Overwatch’s Competitive Mode Undergoing Changes

Blizzard has made Overwatch’s Competitive Season 6 critically important as it eyes to turn the page on what has been a rather rocky Season 5.

No, gamers won’t see a complete overhaul, but they will see a ton of new changes that should help address numerous issues that have plagued Season 5.

Game director Jeff Kaplan discussed all of the changes in Season 6 in a video posted on YouTube, with the big change being that seasons will now be two months long as opposed to three months.

Some of the other changes (h/t Kotaku) include:

• Changes to skill rating decay. In order to avoid decay, you’ll only need to play five matches per week at Diamond and above. Also, if you do suffer decay, you’ll only lose 25 SR instead of 50.
• Control maps are changing. “We’ve noticed that an inordinate number of these matches are going into overtime… this is resulting in very long match times,” said Kaplan. To solve this problem, control maps will be best out of three from now on. Due to the lower time investment, Kaplan thinks this will also make losing a control map “sting less.”
• Placement matches will work differently. In seasons four and five, Blizzard experimented with placing people lower than where their SR should’ve been so they could climb more. This, however, left a lot of people feeling bummed out. “It felt wrong deflating you on purpose just so you would have a sense of progression later,” admitted Kaplan. Placements in season six, then, will more accurately reflect your actual skill level right off the bat.
• Higher tiered matches should now be more balanced. Players won’t be put in as many matches where they stomp the other team and barely gain any SR, but queues might take longer. “Hopefully it’s not super noticeable for most of us… despite the fact that you might have to wait for a long time,” said Kaplan. If times are out of control, however, Blizzard will change it.

You can see the video, right here: