Changes Coming to Overwatch Season 3

Season 2 of Overwatch's competitive mode is in full swing, people battling and clawing away at each other for supremacy and a shot at neat swag, such as loot boxes, bragging rights, and/or an eSports contract. Well, despite the fact we still have a month left for this competitive season, Blizzard is already looking ahead to the next season, and have just revealed plans for some of the things they're going to do different when season 3 rolls around. 

First of all, season 3 will be kicking off almost immediately after season 2, which ends November 24th. by having it's opening day on December 1st: barely giving competitive players a chance to breathe before being thrust back into the thick of combat. But there's another change, one that's been a long-time coming rank saving. Kind of. I'll get Scott Mercer explain:

"we’re testing a different way of determining your starting SR for Season 3 on the PTR. We’re leaning more towards trying to keep things fair rather than giving everyone a fresh start. We’re also going to initially tune your SR to be slightly lower to start. In turn, fewer players should start the season having their Skill Rating drastically drop despite having close to even wins and losses.

This change will mean that some players will not start in the same tier for Season 3 that they were placed in for Season 2, and that your SR gains from winning will be a little higher at the beginning of the season. After you play enough matches, however, your SR gains and losses will go back to normal."

Everyone keeping their old score is a pretty big deal for a competitive game like Overwatch, and a bit unexpected, considering Blizzard doesn't do this for Hearthstone, which could very likely benefit from such a change. Still,if it proves to be a good idea or a bad idea, we'll have to see: hopefully it won't lead to stagnation, but, then, I'd wager Blizzard has a better idea what it's doing than I do. So we can trust in that much, at least.