Overwatch 2 players confused by Season 4 skill tier changes: Rank adjustments explained

Overwatch 2 players excited to check out Season 4 were shocked to see their rank go down from when they finished in Competitive, but it seems to be intentional by Blizzard.

The ranked experience in Overwatch 2 has been quite controversial since its launch with matchmaking woes, SR confusion, and all sorts of other hiccups.

Despite the devs promising that Season 4 would be the end of ranked decay and players wouldn’t begin with reduced rank to begin a season anymore, for many, S4 began with just that.

Across Reddit, Twitter, and the official Blizzard forums, players have been demanding answers. However, it seems like the devs already touched on this hidden in a Season 4 announcement.

Blizzard Entertainment

Some Overwatch 2 players feel like they’ve hit rock bottom.

Overwatch 2 Season 4 rank changes explained

In a Blizzard post on the Overwatch forums, the devs detailed that although decay has been removed, there was one final adjustment to rankings.

“Competitive Play ranks are no longer reduced at the beginning of every season, and all previous effects of this system have been removed. Everyone’s skill tier and division have been adjusted to match the current estimate of your skill,” they explained.

This seems to be why although many players have reported having their ranks lowered from where they ended Season 3, some have actually gone up.

OW2 content creator Skiesti also delved into the situation on social media: “Devs made it so your rank is now your MMR and not your STD. It is not a Rank Reset like previous seasons. You are being moved to your MMR which means you will either derank, stay the same, or rank up.”

Unfortunate acronym aside, STD in this case stands for skill-tier division, which means to the five sub-ranks in Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, and Grandmaster.

Interestingly, players have also reported receiving the incorrect competitive rewards for Season 3 due to the rank adjustment, but the devs have indicated that they are investigating this issue as well.

[Update] Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller has taken to Twitter to talk about the competitive issues. He says that, “We’ve been working to solve an issue for some players who received a lower final rank in Season 3 than they should have. We’ve identified a fix and plan to include it in the next patch later this month.”

He also states that players will retroactively get their rewards for the final placements in Season 3. However, rather than having anything taken away to then be added, back, the developers will just be adding additional competitive points. Keller explained: “To help make up for it, competitive points will be granted again. So these players will get both the correct CP gain, but they also get to keep the original grant we gave them.”Double competitive points ain’t nothing to sniff at! It’s a good make good for the situation and players should be able to get some nice new golden guns in return.