If you’re one of the millions of gamers playing Overwatch’s Competitive Mode in its first season, you’re no doubt wondering what sort of tweaks Blizzard has for Season 2. Well, today, Blizzard released a video that does just that — talk a fair bit about the upcoming Overwatch Competitive Season 2 changes.
While the 14-minute video above is already quite meaty, Game Director Jeff Kaplan mentions that what’s talked about isn’t even the entire list of changes. For that, players should wait for the official patch notes when it drops. If you want a summary of the things discussed above, NeoGAF user SmartWaffles (thankfully!) compiled everything in bulletpoint form, which you can see below.
- Skill rank changes from 1-100 to 1-5000 to better differentiate player skill.
- (Re)introducing Skill Rating Tiers. I.E your Golds, Plats, etc. At Diamond or lower, you won’t drop below your current tier.
- Competitive point gains and gold gun costs multiplied by 10. Also applies to your current point bank.
- Coin toss is going away, all sudden death is going away.
- Big changes to how Assault works, especially the bonus time format. After your team captures point A in your first offensive round, for every subsequent point A capture, you gain 30 seconds of bonus time. In the second offensive attempt, the 2 minute mercy rule for teams with little time left after their first has been reduced to one minute, plus whatever time the team gained from the mercy rule will also be applied to the other team. For example, one team finished their first offensive round with 47 seconds left, in their 2nd attempt they will have 1 minute instead, gaining them 13 seconds, these 13 second bonus will also be applied to the other team, no matter how long they have left.
- Time bank system is going to be applied on Payload maps, if both teams push the payload to the end, they will both push the payload again with the amount of the time they have left in the first attempt. There is possibility of tie but should be extremely rare.
- Both team will have some comp points with a tie, just not as much as a win (keep in mind a win awards 10 CPs now).
- Subsequent “assemble your team” time after the first round is reduced.
- Skill rating difference between players when teaming up is significantly reduced, now 500 within the 1-5000 scale, equivalent to 10 in the 1-100 scale.
- Diamond, Master and Grandmaster division players’ skill rating will now decay, if you don’t play the game for 7 days, your SR will drop 50 ratings every 24 hours. Bottom floor is Diamond, won’t drop below that.
- Top 500 now requires 50 matches minimum.
Again, the stuff listed aren’t all that’s going to change for Overwatch’s second season. Also of note, Kaplan also mentions that if you’re ranked 60 and above, you’re part of the top six percent of the playerbase (yay me and my 62 Rank!), so if you’re ranked higher than that, pat yourself on the bat, alright?
Overwatch’s Competitive Mode Season 2 will start this September 6, with the first season coming to a close this August 17.
What changes are you hoping will come Competitive Mode Season 2? Is Blizzard on the right path with the list of changes discussed in the video?
[Source: Overwatch (YouTube), NeoGAF]
