With Overwatch's upcoming patch currently being tried out in the PTR, several players loved trying out the 1v1 Mystery Duel mode in the brand new Arcade, which put you against one other person as the same random hero. The one disappointing limitation, though, is that you can't play against a friend.
There is the custom game route: you can create a 1v1 Match with a friend (not on the new map, though) and select the "respawn as random hero" option, but that's not quite the same, as you could still be left with something ridiculous like Mercy vs Mercy or a direct counter like Reaper vs Roadhog, unless you went further down the rabbit hole and tweaked even more settings. But no matter what you do, you still can't quite replicate the 1v1 Mystery Duel mode that currently exists in the Arcade.
Then the other option would be to both matchmake separately, but at the same time, and cross your fingers. Good luck with that one.
Luckily, the developers are keenly aware of this desire among players – whether it be due to the numerous request on the battle.net forums or the litany of Reddit posts along the lines of "You can't 1v1 your friends.. wtf blizzard?" – and Game Director Jeff Kaplan announced that the feature is coming and "It's being worked on right now."
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But this raises a very important question. If anyone stopped to ask themselves why you couldn't 1v1 your friends in Arcade, the answer is clear: it would lead to incessant loot box farming. Since the Arcade mode gives you three bonus loot boxes every three wins (maximum three per week), you could just hop on with a friend and trade victories until the end of time. While the experience gained would be negligible unless you actually gave it a true college try, you would still be gaming the system for free loot.
Now, is that necessarily such a bad thing? Not really. You're likely going to get these loot boxes anyway, and the materials themselves cannot be traded, and thus have no monetary value. However, Blizzard will likely not appreciate an exploit that gives you less reason to purchase loot boxes through the shop with real money.
Because of that, expect the 1v1 Mystery Duel versus your friends to show up as in the Custom Games section, or to have a restriction in the Arcade that prohibits loot box and XP rewards. Disappointing, sure, but at least it's happening.
