All summer long, Overwatch fans have been battling it out in the game's fifth season of Competitive Play. With season 5 set to wrap up on August 28th, Blizzard has outlined what fans can expect from the next season of Competitive Play, and it sounds like major changes are in store for the popular game mode.

According to Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan, season 6 of Competitive Play will be shorter than past seasons, lasting two months instead of three. To account for this shorter season, players will receive less Competitive Points (CP) than usual, though shorter seasons going forward means players will have more opportunities to collect CP. When taking into account the frequency at which players will receive CP, they should still end the year with a higher total than before.

Blizzard decided to shorten Overwatch's Competitive Play seasons for a couple of reasons. For one, it discovered that players didn't try as hard later in the seasons, and secondly, it will give fans the chance to do placement matches again more quickly. Placement matches, by the way, are also being tweaked, and should now yield more accurate skill ratings once completed.

As can be seen in the developer update video, there are a few other big changes coming to Overwatch's Competitive Play in season 6. Skill rating decay will be less punitive than it has been in the past, control maps will now be best of three instead of best of five, and the higher-tiered matches should be more balanced. On paper, these changes sound like they will be for the better, though it's worth noting that the better balanced matchmaking for higher tiers will likely result in longer queue times than before.

Of course, even more changes could be in store for Overwatch's Competitive Play in the future. Overwatch is a constantly evolving game, with Blizzard always introducing new maps, adding new game modes like Deathmatch, and balancing characters. Competitive Play has already changed quite a bit since the first season kicked off last year, and so it will be interesting to see how it continues to evolve down the road.

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