Posted Sun Sep 4, 2016 at 09:17 AM PDT by Connor Sears
While also giving disconnects a bit more than a slap on the wrist.
Season 2 of 'Overwatch' competitive play has officially started, and Blizzard is starting to rethink how it handles player ranking. The most noticeable change is that players are now ranked on a scale of 1 to 5,000, much more detailed than the 100-point scale of Season 1. These skill ratings are then divided into tiers, from Bronze to Diamond and the special Master and Grandmaster tiers. According to Blizzard, once players reach a certain tier, they can no longer fall back down to lower tiers, though they can continue to rise. The exception are the Master and Grandmaster tiers, which players will fall out of if their skill rating falls beneath the cutoff.
These new skill ratings will also be used to limit which players can group together in ranked play. Players will not be able to group with others whose skill ratings are more than 1,000 points away from their own. This limit shrinks to a tolerance of 500 skill points in the Master and Grandmaster leagues.
In terms of actual gameplay, Blizzard has completely removed Sudden Death from ranked play. Instead, the developer has gone ahead with its previous plan of implementing the Assault game mode's "time bank" system into the Escort and Hybrid game modes. In the event of a tie after a full round of attack/defense, the two teams will play another round with a game clock that reflects the amount of time left on the clock during the original match. More details can be found on the developer blog post.
Blizzard has also started to increase its penalty against players who disconnect during a ranked game. Leavers not only incur a 10-minute penalty but also need to finish additional matches without a disconnect before they are again in good standing within the game.
Source: Blizzard
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