Overwatch 2 Ranked Decay Is Gone in Season 4, but Players Are Confused Why Their Rank Is Lower

With the launch of Season 4 in Overwatch 2, players were very excited about the prospect that they would no longer need to deal with seasonal decay in their skill division for Competitive Play. The end of this long-scrutinized feature has been highly anticipated since it was announced months ago that it was coming. However, some have jumped into the game after the new season started just to find that their ranking dropped anyway.

In past Competitive seasons for Overwatch, every season would start with a slight decay for every player. That means, regardless of where you ended the previous season, you would start the new one at a lower skill level than you normally would be at. Blizzard would justify that they did this because climbing from the lower level felt much better than stagnating where you normally belong, but it was never an idea that caught on too well with the community. Now with it gone, there has been quite a bit of outcry when players logged in to see they dropped again.

There is a reason why your skill division and tier are different at the start of Overwatch 2’s Season 4. Simply put, with the old style of figuring out where you should be placed being gone, your current rating is one last adjustment from the game to where it thinks you should be placed. Going forward, wherever you end the season is where the next one will begin. In a forum post about this change, one of the Community Managers said, “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.”

Essentially, you are right where the game thinks you should be. With this in mind, there is also a chance you went up in skill division rather than down. Obviously, someone getting a better score than they thought they had won’t lead to them decrying the game on social media, so only the people that got pulled down a little are loudly upset.

Additionally, according to the known issues page, there is a known bug with the rewards from Season 3’s competitive rankings being less than you should get. If this happened to you, expect a fix in the coming days. In the meantime, just keep playing Competitive if you disagree with your placement, and you will rise and lower your sitting depending on how you play.