Any Overwatch 2 player (or anyone who plays team-based games online, for that matter) has probably found themselves in a situation where you have a rough game with a bad teammate or two, and within a short amount of time, that same teammate ends up on your team once more. The disputes between the players are still fresh which means that you’re already off to a bad start in your next match, and it’s unlikely things will get better considering how the previous game went.
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If that sounds like something you’re familiar with, you’ll be happy to hear about the newest feature that Blizzard is implementing in Overwatch 2 which will allow you to avoid teammates that you don’t want to play with. Gavin Winter, systems designer on Overwatch 2, announced the new feature in full this week after it was brought up earlier in the year, though it’s been expanded on since then.
A previous iteration of an “avoid player” feature allowed players to avoid people, but those would time out eventually which meant that you could at one point come across those players again. Now, you’ll have the option to avoid up to 15 players at once with three of those 15 slots able to be “pinned” so that you will always avoid those players in those three slots.
“The system now features 15 avoid slots, with two different types of slots making up those 15,” he said. “You have 3 ‘Pinned’ avoid slots that allow you to permanently avoid a player.Unlike our old avoid slots, these Pinned slots never time out.The other 12 ‘Recent’ avoid slots time out after 7 days, like in our previous system.They also use a priority system that takes many factors into account when determining whether an avoided player can be placed in a match with you.”
While those who are particularly argumentative with others may suggest that 15 slots isn’t enough, one has to consider how avoiding every single player who’s ever slighted you could impact your matchmaking times, particularly when it comes to competitive modes. On the topic of ranked matches, Winter also acknowledged that it’s possible someone on your avoid list may get into your game anyway if matchmaking pools are smaller “when you’re at very high Rank or if you’re in lower-population regions during off hours.”
This new Overwatch 2 feature should be implemented during Season 12.
