Season 6 of the Overwatch competitive mode will be different once it starts on Aug. 31, as the development team behind the massively popular multiplayer shooter will implement a variety of changes to address feedback from players.
Blizzard is hoping to invite more players to play Overwatch Season 6 with these changes, without compromising serious competition.
Overwatch Season 6: What Are The Upcoming Changes?
In a developer update, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan narrated the changes that will be coming to Overwatch Season 6.
The most notable change with the next Overwatch competitive season is that it will be shortened from three months to two months. According to Kaplan, players lose interest in competitive seasons over the latter two months, but one-month seasons when the competitive mode was still in beta was too short. As such, the development team came up with a new length of two months, with Kaplan adding that despite shorter seasons, players will still be able to earn about the same amount of competitive points per year.
Overwatch Season 6 will also only require players to join five matches weekly at Diamond and above to avoid skill rating decay. If decay does happen though, it will only be for 25 SR and not the current 50 SR.
Control maps in competitive mode, which used to be best-of-five sets, will be changed into best-of-three sets, particularly because so many of such matches were going into overtime and taking too long to finish.
Placement matches will also be adjusted to group players with others that are within their skill levels. For Season 4 and Season 5, Blizzard tried matching players with opponents of lower skill level to be able to climb up more. In addition, higher-tiered matches will become more balanced, though at the cost of longer queues.
In a follow-up blog post for Overwatch Season 6 changes, Blizzard announced that players in Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond can now be demoted into lower skill tiers if they are not able to maintain the minimum skill rating for each tier. Players will not be demoted after a win though and will receive Competitive Points after a season depending on the highest tier achieved.
Blizzard will also be adjusting the calculations on how much skill rating is gained or lost after losing a match, with the development team stating that it will continue making adjustments.
Other 'Overwatch' News
Blizzard recently released two animated shorts for Overwatch. The first one is The Plan, featuring Junkrat, Roadhog, and a glimpse of the new Junkertown map, and the second one is Rise and Shine, featuring Mei and her tragic backstory.
Overwatch is also currently in the middle of its Summer Games 2017 event, where players can once again play Lucioball and unlock new skins such as Widowmaker in a bikini, McCree as a lifeguard, and Soldier: 76 as a grillmaster.
