Are you someone who has been stuck in Bronze 5 while trying to climb the Overwatch 2 Competitive ranks? Well, if you checked online, you’ll probably be aware that you’re not alone. This new Competitive system is a grind at the best of times – and even more of a slog at the worst of them. However, did you know that your struggle to get out of Bronze 5 was actually a bug, and not an intended feature? Well, yeah. Blizzard kept that one a little quiet, didn’t it?
As highlighted on the Overwatch 2 subreddit by seemingly disgruntled player ‘SeeOurTea’, the latest set of Overwatch 2 patch notes contain the following fix: “resolved an issue where some players could be stuck in Bronze 5 even after several rank updates”.
While this is, of course, a fantastic fix for players looking to jump into this hero shooter’s competitive mode over the weekend and beyond, it has also caused retrospective outrage because Blizzard seemingly didn’t make anyone aware that this was even an issue in the first place.
SeeOurTea shared this part of the patch notes with the rhetorical question suggesting that Blizzard left Overwatch 2 players to “pointlessly grind [competitive]” without any warning that it would be in vain – and, similar complaints are filling the comments below.
“Remember all those ‘competitive sucks, it’s always a steamroll’ posts? They make more sense now, don’t they”, one player said.
“My friend uninstalled the game because he couldn’t rank up from Bronze 5 for weeks… I can see why a lot of people stopped playing”, said another.
So you’re telling us that instead of warning people that this was an issue, you just left them to pointlessly grind in comp? from Overwatch
Despite this being quite a positive fix for Overwatch 2, you can’t help but wonder if it’s another case of ‘too little, too late’ for the hero shooter. A lot of players are echoing the sentiment that they don’t know if they can be bothered to return to Overwatch 2 – after dropping it because of this glitch. When you couple this with the opposition to, and in some cases sheer disbelief of, Overwatch 2’s monetisation system, it feels as though Blizzard is going to have a hard time convincing players to return.
While the Overwatch League grand final was the esports’ most important yet, this frustrating Overwatch exploit still plagues Overwatch 2 and it feels as though the community is demoralised and simply unexcited to play the game. We hope this changes, with the Overwatch 2 Season 2 release date approaching, but we’ll have to wait and see.