Overwatch is getting an overhaul for its second season of competitive play. Game director Jeff Kaplan talks about the changes being made in Season 2 in the latest video from the development team.
The next competitive season is going to make the shift to a tiered system that gives players rewards based on the highest tier they’ve earned throughout the event rather than their final standing or Skill Rating. “The cool part of the tiers that we’re going to do is at certain tiers we’re not going to let you drop out of that tier,” Kaplan explains. “Except for the two highest tiers – which are Master and Grand Master – all of the other tiers, once you achieve that tier for the season, you will remain in that tier for the season even if your skill rating drops below what you initially had to do to enter that tier.”
As a result, rewards for Season 2 will be given based on the highest tier each player achieves. “You should feel pretty good even though your playing may be in the Silver skill rating for the last week of the season, but if you ever got into Gold, you will get the reward for Gold,” Kaplan notes regarding the change.
Kaplan details the reason for the change is all part of a new Skill Rating system that rates players within a range of 1 and 5,000 instead of between 1 and 100. “We don’t want to have that debilitating feeling that players have when they lose something in the game. Right now, that 52 Skill Rating player feels just awful when they drop down to 51. We want to get rid of that feeling.”
Overwatch Season 2 is expected to begin in late August or early September 2016.
Published: Aug 15, 2016 04:35 pm