Overwatch Season 8 brings changes to Competitive Play

Skill Rating systems have been tweaked.

Season 8 for Overwatch’s Competitive Play mode is now live on all platforms and brings changes to the system.

The main difference comes in a limitation to the Skill Rating differences in a team. Describing the update in a blog post, principal designer Scott Mercer said the matchmaking will now limit “the maximum Skill Rating (SR) difference between the highest SR player on a team and the lowest SR player on the same team.”

What this means is that players should find themselves teamed up with players much closer to their own skill rank, rather than pairing a high-ranked player with those much lower in order to find an even game with someone in between.

This should help create a fairer experience all round, and means teams are less likely to be carried (or held back) by one individual.

The other change will only affect those in the Diamond or higher skill tiers. Previously, Diamond players were scored on their individual performance as well as the team’s success.

After a lot of deliberating, Blizzard have turned off the personal performance tracker, and now Diamond and up will be scored only on their team’s success, the same as the levels below them.

Associate Editor

Henry Stenhouse serves an eternal punishment as the Associate Editor of AllGamers. He spent his younger life studying the laws of physics, even going so far as to complete a PhD in the subject before video games stole his soul. Confess your love of Super Smash Bros. via email at henry@moonrock.biz, or catch him on Twitter.

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