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Overwatch7 years agoGosu "GosuGamers" Gamers

Competitive Play's Season 2 ends the 24th of November - what will change for Season 3?

Season 2 ends November 24th and Season 3 starts December 1st. Skill Rating will be adjusted at the beginning of Season 3 resulting in potential drops of rank.

Season 2 has been great fun and the changes to the Skill Rating system have been welcomed. Sadly all good things must come to an end, but it gives us an opportunity for even greater things in Season 3.

Competitive Season 2 is ending on November 24th at 00:00 UTC so make sure you get the climb that you want. Season 2 saw a bunch of changes to how competitive in Overwatch worked: it got rid of the 1-100 SR (Skill Rating) and instead gave us 1-5000 SR for instance. Sadly, the transition did not go as smoothly as we all hoped. Blizzard started from a clean slate meaning they did not factor in your rating from Season 1 at all but instead relied solely on the 10 placement matches and your wins and losses. Something went wrong with their algorithm and too many players got placed into Gold and Platinum instead of the lower tiers, Bronze and Silver, meaning the mid tiers were a wild west of different skill levels. Playing with a Platinum did not mean that you could expect Platinum level play out of them which is frustrating for everyone.

Based off of feedback from the community, the time in between Season 2 & 3 is only going to last a week. Season 3 starts on December 1st, but you don't have to remember that as they will have an ingame countdown to the new season. Most of the complaints about the time in between seasons came from people having to play Quick Play. This is a pain that has been alleviated thanks to the introduction of new modes and QP getting a 1 hero limit, preventing a 6 Torbjorn defence on Volskaya.

Season 2 brought us many months of great Overwatch but it is time to look ahead and see the future of this game. Recently a massive update was released onto live servers that will shape much of what Season 3 will look like. Sombra was released, new modes were released, and tons of heroes were changed. These are all live and can be played in competitive Season 2, but Season 3 will start fresh with all players being accustomed to the new meta. 

There will be some changes to competitive for Season 3, like the change in initial SR. Based on what they saw with placements in Season 2, Blizzard will be adjusting the initial placement in Season 3 resulting in many players ending lower than expected; if you were Gold you might go to Silver and Plat might go to Gold etc. To counteract this your initial wins will also grant you more SR, so you can still prove you actually belong in the higher tiers!

For full notes on these changes head here.

For more competitive Overwatch news, follow us @GosuOverwatch.

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