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
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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
