'Overwatch' season 3 release date, news & update: Season 3 coming earlier than expected with Competitive Play tweaks

The third season of the Competitive Play mode of "Overwatch" begins in a little over a month, much sooner than fans expected.

In a message posted by "Overwatch" principal designer Scott Mercer on Tuesday, Oct. 25, it was revealed that the break between seasons 2 and 3 will be much shorter, with the third season of the Competitive Play mode kicking off just a week after season 2 ends on Nov. 24. During the off-season, an in-game countdown will display the time left until the next season starts.

While this is surely good news, it is not without a catch. Mercer also revealed that "Overwatch" season 3 will not function exactly how players have come to know the game. Several tweaks have been made to the game's Competitive Play mode that will affect how skill ratings are handled.

According to Mercer, these "Overwatch" season 3 changes are currently being tested on the Public Test Realm. Before he went on to explain the changes to the game's skill rating, Mercer described the interesting dilemma "Overwatch" developer/publisher Blizzard is currently facing.

"First and foremost, we always want to provide the fairest matches that we can," he wrote. "Fair matches of skill between the teams provide the greatest chance for you to have fun in 'Overwatch.' At the same time, we'd also like every new competitive season to feel like a fresh start," he continued.

But Mercer admitted that, in the end, these two goals are somewhat contradictory. Resetting everyone's skill rating at the beginning of a new season means that top-tier players get thrown in with the less-experienced players. This would make ideal and high quality matches difficult to create, that is, until the system has reevaluated each player's skill rating (SR). According to Mercer, this is why the SR is not fully reset at the start of each new season. Instead, the player's SR from the previous season is used as a starting point.

But for "Overwatch" season 3, Blizzard is testing a different way of evaluating players' starting SR.

"We're leaning more towards trying to keep things fair rather than giving everyone a fresh start," Mercer wrote. "We're also going to initially tune your SR to be slightly lower to start," he added.

This means that some players will not begin the upcoming season on the same tier that they were placed in season 2. SR gains from wins are also expected to be slightly higher at the beginning of season 3.

Blizzard is still testing this new system and more modifications could be made.

GameSpot notes that while the current PTR update introduces multiple balance changes, they do not include the major improvements that were teased for Symmetra.

The Competitive Play mode of "Overwatch" season 3 begins Thursday, Dec. 1.