Overwatch 2 Season 12 Director Discusses Teammate Avoidance, Wave Respawns and Drives

The system team of Overwatch 2 has been diligently developing in recent months, indicating new enhancements are on the horizon for the team shooter game with the Season 12 rollout. The development team recently released a post detailing their ongoing projects including anticipated improvements and unexpected additions. The success of these new implementations, like always, will depend on players’ feedback.

Several notable points are emphasized in the dev post. The first is an enhancement to the existing “avoid a teammate” feature. The slots are now upped to 15, including 3 slots for “permanent avoidance” instead of just one week. Nevertheless, the actual effectiveness will also rely on the player’s rank and match population.

A novel addition to the mix is a competitive event known as “Drives”. Any player participating in the Competitive Play Role Queue will have the opportunity to score Drive points, advance through checkpoints and accumulate rewards.

Another modification to look forward to is a substitution. The dev team has resolved to do away with the group respawn system and introduce a new “Wave Respawn” feature. The main snag with group respawn that’s intended to be rectified was the delay in respawn times for those who died first, as they had to wait for others to die. The Wave Respawn tackles this issue. An in-depth explanation for this change can be read in the blog post.