Overwatch 2 devs hint at yearly rating reset with “greater” changes to ranked

Aaron Keller, game director of Overwatch 2, shared new details about what changes to the ranked system are being internally discussed by the team.

Overwatch 2 garnered much praise from fans and critics when it launched, but a big point of contention quickly emerged from the new game, as the ranked mode had many issues.

Matchmaking became much worse according to players and leavers were ruining games. Some of these issues are still there, and changes aimed at addressing these problems are still being deployed and discussed by the developers.

It seems like the devs want to make some changes to address rank resets, more detailed information about player’s rank progress and their individual performance.

Overwatch 2’s Aaron Keller teases ranked changes

From what Keller said, the potential changes coming to ranked play will address some of the negative interactions players had with it over the lifespan of OW2.

“One of the biggest issues that players bring up is how their experience has been affected by a partial rating reset at the beginning of each Competitive season,” said Aaron. “Starting with Season 4 we’ll be removing this reset, and players should have a much clearer picture of their rating, season-to-season.”

Keller explained the team is currently discussing rank resets that could take place further apart, as an example he says “perhaps yearly” instead of the previous seasonal resets.

The community reaction to Overwatch Cavalry’s announcement of this over Twitter has seen mixed reactions. Some players argue that the game could completely forgo the rank resets.

Seasonal rank resets are being removed in #Overwatch2, but the team believes they could still make sense 📊

"What if a partial reset happened at a much greater time interval and coincided with a greater set of changes to the game," questioned Keller.

📰 https://t.co/RSzSqsJww8 pic.twitter.com/blgs8S0Oyk

— Overwatch Cavalry (@OWCavalry) March 24, 2023

“What if ranks didn’t reset, because my life doesn’t revolve around competitive but that shouldn’t mean my rank resets,” argues one Player.

But others argue that problems with competitive play are just symptomatic of other problems with the gameplay that should be the dev team’s focus for now.

“How about fixing the matchmaking,” reads one of the most liked replies under the Tweet. “As long as rank resets but MMR doesn’t it’s meaningless and only hurts the game.”

It’s not known when the changes will come to the game, but for now, players are content that rank resets are at least temporarily gone. Season 4 will likely begin in April, and with it some changes are sure to come to the game.