Your individual performance in competitive online games can only help you to a certain extent. In games like Overwatch 2, you’ll eventually need the assistance of your team to succeed since your chances of taking on the entire enemy by yourself in the upper ranks will be low.
To improve the overall team coordination, Overwatch 2 will be making its debut with a ping system that players may be familiar with from other games. Not to be confused with the ping that rises due to bad internet connection and lag, the ping system allows players to mark objectives or call out other in-game elements.
Marking various objects throughout a match will allow you to increase the level of communication amongst your team, especially if you don’t have access to voice chat.
To use the ping system in Overwatch 2, players will need to hold down their dedicated ping button. You can check what your button is through the game’s input settings since if you have a custom layout, the default configuration will be different for your system.
After holding down the ping button, a communication wheel will pop up on your screen, filled with options like “Group Up” and “I need healing.” Hovering over these options and releasing the ping hotkey will allow you to use one of these responses.
In addition to improving the overall communication amongst teammates, the developers hope this system will help with the in-game toxicity. The existing spam protection and other chat-related restrictions will also be adjusted based on the feedback the devs will receive after thoroughly testing out the ping system.
