Overwatch Competitive Play seasons will now be 2-months long, and other big changes for Season 6
Blizzard is making big changes to the way Overwatch's Competitive Play works.
Starting with the upcoming Season 6, each season will last for two months instead of three, and the CP you earn will be adjusted to account for the shorter seasons.
Game director Jeff Kaplan announced this and plenty of other changes to Competitive in a community update. According to Kaplan, Blizzard wanted to try two-months seasons because it felt like a middle ground between the beta's month-long seasons, and the most recent length of three months. This could change again, though, if there's enough feedback one way or another.
As a result, players will earn more CP per win. Skill Rating decay is another controversial topic in the Competitive scene, and starting from Season 6, you'll be required to play five instead of seven games per week. The decay rate itself will be slowed down, and you'll see drops by 25 SR rather than 50, if and when.
Long term, Blizzard plans to introduce other solutions so the game doesn't rely as much on SR decay.
Control maps in Competitive will now be best of three instead of best of five. This was done to reduce instances of 99% holds as well as the number of times matches had to go into overtime. This change will make the mode play the way across quick play and Competitive.
Blizzard is also making it so placement matches more accurately represent player skill. Previously, the game awarded players with ratings lower than what they actually deserved to create a sense of progression when they do eventually go back to where they were, such as between the end of the season and the start of another.
At higher tiers, this makes matches more balanced, but it may increase matchmaking times. Kaplan said that this should lead to more enjoyable matches for everybody.
In other Overwatch news, the game's newest map, Junkertown was unveiled earlier this week at gamescom. Later today, a new animated short will also be shown.