Unranked is one of the playlists available in Overwatch. It is the first mode players can play and you need to win 20 games on this game mode to play Competitive Play. At the start of each game, players will have to vote for a map to play on out of three randomly selected maps from the six standard game modes - Control, Escort, Hybrid, Push, Flashpoint and Clash.

Description

Jump into a game against other players of your skill level.

Quick Play

Quick Play is the standard way of playing Overwatch.

Role Queue

Choose a role before you play.

Game Rules:

• Players: 5V5
• Victory: Complete standard map objectives
• Teams consist of exactly 1 Tank, 2 Damage and 2 Support Heroes.
  • Select between Tank, Damage, Support roles before queuing. Any combination of roles may be selected. The player will be assigned to the first suitable match as one of the roles they selected.
  • During the match, heroes that do not belong to your assigned role are locked.

6v6 Open Queue

Play any role, maximum 2 tanks.

Game Rules

• Players: 6V6
• Victory: Complete standard map objectives
• Teams may have any amount of Damage or Support heroes, but are limited to a maximum of 2 Tank heroes

6v6 hero changes

Following table lists the balance changes made to heroes in the 6v6 modes.

Mystery Heroes

Defeat the enemy team with every player using heroes that randomly change upon respawn.

In Mystery Heroes, the player is assigned a random hero (and random perks) every time they are eliminated by another player or player intervention. Mystery Heroes is played as 6v6 on a randomly selected map from one of the five standard game modes - Control, Escort, Hybrid, Push, and Flashpoint.

Game Rules:

• Players: 6V6
• Map: Random (map vote)
• Allows locked heroes
• Victory: Complete standard map objectives

Scoring

• On Escort and Hybrid maps, the attacking team wins if the payload reaches its final destination. If not, the defending team wins.
• On Push maps, the team that has pushed the TS-1 robot farthest on the opponents side of the map after 8 minutes wins. If a team pushes the robot all the way to the end, they will win immediately.
• On Control maps, the team that reaches 100% capture progress on the control point wins the round. Matches are scored as a best-of-three rounds.
• On Flashpoint maps, the team that scores 3 objectives in one game wins.
• On Clash maps, the team that scores 5 objective points in one game wins.
• In Mystery Heroes, you have the standard map objectives (seen above) but players respawn every time they are eliminated (by a player or with player intervention) as random Heroes.

Matchmaking

Main article: Matchmaking

Players are matched based on several factors, including but not limited to:

• Skill: The matchmaking system will, first and foremost, try to group players with and against players of similar skill. The game represents "skill" as a hidden Matchmaking Rating, or MMR, which is determined by a player's performance in Quick Play.
• Time: The matchmaking system will try to find a match within a certain time period so the player doesn't have to wait for too long.
• Ping: Players with servers close to one another are prioritized, to minimize lag and improve the gaming experience.
• Group size: The matchmaking system will attempt to find groups of equal sizes to match against each other. If four players are looking for a game together, the matchmaker will try to put them against another pre-made group of four.
• Account level: The matchmaking system will attempt to group players together based on overall team level and match players with similar account levels against players of similar levels. If too many low level accounts are in queue at one time it will attempt to match low lvl players against other low level players regardless of MMR.
• Avoid priority: The matchmaking system will try not to include avoided players. However, they may be released from the list if the queue times get too long.

Backfill

If one of the players in a team leaves a match in Unranked game modes, they will be "backfilled", meaning that they will be replaced by a new player from the matchmaking queue or by a spectator. The player who was selected to backfill will receive "high priority" matchmaking after the match. Players with high priority will be put in a match faster and cannot be selected to backfill another game, while queuing for the same game mode. (Role queue and open queue are considered separate, but each role in role queue the same.) If the player exits to desktop or plays another game mode, their high priority will be lost.

Spectating

If you join someone already in an unranked mode, you will be able to spectate that game. As soon as someone leaves on the team of the person who you joined, you get to join the game. You can only spectate people on the team of the person you joined.

Leaver penalties

As Unranked modes are intended for a more casual experience and leavers can be backfilled, players are given some leniency when it comes to leaving matches. However, this can still be very disrupting and can lead to unsatisfactory experiences, so players who excessively leave Unranked matches, will be temporarily suspended from queueing to any game mode that grants Player Progression.^[1][2]

Each player's last 20 matches they participated in are recorded. If the player has been marked as leaver in at least 4 of these matches, they will receive a 20 minute suspension from matchmaking. If the player has left at least 6 of their last 20 matches, the duration of the suspension is increased to 4 hours. These suspensions will be reapplied every time the player leaves a match while above these thresholds, but not when the player completes a match. If you are currently in leaver status, your player card will tell you how many games you must finish to leave that status in the upper-right corner.^[3]

References

v · d · e Gameplay
Playlists	Unranked Competitive Play Stadium Arcade Custom Games Missions Training
Maps	Assault Clash Control Escort Flashpoint Hybrid Push
Heroes	Ability Health, Armor & Shields Melee Movement speed Passive ability (Global) Perks Ranged Roles (Sub-Roles) Ultimate ability Weapon
Mechanics	Channeled Damage modification Deployables (Barrier) Environmental kill Critical hit Healing Health pack Overtime Projectile Respawn Spawn Room Status effect Transformation
Systems & Content	Achievements Avoid as Teammate Battle Pass Challenges Cosmetics Elimination Feed Endorsements Events Loot Box Map Voting Matchmaking On Fire Penalties Ping Play of the Game Player Progression Quick Play: Hacked Scoreboard Tips Workshop
Other	Common Terms Patch Notes
Removed features	Sudden Death Card Medals Looking for Group Map Pools Priority Pass Assault Hero Mastery Hero Mastery: Gauntlet Hero Missions Talents