Blizzard Changes How Wins are Determined in Overwatch‘s Competitive Mode

There may be more ties, however the 1% rule has officially been dropped.

As part of a recent update, Blizzard the ways in which ties are resolved in competitive Overwatch matches. In a post yesterday, the developer further detailed the changes and explained the reasoning behind the change.

Previously, the rules stated that one team had to capture one more objective than the opposing team in order to win. However, that was changed to award victory to the team that makes more progress toward the objective in order to limit the number of ties.

However, it also ended up resulting in one team having one percent more completion than the other achieving victory. In the most recent update, Blizzard changed this – the winning team must now earn 33 percent in order to be able to win.

“Instead of needing to simply earn 1% more progress on an objective than the enemy team to break a tie and win, a team will also now also need to achieve a minimum of 33% progress,” Blizzard wrote.

The company has shared some specific examples of how this will work in matches, which you can check out below:

Team A attacks the first objective on Hanamura, but only gains 10% progress after a really rough offensive round.
Team B then attacks, but they can only gain 20%.
This is a TIE. Neither team achieved the minimum of 33%.

Team A attacks the first objective on Hanamura, and gains 90% progress. (So close!)
Team B attacks, and only gains 40%. progress.
Team A WINS, as they had a minimum of 33% and more progress than their opponent.

Team A attacks the second objective on Hanamura, and fully captures it with 3:00 left.
Team B attacks the second objective on Hanamura, and captures it in overtime with 0:00 left.
Team A now is back on the attack, trying to take the first objective. They can only reach 20% progress after their time bank of 3:00 elapses. This is a TIE. They did not meet the minimum target of 33% progress. If Team A had reached 33%, then they would have won the match.

The update also changes how streaks affect your Skill Rating, and while there are still issues with the Skill Rating for healers, Blizzard has said that it is investigating this matter.