Overwatch Season 21 has started, and with it is the implementation of Hero Pools.
As previously detailed, Blizzard will disable a few heroes from Competitive Play for a given week, and each week will feature a new pool of heroes.
Each hero selection is curated by the design team instead of randomly, and again, it only affects competitive play.
The studio is trying out the new system for this season, and depending on how it performs, it may or may not stay active past the end of the season
Blizzard’s goal with the new system is to allow more hero diversity in matches by allowing the meta to change weekly.
You can read more about Hero Pools through a recent blog post made by principal game designer Scott Mercer.