Some of us never stopped playing Overwatch, but many players have come and gone as the hero shooter has had its ups and downs over the past decade. With Blizzard essentially rebooting the game by dropping the 2 from the title, restructuring its seasonal rollout to incorporate story, and adding five new heroes, a lot of folks are coming back to see what all the fuss is about. But if you’ve been gone for a while or you’re straight up new to the game, there’s a lot you may have missed out on or don’t know about how to play the hero shooter. Well, the intricacies of Overwatch are impossible to break down in one blog alone, but I can give you at least a few tips on how to get (back) into the swing of things.
A quick breakdown of each game mode
Whether you’re playing in Quick Play, ranked modes, or something in the casual arcade menu, Overwatch has several modes of play determined by which map you’re on. The objective usually just requires you to hold space for longer than your opponent or escort something across the map, but the rules of each of them change depending on which mode you’re playing. Some of these have been in the game since launch, while others have been added over the course of the past few years. Here’s a quick summary of each:
- Control – This is a King of the Hill style deathmatch mode in which two teams fight for control of a designated area on the map. When one team has maintained dominance for an allotted time, they win the round. These matches are a best of three, and each round takes place on a different map within the same region.
- Escort – This mode has one team trying to move a payload from one side of the map to the other, with the enemy team attempting to block their progress. The payload only moves if players on the attacking team are touching it, and if the defending team manages to fight them off the payload and stay on it for a few seconds, it will slowly start to backtrack, resetting the opposition’s progress. Matches can go into overtime after the time limit runs out as long as the attacking team maintains control of the payload.
- Flashpoint – If Control didn’t make you enter a loading screen and a new spawn each round, it would look like Flashpoint. These maps are the biggest in Overwatch, and the best-of-five matches will have you and your team running across long distances to reach each objective point and fight over it against your opponents.
- Hybrid – These maps are essentially a mashup of Control and Escort. You’ll start defending or attacking one point, and if the attacking team wins, a payload is revealed that must be escorted to the end of the map.
- Push – The first mode that was added in Overwatch 2 is a bit of a tug-of-war, with both teams trying to escort a robot that pushes two barricades across the map. Which one he pushes depends on which team has the upper hand, so it’s basically a custody battle for the push bot as you both fight over his allegiance until the match ends, either because one barricade has reached the end of its path or because time ran out, at which point whichever barricade has been pushed further determines the winner. If the team that’s currently losing has control of the bot when the clock runs out, the match will go into overtime and they’ll have a chance to push their barricade as long as they maintain control.
- Clash – These maps are some of the most straightforward in Overwatch, as they have two teams fighting over objectives and gradually progressing further onto one side of the map or the other depending on who wins each round. The first team to capture five points wins, regardless of where on the map the fight has ended up.
Those are all the standard ways of playing; we’ll get to one other major pillar of the game later.
Yes, you can still play 6v6 without role lock
Some folks who haven’t played Overwatch in a hot minute might not realize that the classic 6v6 open queue is still in the game, and has been for a long time. The standard way of playing Overwatch has pivoted to a 5v5 “role lock” mode that requires a team composition of one tank, two DPS, and two support, but back in the day, the game supported 12 players at once, and didn’t require you to play specific roles. Both of these modes are available in both quick play and competitive ranked modes.
How map voting works
Overwatch has map voting now, but it’s not a majority vote win sort of deal. At the beginning of each match, both teams can vote for one of three maps, and every vote gives each map more chances to get picked on a roulette wheel. As a result, it’s entirely possible that one person may vote for a map against nine other players and it still wins out. I suppose if it were a majority rule we’d only play on the same handful of favorites so this is probably the best approach, even if it means we get comical moments in which one person’s vote decides the fate of the entire lobby.
Don’t be afraid to lose your Perks and swap
One of the biggest gameplay changes that’s been made since the days of standard Overwatch is the addition of Perks. These are branching upgrades you’ll pick throughout a match that modify and upgrade your base abilities. Each hero has bespoke changes, so there’s no blanket “make my bullets do more damage” or “give me a ton of overhealth.” The tweaks have been patched in and out a few times over the past year, though, so don’t get too comfortable with the ones you like.
Since they take time to charge up, you might be hesitant to swap to another hero after you’ve already sunk so much time into one. Well, get out of that mindset quick. Perk charge speeds grow faster the longer a match has gone on, so you can unlock them much more quickly for a character you’ve swapped into in the final push than for one you came out of spawn playing at the beginning. Also, if you change your mind, you can swap back to the hero you were using before and you’ll still have all those Perks unlocked and equipped. So don’t feel obligated to commit to a character just because you’ve already leveled them up.
If you’re overwhelmed by the amount of heroes, try someone simple out first
Overwatch has a staggering 50 heroes now, with another five planned for the next five seasons. If you’re new here, it might be worth starting with someone simple before you jump into the more elaborate kits. You can’t really go wrong with a lot of the OGs. Soldier: 76 is the sort of baseline “shooter guy” with an assault rifle and a sprint. Reinhardt is a big tanky guy with a shield and that’s pretty straightforward. And if you’re a returning player, don’t be afraid to just jump in with your old fave. You’re just getting back into the swing of things, no need to overwhelm yourself trying to figure out how all of Wuyang or Kiriko’s bullshit works.
It’s going to take time to learn all the ways heroes synergize
The 50-hero roster can look intimidating, and if you haven’t touched Overwatch in years, you probably won’t recognize half of them. Between each of them there are hundreds of interactions you might not know or understand, so it’s better to focus on a hero you jive with and learn about the rest of the roster through interacting with and and countering them first. I started as a Soldier: 76 main and gradually started memorizing how other heroes work by just seeing them in a match and using context clues. Definitely take some time to try everyone out in the practice range, but don’t feel like you’ve gotta know the intricacies of everyone before you queue up.
If you’ve got friends who play, lean on them
One of the best resources a person can have for getting back into Overwatch is a friend who’s been playing and knows their shit. I’ve been coaching some of my returning friends through changes on the fly in the middle of matches, and that takes some of the trial and error out of countering or avoiding certain heroes. I guarantee you any friend who has been playing Overwatch solo for the past few years has been waiting for a chance to play with you again, so hit them up and form a five-stack.
Stadium is for the sickos
One of the game modes we haven’t touched on yet is Stadium. This was added last year, and it’s one of the most complex modes in all of Overwatch. Its matches are the longest of any mode in the game, and it has two teams facing off in a series of quick rounds while players buildcraft and fundamentally change up their heroes’ playstyles in ways more far-reaching than Perks. If you aren’t a person who likes upgrading skill trees, crunching numbers, and committing to a hero for a whole game because you can’t switch, Stadium is absolutely not the game you should play when you’re just coming back to Overwatch. I love it and I barely even play it because it’s such a time commitment, so work your way up to that if it’s something you might be interested in.
Mythic skins are expensive, but you can unlock them for cheap
When you pop over to the Shop tab, you’ll see a standard page with a bunch of cosmetics you can pay real money for, but you’ll also see the Mythic shop. Here, you’ll find customizable skins and weapons for specific heroes that you buy with a specialized currency called Mythic Prisms. They cost a whole lot of money, but there is a cheaper way to unlock these prisms and that’s through the premium battle pass. Completing any given season’s battle pass will net you enough of this currency to buy one Mythic skin at no additional cost. So if you’re keeping up with the battle passes, you can collect all of these without forking over any additional real cash. And if you’ve missed one you want, hang tight; they rotate in and out of the shop every season.
There are better story recaps than the one in the game
With the big emphasis on lore and story moving forward, all future Overwatch story content from motion comics, cinematics, and short stories will be found in the game itself in the Story menu. However, if you haven’t been paying attention to the story as it’s developed for the past decade, know that the in-game summary is absolute dog water. It touches on a few major plot beats, such as the rise and fall of Overwatch, but there’s a whole lot of context, characters, and content missing. You’re better off finding summaries on YouTube about everything you’ve missed or, better yet, reading and watching it all yourself, as most of it is readily available online for free. A lot of the more recent stuff is available as audio dramas on YouTube, usually read by one of the game’s stellar voice actors.
No, you can’t buy lootboxes
If you weren’t part of Overwatch’s community at the time, you might have been confused as to why fans were excited for loot boxes to return last year. Well, Overwatch fans liked these not because of the gambling aspect, but because they were a free way to unlock cosmetics rather than throwing cash into the game’s expensive shop. Nowadays, you can’t buy these outright, so the gambling part is no longer part of the equation. Instead, you unlock them through progressing the battle pass, participating in events, and completing daily and weekly challenges. The new season included a refresh of what you can find in the loot boxes as well, so there are plenty of new skins that were once available in the shop that can pop out of these.
Overwatch can be a lot, and the key to getting into the game is finding ways to not overwhelm yourself with all the sensory overload of content and characters it offers. Take it slow, grab a friend or two, and pick a hero who you’re comfortable feeling your way through it all with. The game is at its best when your third eye opens and you can predict, strategize, and execute cool plays by pure instinct, and you’ll never get that far if you don’t take the first step. I’ll see y’all at Watchpoint Gibraltar.
