by JR Cook - 6 years ago     show comments

Tuesday’s Overwatch Developer’s Update was a doozy. Jeff introduced two new social features, along with an update on Symmetra and Horizon Lunar Colony’s reworks we have all been so eagerly awaiting:

First up: the new social features. Jeff announced two features that are for sure coming in the latest patch: Recognitions and a Looking for Group feature.

The Recognition system will allow players to recognize players they’re in a match with for positive reasons — how nice is that? There will be three different categories players can recognize other players in: Sportsmanship, Good Teammate and Shot-caller.

Sportsmanship is just like it sounds, if someone — whether they’re on your team or the opposing team — showed good sportsmanship during a game, you’ll be able to go to their player profile and recognize them for that.

Good Teammate is when someone on your team (can’t be the enemy team obviously) is a good team player. Maybe they actually switch off of Junkrat (or Hanzo).

Shot-caller is someone on your team who, just like it sounds, calls the shots. Maybe they got the team out of a disastrous team fight, or they had the foresight to wait for Mercy coming back from spawn. Whatever they do, these are the people who lead your team positively through the match.

Players will also get to see how other players are endorsed – in order to recognize good teammates when you see them. Once you get a certain high endorsement level, you have to be recognized frequently to stay at a high level. If a player gets suspended in anyway, the endorsements start over.

There will be minor rewards for endorsing other people — but each player will only have a limited number of endorsements. Check in moments where rewards come to those with high endorsements will happen occasionally as well. No word on what those rewards could be, but I would guess loot boxes or coins (could be a skin though, who knows!)

Next is something the community has been clamoring for for at least a year, maybe even since release: Looking for Group.

Looking for Group allows players to create a group that matches their exact specifications. Want to run a triple tank? No problem. You’ll be able to select roles for each member of your team, if desired. Players can also let the group be free-for-all and choose whatever character they want – if you’re into that.

Another note on Looking for Group: “Defense” heroes have now just become “Damage” heroes. So instead of 4 hero categories, we’ll only have 3. You can also require everyone in your group to use voice chat (thank you Jeff). Groups can also be named whatever the creator wants.

In addition to these changes, players can now select privacy settings for their player profile. Players can either have it private, friends only, or open to anyone — like it is now. This is the change I think will see the most kickback. People like to be able to see what other members of their team are good at, although with Looking for Group, that might not be as big of an issue anymore.

In addition to these massive social features, Symmetra’s anticipated rework and some changes to Horizon Lunar Colony are currently on the PTR, so they should be included in the next patch as well.

Get some friends together, practice some Sym on the PTR and think about your ideal group compositions. This next patch will be a big one!