Overwatch is a game that is paradoxically competitive and casual at the same time. Given the number of heroes to choose from, the balance at launch is pretty incredible, and matchmaking has been doing a great job of pairing players of similar skill together to compete. At the same time, Blizzard hasn’t placed a huge emphasis on your K/D ratio during, or even at the end of, a match. It’s more about playing your hero to his or her strengths and helping your team secure the objective. That’s why Overwatch has been so successful, in my opinion.
It is a game, though, and there are winners and losers. As long as that’s the case, there will be a class of hyper-competitive players who want to prove that they’re the best, and that’s where ranked modes come in. Overwatch shipped without its ranked mode, called Competitive Play, at launch. When asked by fans if we could look forward to a competitive season some time soon, the official Overwatch Twitter account responded by saying, “We’ll be introducing our Competitive Play (hopefully) later in July. Stay tuned!” The word “hopefully” doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, but this is Blizzard, and Blizzard takes its time with games. When the ranked mode does finally drop, you can expect it to be part of a sizable update with plenty of balancing tweaks, and that’s a great thing.