Today, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan took to Youtube with another Developer Update to break down every big change coming to the game in the coming weeks. This time, the spotlight was on competitive mode, which is receiving a complete overhaul, following player feedback over the last few months.
The biggest change to the mode, by far, is the reworking of the Skill Rating system. The current system ranks players from a 1-100 scale, but the new system will be a 1-5000 scale with tiered grouping in-between. The system sounds extremely similar to how MOBA’s like League of Legends handles its rankings, but if you’re not familiar, the tiers will place you in camps of silver, gold, diamond, and so on.
What’s interesting about how Overwatch’s system is that once you reach a tier (gold tier, for example), you can’t go lower than that rating for the rest of the season. Your numerical skill rating can dip down into silver level, but your tier will remain the same unless you climb higher. Kaplan explained that adjustment is to mitigate the awful feeling of having a bad night of Overwatch and dropping several ranks.
Kaplan went on to talk about how Sudden Death will no longer be a thing in competitive Overwatch. The team had previously announced this a while ago, but he went in to detail about how uncommon tie matches will be. Assault maps (Nepal, Volskaya Industries, etc) will now give players an extra 30 seconds in their time bank if they capture the second point in Overtime, giving them a small fighting chance, instead of an awkward defeat.
Changes are also coming to competitive points themselves. Starting in the next season, the value of competitive points will be multiplied by 10. You’ll earn 10x more, your current amount will be 10x more, and golden guns will cost 10x more. This change was made to make sure that there is a reward for a tie game for both teams.
There are even more changes explained throughout the video, and more to come in the official patch notes, so stay tuned to Twinfinite as we learn more.
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