Blizzard Discusses Upcoming Overwatch Season 2 Changes

Blizzard riled up the hornets nest today by talking some fairly serious changes coming to Overwatch’s competitive mode, specifically for the next ‘season’ of play.The video was released on the official Overwatch Youtube today – See below.

For those who can’t bear to watch the handsome Jeff Kaplan talk about the changes (what’s your beef, man?), we do have a general list of the changes below:

New Skill Rating System:

• Ranging from 1-5000 which gets rid of the fractional increments
• If you win or lose, you’ll be going up/down whole numbers.
• For “Top 500 Players” there will be a requirement of having played at least 50 matches

Introducing Skill Rating Tiers:

• 7 tiers
• Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master and Grand Master
• Gold (Level 2000-2499)
• For all tiers besides Master and Grand Master, you won’t be allowed to drop lower for the season. So if you reach Gold you won’t ever drop down to Silver even if you drop below the initial requirement for that tier
• Season rewards will be based on what tier you reach

Sudden death is going away completely:

• Control Maps: There is no sudden death. Games still play best out of 5
• Assault Maps: Will still play like the Season 1 time bank system
• Changes to Assault: Bonus 30 seconds after the first initial cap. This is so that the game doesn’t instantly end if the attacking team captures the first point in overtime.
• Changes to Payload and Hybrid Payload maps: There will be no Sudden Death. Instead, teams will play on a time bank system similar to Assault. If your team finishes the map with time to spare, you’ll later get a second round on Attack to see how far you can push the payload the second time.
• Originally when you captured a point with 30 seconds left, it would bump up your timer to 2 minutes. That will be decreased to 1 minute.
• There will be ties but it will be very rare
• Ties only apply if: Both teams don’t push the payload at all & If both teams don’t cap Point A
• If a tie happens, both teams will receive CP but it won’t be as much as a win

Competitive Points received is being increased by x10:

• So if you have 50CP now, that’lll be converted to 500CP in Season 2
• The cost of Golden Weapons will increase to reflect this

Smurfing will be addressed

• The skill gap limit between one player to another will be 500 levels.
• Example: If you’re level 2000, you can only play with other players between 1500-2500
• They’re aware that it’s a tough one to get right due to many players legitimately playing with friends with a wide skill gap. This system will be tested in PTR and will be adjusted based on feedback to balance it correctly.

Skill Rating Decay:

• Only applies to top end players
• If you’re within Diamond, Master and Grand Master your level will decrease by 50 every 24 hours if you don’t play for Competitive for a week
• This has a floor limit so you won’t drop infinitely.
• This system is meant to keep top players constantly playing to keep their high rank instead of just stopping once they reach it

Many items here, particularly the killing off of ‘Sudden Death’ has a lot of Overwatch players very excited. Other items, like the tuning up of golden weapon costs, has raised many an eyebrow. I am just pleased that Blizzard has gone out of their way to create a specific classification system to ensure I have the tools required to truly communicate how bad I am at the game to other people. Bronze league, here I come!