far after this win. I’ve had other wins where I had almost gone up a full level.

Last but not least is a change to the “Play of the Game” model in this format. You won’t see a Play of the Game after each round, instead you will get a Play of the Match and the end of everything. This can be something that happened in any of the rounds you played in. Here’s one I got with Lucio that I am rather proud of:

Overall, I really enjoyed this take on the competitive play. A couple of the things I think the team needs to work on is leavers, nearly every game it appears we had one (but with it being PTR there isn’t the real punishment that will happen when it is live). After keeping a team from getting to the first point on Gibraltar on defense their entire team ended up leaving. What was frustrating about that is instead of just ending the game and calling victory for us, we had to sit on the payload for the next minute or 2 to get past their location in order to get the win.

All of this is a vast improvement to what we saw in beta, I’m excited to see where this ends up in the future as they keep iterating on the design of competitive mode.