Blizzard is trialing some small changes to Overwatch 2’s format in a series of short-lived Hacked Events. According to a Blizzard blog post earlier this year, this is an effective way to “quickly understand what [players] like and possibly implement changes to improve gameplay.”
The Previous event introduced faster respawn times, payload speeds, and match starts. While I didn’t massively adore most of these changes, they didn’t make a real difference to my games, unlike the most recent event, Double Trouble.
Opening Overwatch 2 after a long day just to see the Quick Play icon turn purple is disarming enough, but learning that this was part of a Hacked Event, which removes the one hero limit for Role and Open queue, allowing teams to play two of the same support or DPS heroes, was enough for me to close down the game and get an early nights sleep—at least that’s what I should have done.
Double Trouble is only around for 24 hours, and in the short time I experienced this event I can safely say that that’s probably for the best. Facing up against teams with two Mercys and two Pharahs is a sickening ordeal, which saps all the fun out of what should be chill Quick Play games as you have to lock in and work twice as hard to counter the weird duos which emerge from the enemy spawn. At one point, I thought I had started hallucinating as two Moiras chased me through the snowy streets of Nepal Village, fading in and out consecutively and poking me with damage orbs until I took my life into my own hands and threw myself off the side of the map.
But I am not entirely without fault—I may have spent a couple of matches doubling up with my teammates. At various points, we had two Anas, Soldier 76s, and even the occasional double Mercy, which I would like the record to show that I did not endorse. Having two of the same heroes makes a significant difference, and if you pick the right ones, it can completely sway a match—two Soldier 76s with a Mercy pocket each is never ok.
While Double Trouble doesn’t inflict a great deal of harm (apart from the psychological damage of dealing with two Moiras), it would have been nice if the Hacked Event was just added to Arcade instead of hijacking Quick Play. Having to choose between playing for your life in Competitive and dealing with seeing double in what’s meant to be the less stressful mode is a choice I don’t want to have to make again any time soon.
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