Big Changes Coming to Overwatch’s Competitive Seasons

Blizzard's game director of Overwatch, Jeff Kaplan, has taken to YouTube to inform the community with another developer update video on some of Overwatch's upcoming changes. Most of the big changes revolve around the popular competitive mode and seasons.

The first big change to the competitive mode is that seasons will be reduced in length, from three months down to just two. Kaplan said that teams and players tried harder and played more often when the seasons first started, at three months, but at one month, it was far too short and players couldn't earn the rank that deserved in such little time. At two months, it's sort of the best of both worlds, play time is shorter overall, but there's still enough time for players and teams to achieve their desired rank.

One of the bigger complaints that Kaplan noticed from players is the decay of Season Points or SP when your rank is diamond or above. For those unfamiliar with SP decay, essentially it means that players who hit diamond or above need to keep playing to maintain that level. If a player doesn't meet the requirement, their ranking will drop, aka, decay. The fix is minor, says Kaplan, which only requires those players with that high of a rank to play five games per-week, instead of the previously required seven. As for the decay amount, in Season 6, if a player fails to meet the required five games per-week, the decay will be only a loss of 25 points of your ranking, down from 50 in Season 5.

Another change is an update to control point maps. Previously, matches with a control point map required teams to win the best out of five games, which often lead to very long match times. Starting in Season 6, players/teams will only have to win the best out of three games. So the first time to win two games wins the match. Ultimately, with short matches, player and teams can play in more matches with less time.

There's also a fix to match placement based upon your skill rating. Previously, skill rating was slightly inflated to make players feel better about themselves, but when they finished a season at say Diamond level, then did the match placement the next season and were only at platinum, they were left wondering why they were so far off. In reality, the system knew players of that previous diamond rank would earn their way back up. Players on the high end of skill rating, will have to wait a little longer for matches, to make it even for them playing players of equal skill and not to stomp those of lesser skill.

Season 5 ends on August 28 and Season 6 will start shortly afterwards, Kaplan says that the team is already working on new changes for Season 7 and 8.