It’s been known for a while that Overwatch has a lower tick rate—that is, how often servers update to reflect what players are doing—than most other competitive first-person shooters. Thankfully, Blizzard’s finally upping it on PC.




While Blizzard has said that Overwatch uses predictive server techniques to make up for the potential delay produced by a lower tick rate (20.8hz/updates per second vs most shooters’ 60hz), players have reported instances of missed shots landing and actions falling out of sync with what they’re seeing on screen.

Today, Blizzard announced that they’re changing that in Overwatch’s PC version. This isn’t just a high-bandwidth mode, either. It’s across the board. Blizzard explained:

“When we implemented the ‘High Bandwidth’ option to Custom Games back in beta, we also noted that—if the feature performed well and players responded positively to it—we would investigate adding it to other games modes. We’re holding to that promise and are currently in the process of rolling out high bandwidth support globally for PC. This process may take a few weeks for all regions, but once fully deployed all games including those in Quick Play and Competitive Play will be running in high bandwidth mode by default.”


The game’s tick rate will now be set at 63hz, putting it in line with games like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Battlefield 4. If, however, your Internet connection can’t handle the fire hydrant spew of piping hot data, the servers will adaptively scale down your tick rate.

Now, this isn’t to say there won’t be any in-game delays at all. They just won’t be quite as egregious, and the game should feel generally more responsive. So that’s good news! Has the feature rolled out in your area yet? How does the game feel now?