Blizzard is finally making changes to Overwatch 2’s ping system

Overwatch 2’s well-intended yet notorious context-based ping system has been under the crosshairs of players due to a long-term undecoded issue, which has been preventing important prompts like “Group Up” and “Need Healing” from being announced accurately. To defuse the complaints, Blizzard is finally planning to address the unfavorable situation with the game’s upcoming mid-season update. 

On April 29, an Overwatch 2 player called WitheredBarry posted a Reddit thread highlighting his woes with the popular hero shooter’s ping system. He mentioned how he was unable to call for grouping up using the “Group Up” ping, which, instead, announced the “I am with you” prompt. 

For the reader’s context, the community has been reporting such infuriating instances for a long time where Overwatch 2’s ping system sent out the wrong message, despite players using the right prompt. Not only Reddit but the Blizzard forum is also flooded with users sharing their confusing experience with the ping wheel.

The issue is most notable with the “Group Up” and “Need Healing” pings. But several players have also reported facing trouble with the “Fall Back” prompt. Many even had trouble pinging the objective or a location on the map, with the system hilariously announcing a completely unrelated message like “Come to me for healing,” forcing a countdown, or a respawn time.

Luckily, these issues are about to be history, with Blizzard planning to add a setting to enable/disable contextual ping for “Group Up” and “Need Healing” prompts when the player aims it at an allied teammate. A Blizzard spokesperson named blizz_winter on Reddit replied to WitheredBarry on May 1, announcing the setting will be deployed via Season 4’s mid-season patch, which is expected to drop in May.

Alongside the promising announcement of a fix, blizz_winter also shared a tip for players to reduce instances of inaccurate contextual pings. Accordingly, increasing the value of the Ping Wheel Press Delay may help prevent such issues. 

While in Overwatch 2’s home screen, navigate to Options -> Controls -> Communication -> Ping Options and increase the Ping Wheel Press Delay to around 0.3. For the “Need Healing” situation, players can try reducing the Injured Ally Ping Sensitivity setting under Options -> Controls -> Communication -> Ping Options -> Advanced. 

Related: The best Overwatch 2 settings for PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and Switch

While it could be just a mere ping press delay issue, blizz_winter hasn’t ruled out a possible bug to be the cause. He revealed that a long time ago, “it was possible for Ping – In World to fire an unintended type of ping under some very specific circumstances.

Blizzard had addressed the issue at the time, but it’s always possible for the game to fire up another bug with the same consequence. If performing the suggested workarounds doesn’t do you any good, don’t worry. blizz_winter assured the team is on the lookout for better solutions to address such anomalies in the system.