Overwatch 2 has been on a hot streak as of late, with excellent additions like the Perks system that lets you upgrade a hero throughout a match, and the Stadium mode that lets you create off-the-wall builds for each hero over the course of a seven-round game. The shooter just entered its 17th season, bringing with it a retro-game-themed battle pass, new heroes and maps for Stadium, and map voting across all modes. All of that sounds good on paper, but the addition of map voting and the way Blizzard implemented the system has split the community. After playing around with it myself, I yearn for the days of getting randomly assigned a map before a match.
The way map voting works in Overwatch 2 is that players are presented with three maps before a match begins. Everyone votes for their preferred stage, and then those votes are put into a roulette that picks between them at random. The idea is that the more people who vote for a map, the higher the chance it has of getting picked. This also means that less popular maps aren’t off the table entirely, and that is the first point of contention folks are voicing about the system, as several clips are being published online of a map that gets one vote being selected over a majority decision from the rest of the players in the game.
A cursory glance at the Blizzard forums will show you people arguing the merits of the system, with some asserting that a system that gives every player a chance to play on a map they want means that you won’t have to play the same maps over and over, even if they still feel like they’re playing on less-popular maps at an alarming frequency. Some are even speculating that the map voting system might be weighing maps with fewer votes differently, but that’s just conjecture. Others would rather Blizzard scrap the roulette system entirely in favor of a majority rule, which would probably fix some folks’ issues with being forced to play on maps they don’t like, but would also likely result in most Overwatch 2 matches taking place on the same handful of popular maps.
Anecdotally, my frustration with the system is that it makes it difficult (if not impossible) to get time in with newer maps. Season 17 added a new Flashpoint map called Aatlis that I haven’t been able to play a match on even once. In my experience, people vote for the maps they know, and that means that statistically, fewer players are voting for something new they aren’t used to playing on. Every time Aatlis has shown up on map voting, it’s been pretty handily outvoted, so I haven’t even seen the map for myself yet. Before map voting was added, matches would be randomly assigned a map with no input from players, so you would eventually get to see new maps as they came through standard play. Now, I guess I have to jump into a custom match to even run around in it?
One fix would be for voting to be removed from quick-play modes. I see the argument for having such a system in ranked because people in that mode get sweaty and want to craft what they view to be an optimal game. For those of us who just want to jump into an easy, uncomplicated match, however, map voting adds a new potential frustration without enough benefit to make it worth it. I wanted to get in a match or two on the Pride March Midtown map before it went back into the vault at the end of Pride Month, but now I can’t even stumble upon it without having to cross my fingers that someone else votes for it to improve the odds. The system isn’t even a week old, so there might just be some growing pains for fans and Blizzard to sort through. Hopefully, the team makes some quick improvements to map voting as season 17 goes on.