Jeff Kaplan, the game director for Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch, recently conducted a developer update in which he detailed the changes that are coming to Season 2 of Competitive Play. The following changes were posted on Blizzard’s official Overwatch forums:
Skill Rating
- Skill rating in season 1 did not feel good to players.
- With only 100 ranks of skill rating, it was weird to go up and down fractions of a skill level.
- If you were skill rating 60, you were in the top 6% of Overwatch players.
- Season 2 will have a skill ceiling of 5000, up from 100.
- In season 2 there are no more fractions, only whole numbers.
Skill Tiers (New)
- They didn’t like that players were associating themselves with a number and that players felt bad when dropping skill rating even though it’s supposed to happen. Skill tiers solve this.
- There will be 7 tiers of skill rating.
- Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Master, and Grand Master. [Platinum is likely between Gold and Diamond]
- Skill tiers have a range of 500 skill rating.
- You won’t be able to drop out of skill tiers unless you are in the top 2, Master & Grand Master.
- You can only queue with players that are within 500 skill rating of yourself. They’d like feedback from the PTR on this.
- Master, Grandmaster, and Diamond players will lose 50 skill rating every 24 hours after they haven’t played for 7 days. You can only go down to the bottom of Diamond.
- Top 500 players must have played at least 50 matches that season.
Competitive Points
- They will be multiplying the number of competitive points required for Golden Guns by 10.
- If you have competitive points right now, they will also be multiplied by 10 in the patch.
- You will earn competitive points based on your skill tier.
Sudden Death
- Removed from the game.
- You can now tie. Everyone will receive some competitive points.
Assault Maps
- If you capture a point that is not Point A, you will be given 30 extra seconds on the clock. This is to allow for comeback moments.
- When given bonus time through Final Assault, you will only get 1 minute rather than the current 2 minutes.
- The second team will automatically receive bonus time if the first team received it.
Hybrid & Payload Maps
- Receiving the time bank system. This should help prevent ties.
- Ties should only happen if no one moves the payload.
Assemble Heroes Phase
They’re reducing the time you get to choose heroes when switching sides.
The full Developer Update with Jeff Kaplan
Also announced by Blizzard during their Gamescom 2016 preview stream, a new map is on its way to Overwatch as well! The map will be called Eichewalde and is described as being a German castle inside of a black forest.
Preview of the new Eichewalde map
Also, in one final interesting tidbit, it was announced that Zarya will be joining Tracer as a playable hero in Blizzard’s MOBA Heroes of the Storm.
She can bench more than you. Meet Zarya in the Nexus soon. pic.twitter.com/EH65nlA5l7
— Heroes of the Storm (@BlizzHeroes) August 16, 2016