Overwatch 2 Season 13 has some exciting stuff in store for players. There's not just a stacked battle pass this season, along with some much-needed balance and map changes, but we're also getting tweaks to the scoreboard interface, making it easier to deal with annoying players.
"To give players easier access to social features, especially on controllers, we've added the ability to interact with the scoreboard," Kaedi, a community manager for Overwatch 2, says in a forum post. "The interactive scoreboard is intended to make reporting faster and easier, but also improve your social experience through whatever channels you prefer to communicate in or avoid entirely."
Before this, all the scoreboard was useful for was checking how your team was doing in comparison to your opponent, plus checking team compositions throughout the match. But now you can adjust your and other players' mic volumes, report players, join or leave team or group voice chat, join or leave team or match text chat, or just mute text chat of other players.
My general rule of thumb is always to have voice chat on mute. Despite popular opinion, I've never lost a match due to bad team communication—most half-decent players can read team fights and act accordingly without having to triple-check with their teammates. The ping feature is also clear enough for any urgent calls. But every now and again, I actually come across someone funny enough to warrant venturing into team voice chat just to listen to their chaotic ramblings, so I'm glad Blizzard has made customising social settings easier.
Another smaller but equally cool change to the scoreboard is that now, if you change hero mid-fight, it'll hide your selection from the enemy team for 15 seconds, you know, to keep that air of mystery about you. "This change adds more friction to counterswapping, especially in the extreme case where two players on opposite teams are both sitting in spawn with the scoreboard open and rapidly switch their heroes in response to each other's choices," a developer commented. For those who don't know what counterswapping is, you tend to find it in hero-based/ability shooters, as it involves players picking their character based on what will be the most effective against heroes in the enemy team. These can change with patches and updates, but a good long-standing example is that Zarya is a good tank counterswap for D.Va, as D.Va can't negate Zarya's beam.
I've never come across someone so dedicated to counterswapping that they'll wait in spawn to see which hero you pick. But I don't have an issue with counterswapping in Overwatch 2—it's quite an integral part of the game and why it's a good idea to get familiar with a group of heroes instead of relying on just one. Also, I've had plenty of matches where I've beaten an enemy Zarya as D.Va. You just have to play a different way than usual—being better than the enemy also helps.
The scoreboard update is a small change, but it still takes a step in the right direction, as it makes actions easier for players. Although I'm still waiting for the day when Blizzard finally decides to answer my prayers and add a ban hero button, I'll only be truly happy after that.
