Overwatch admits Team Drives matchmaking problems and explains Push robot speed
Overwatch's Push robot also gets a HUD update.
Sometimes in Competitive, you might end up in matches where it feels like the gap in skill is really large. It turns out this is not supposed to happen.
Blizzard has now acknowledged the matchmaking problems during Overwatch's latest Team Drives event. They are currently working on the issue for the next round.
They also confirmed upcoming changes to the Push game mode and explained how the Robot's speed works.
It turns out TS-1 has been moving faster with more players nearby since Season 12, despite the change never appearing in the patch notes!
Team Drives Matchmaking Is Getting Fixed
The first problem concerns Team Drives matches. This is a topic that has been talked about a lot lately on various social media, such as Reddit or Twitter/X.
The reason for that is the unusually large skill gaps between players that get matched together during Drives.
Blizzard admitted we were indeed right about this, and they explained they understand how it could have a significant impact on match quality.
In the official post, they also apologised to players who experienced these games and confirmed that they are already working on a fix for the next round of Team Drives.
There are no further details about how the matchmaking changes will work or when exactly they will be fixed. The Season 5 Team Drives just ended today, so the fix will mostly come for the Season 6 round.
TS-1 Has Been Pushing Faster Since Season 12
The second part of the update addresses a question that has been around for way too long. Is TS-1, the pushing robot, really pushing faster if more players are around?
Contrary to what many players believed, TS-1 does indeed move faster when more players stand near it while it is pushing the barricade.
It turns out this behaviour is not new at all, and was introduced back in Overwatch 2, during Season 12 on August 20, 2024, but they forgot to mention it in the patch notes.
So TS-1 does not move faster between barricades based on nearby players, but he does push the Barricade itself a little bit faster if more players are around it.
Two adjustments are coming in Season 6 when it comes to TS-1:
Blizzard will fix a bug that currently makes TS-1 push slightly faster with four players than with three. The minimum and maximum push speeds will remain unchanged.
At the Season 6 midcycle update, the Push HUD will show additional arrows next to TS-1. This will give you an indication when players increase their barricade push speed. This will work exactly like the speed indicators already used in Escort and Hybrid.
The HUD change should make it easier to see when your teammates are helping push the barricade faster, without having to look around to check if your friends are on the other side of the map doing who knows what instead of helping progress the objective faster.
Hello, Heroes! We’re here today to talk to you about two points of discussion we’ve been seeing you all talk about recently: really wide matches during Team Drives, and TS-1 - the Push robot - moving faster with more players nearby.
First, Team Drives! We’re aware that some matches are being created which have a range of player skill which we find unacceptably large. This has a significant impact on match quality, and we’d like to apologize for any of you all who experienced these matches. We’re already working on fixing this issue for the next round of Team Drives.
Second, let’s talk about TS-1, the cheerful robot that pushes the barricade in Push. It’s pretty common knowledge that TS-1 doesn’t push faster with more people nearby, and while this was the case when Push was first created, we did end up making it so that TS-1 does push faster with more players nearby in Season 12 (August 20, 2024). Unfortunately we missed this in our patch notes at the time, and we’d like to apologize for that. To be clear, TS-1 runs between the barricades at the same rate regardless of how many players are nearby.
In Season 6, we’ll still be keeping the barricade push speed scaling that comes with having more players nearby, but we’ll be removing a small bug where 4 players caused TS-1 to push slightly faster than with 3 players. The minimum and maximum barricade push speeds for TS-1 will remain the same. At Season 6 midcycle, we’ll also be updating the Push game mode HUD at the top of the screen to show more arrows by TS-1 when it is pushing the barricade quicker due to more players being nearby, similar to how the payload is displayed in the HUD for Escort and Hybrid. This UI change should hopefully make it clear that TS-1 is indeed pushing faster, even for those players that don’t see this post.
Alright, that’s all we’ve got for you all at this time. Talk soon, and see you in-game!