Some big changes are coming to the second season of Overwatch‘s competitive mode.
The first season of Overwatch ends tomorrow, and Blizzard is already talking about how the game is going to change for the second season.
In a new developer update video, game director Jeff Kaplan detailed a number of the changes.
The much-debated Sudden Death and Coin Toss system are being removed entirely. Previous changes have brought the tie rate down low enough that Blizzard is willing to let them stand. The points awarded for a tie in Season 2 will be higher than a loss, but lower than a win.
Another change that’s coming is a rework of the skill rating system. The biggest change is that the system will no longer be percentile based. The new rating scale will run from 1 to 5,000. This means that you won’t see as many matches where your rating doesn’t move. Your rating number will also have less importance, as Blizzard is introducing new rating tiers in Season 2 as well.
There will be seven tiers, and once you move up a tier, you won’t drop backwards unless you consistently under-perform. One bad day won’t set you back, in other words. If you happen to make it into the top three tiers (named Diamond, Master, and Grandmaster), you will start losing skill points if you don’t log in for a week.
There are a couple of other offshoots from the rating system changes. First, players won’t be able to group with someone who has a much higher or much lower rating. Next, you’ll need to play at least 50 matches in a season to make it into the top 500.
There are a few other changes as well. These include increasing reward points by a factor of 10. Don’t get too excited, because the cost of everything is increasing by the same amount. Also included will be the extension of the time bank system that is currently on Assault maps to Payload and Hybrid maps as well.
There are plenty of changes to wrap your head around. Blizzard says that “All of these changes will be available for testing soon on the PTR,” so you’ll have a chance to test things out before you
