It's been awhile since "Overwatch" introduced its competitive mode where players can seriously battle it out with each other and gain ranks depending on how good their play is. With the opening of its season 3, Blizzard introduces some adjustments.

Off-Season Play

Some players might have noticed that after the end of season 2 competitive mode, it wasn't entirely disabled. Instead it was marked as "Off-Season" competitive mode. Blizzard says that while in this mode, players won't have to worry about their skill rating being affected.

With that, players can take advantage of this off-season competitive mode whenever they want to experiment a new hero or a combination of heroes. Do note though, that Blizzard expects this to only last 7 days so players will have to prepare quickly.

Skill rating updates

Based on Blizzard's observation from Season 2, they have adjusted on skill ratings to be more widespread this time. This is to address a certain problem where Gold and Platinum tiers were overpopulated, and this caused the competition within Gold and Platinum tiers to vary widely per match, according to Blizzard.

As a part of this adjustment Blizzard expects that many players will be ranked lower than what they expected after the placement matches of Season 3 and that this should normalize as the current competitive season progresses.

New control map 'Oasis'

In another recent post, Blizzard introduces a new patch currently in-development and is also currently available on its PTR server. If you don't know what the PTR server is (which stands for Public Test Region), it's where the developers let the players try their new patches which are currently in development.

The new map called Oasis, according to Blizzard's description: " is one of the world's most advanced cities, a shining jewel rising from the Arabian Desert." So what is new on the Oasis map? A new hazard called traffic, jump pads and an amazing new area. But of course, don't just take our word for it, go explore the area in the PTR server of "Overwatch" now! Or you might prefer to watch the full tour of the map by Overwatch Central instead:

Stay tuned for more news on "Overwatch."