Some players have voiced concerns about queue times, but Kaplan says that Blizzard’s data shows the new mode will actually improve wait times, rather than stretch the out. However, he does reassure fans that the game will continue to be balanced specifically for Role Queue, which will remain the primary competitive mode for Overwatch.

There are a few other tweaks in the pipeline, too. According to Kaplan, the Experimental card will be making a return soon, and there are some planned changes for hero pools, notably that they’ll no longer apply in matches for players with skill ratings below 3500. Come Season 23, then, only the top players will be subject to hero pools. Overwatch 2 is still very much on Blizzard’s agenda, but with no release date yet announced these sort of changes help keep the OG game interesting.

It’s always been a frustrating problem with Overwatch that has been somewhat overlooked as many tweaks focus on the more intensely debated areas of the game. Ever since Blizzard added role queues that can keep players waiting for upwards of 20 minutes at times, it’s even worse. According to Kaplan, backfill isn’t going away any time soon (and to be fair, the game has always credited players a few extra XP for their trouble), but he did say the team is going to apply a fix that will prevent players form repeatedly experiencing it, even if they switch roles.

As far as the other issues, he was less definitive about when or how a fix would arrive, but said: “Being backfilled into a defeat screen is not ideal, no matter how long you wait. We want to address these issues. With backfilling, we’ll never be able to entirely eliminate them because of how some of the game modes work. but certainly it can be better than it is today.”

But now, if you’re in competitive or quick play, you can choose your role before the game starts and the system will match two tanks, two supports and two damage heroes to create a team. Each of the roles has its own queue, and you’ll be able to see estimates for the wait times for each — this will generally be down to the number of players queuing for a particular role. There may also be rewards on offer to help balance out the distribution of players.

Blizzard has also made a couple of other tweaks to ensure matches remain as fair as possible. Players will earn a separate skill rating for each role in competitive play and be assigned a tier per role based on that rating — bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond or grandmaster. This will help the matchmaking system create teams on an evenly skilled basis. Role Queue will affect hero balance, especially for heroes such as Brigitte who is most potent as a third Healer or Tank. As such, Blizzard is updating Brigitte’s kit to provide more healing overall while decreasing her survivability to help solidify her as a support hero.

The feature is currently available on the public test region on PC, and will be coming to live servers starting with a Role Queue beta season in Patch 1.39. It’ll be fully available for quick and competitive play from September 1st for the start of Competitive Season 18.