Whether it comes in the form of Game of Thrones stars or the 7 million users who played the game in its first week, it's fair to say that a lot of people love Overwatch. The multiplayer shooter from Blizzard has proved to be a complete smash with the gaming community since it was released, and so far the title shows few signs of slowing down any time soon. Now, the developer has given an update on the game's competitive play.

Releasing a video on the subject over at the official YouTube channel, Blizzard's game director Jeff Kaplan went into some length about this Overwatch feature. Kaplan gave players an overview of exactly how competitive play works, as well as running through the development changes that have taken place since the game's beta.

In particular, it seems as though Overwatch players felt that the game's competitive mode was not quite competitive enough, and to help solve this issue Blizzard decided to get rid of the tier-based progression system within competitive play. This has been replaced by a system that will "directly correlate" a player's skill rating to their matchmaking rating. What's more, there's a greater transparency over ratings, with players able to see their own skill rating, as well as the team's average.

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The team at Blizzard is also looking to solve the issue of sudden death within the game, as according to statistics, sudden death took place a whopping 35% of the time. According to Kaplan, Blizzard is taking steps to try and reduce the number of sudden deaths that players witness, although did not go into specifics. What's more, the company is also going to stop assault maps such as Temple of Anubis or Hanamura from flipping too quickly, allowing for longer length matches.

The updates given the video above certainly tie in with Kaplan's previous comments. The game director took to the official Overwatch forums to give an update on the title's competitive mode this week, as well as listing a number of other updates that Blizzard has in store for the title. With competitive play set to launch by the end of June, it won't be long to see exactly what the developer has changed.

It's clear that Blizzard is dedicated to tweaking Overwatch far beyond its immediate release, as seen by the recent PC nerfs to McCree and Widowmaker. Hopefully, these updates - and a continued transparency from the developer when it comes to making gamers aware of changes - will continue, allowing Overwatch to maintain its strong launch. That is, of course, as long as teamwork continues to keep a strong presence in the game.

Overwatch is out now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: YouTube