Blizzard Entertainment VP Jeff Kaplan in the new Developer Newsletter wrote about innovations in competitive action. First of all, he touched on the open competitive mode, which is currently available in Arcade and allows you to play as before: without the restrictions of 2x2x2 - splitting into two fighters of each type in a team.
Different countries reacted to this innovation in different ways: in Korea, the open competitive mode was the second most popular mode in the entire game, and in North America it lost out to Mysterious Heroes and even custom modes in the Match Browser. But in general, it turned out to be unexpectedly in demand, so the developers decided to return it in the future, although for a while it will still disappear.
The next short season of open mode in Arcade will take place sometime in mid-June, and in early July, with the start of the 23rd competitive season, open mode will become part of the main version of the shooter and the official version of the usual competitive game with the distribution of roles (namely, with aiming at him, Blizzard introduces changes to the balance). That is, now the players will have a choice.
The developers will also continue to update the balance more often and experiment with disabling certain heroes in the main mode. Work is underway to reduce the waiting time for matches: according to the collected statistics, the appearance of an open mode will just help to reduce downtime: players who prefer DPS will choose open mode more often - two queues move faster.
Also in the near future, the "Lab" will open again - a section with experimental modes and unusual balance changes. For example, many of them are designed to test various power-ups for Bastion, which now rarely appears in the game. Changes to support heroes will also be tested: some will be slightly weakened, some will be buffed. For example, the amount of healing that Ana gives will slightly decrease; Angel, on the contrary, will receive a direct bonus to the amount of treatment; and Zenyatta will return the old variant of Orb of Dissonance at 30% effectiveness, down from 25%. A number of changes will also affect Moira.
Finally, Blizzard will take a new approach to hero rotation. Now this feature will only work in matches with a skill rating above 3500. That is, most players will no longer see the rotation, but will be able to play any heroes.
Source: 3dnews.ru