After the competitive ranked mode appeared in beta but was missing from Overwatch's retail release, Blizzard made clear that the mode needed more time in the oven.
It's for that reason it released at the end of June, more than a month after Overwatch's official release. Unfortunately for players (and Blizzard), the new game mode needed more time to cook.
It's not the basics of competitive mode that need improving. Those, as is usually the case with everything Blizzard does, are rock solid. The rules of Overwatch's various game types are tweaked in competitive mode, as they should be. Players play best of five rounds on Control maps, Escort maps are scored not by pushing the cart all the way but by how far the cart is pushed, and Assault maps are judged by the number of objectives taken.
That all makes sense. So does competitive mode's ranked system. Players play 10 placement matches, and then are ranked 1 to 100, with 100 being the best. Losing against higher-skill teams will cause your rank to go down more, while winning against higher-skill teams causes your rank to go up more.
It's all fairly self-explanatory, and when the mode works like it's supposed to, it's a blast to play. Having a team that actually communicates and works in unison makes competitive mode fun, even if you lose at the end.
Unfortunately, finding a team that works together, or even stays together, is far harder than it should be. In Blizzard's attempt to craft a mode better suited for competitive play, it completely overlooked what is by and large the main problem with any competitive game or game mode: players themselves, specifically sore losers. More often than not in what appears to be a one-sided match, players on the losing team will simply quit. Losing a teammate (or two or three) makes it nearly impossible to have any chance of winning in Overwatch, and this scenario rears its ugly head far more than it should. In nearly every competitive match I've played, there have been multiple players quitting the match, whether on my team or on my opponent's.
The reason for that lies with Blizzard's too-lenient leaving penalties for competitive play. Leaving a game early or going AFK makes it so the player responsible is unable to join a new match until the one they left is finished. Those who frequently leave games will be banned from competitive play for certain lengths of time. If the leaving continues, those players can even be banned entirely from competitive play.
It might sound good in theory, but in practice, it isn't having any kind of effect. What's even more baffling is that players who leave don't receive a loss on their ranked records, essentially giving them a get-out-of-jail-free card for quitting early. Instead, the team that lost as a direct result of having a teammate leave must suffer the consequences.
Being able to leave from the occasional match that goes south quickly and receiving virtually no penalty for it is a perfect way to incentivize players to leave when they are losing. Most of these infrequent quitters won't be banned for long periods of time or banned permanently for the season, because Blizzard gives players the option to put their account back in good standing by successfully completing matches without quitting. It's unclear exactly how many matches a player must leave before Blizzard starts to ban them for certain lengths of time or permanently, but judging from how frequently players leave, it's obviously not having much of an effect.
Something about the system needs to change. In theory, there is a reason Blizzard makes teams that lose as a result of quitters deal with the consequences. Were Blizzard to punish only the leaver, one player could essentially "take one for the team" any time a game started to go downhill, letting the rest of the group get out free. That's obviously not a desirable outcome, but it still doesn't explain why the leaver doesn't also receive a loss alongside the team that gets left behind. The fear of loss is the entire reason players quit games in the first place, and by not giving them an automatic loss in exchange for quitting, Blizzard is saying it's okay to quit every once in a while.
Those are the main issues, but competitive play's reward system (as with the rest of the game's reward mechanics) could use some improving as well. Winning matches in competitive play earns players Competitive Points. These points are also earned at the end of the season based on performance, and can then be used to purchase golden weapon skins for each of the game's 21 heroes.
It's a good idea in theory, except golden weapon skins cost 300 CP per character, and winning a match earns you only 1 CP. Losing a competitive match nets you no rewards. While it remains to be seen how many CP players will earn at the end of each competitive season, requiring players to plays hundreds and hundreds of matches just for one golden skin is ridiculous. Just as with Overwatch's loot box system, it's a grind-heavy, brain-numbing endeavor to try and earn anything you actually want in Blizzard's otherwise fantastic shooter. Unless the end of the season nets players 100s of CP at a time, the 1 CP per win system needs to change. Why not reward players who win in competitive play with 3 or 5 CP, and players who lose with 1? There are a number of simple solutions that could go far when it comes to giving players a reason to play ranked.
Blizzard is aware of this. The company has gone on record to say that it may take a few seasons for it to iron out the kinks of competitive mode and make the game type all it can be. That's reassuring to hear, because as it is now, there are plenty of kinks that need ironing out.
