Psyonix has announced that a new Rocket League patch scheduled for rollout in February will conclude the first season of competition and make “a TON of improvements” to the game—caps theirs—based on player feedback. The goal of the second season is to “de-emphasize the importance of single wins or losses,” the studio said, and instead focus on long-term performance and improvement.
Some of the changes being made for season two are cosmetic: Ranked play will be renamed to “Competitive Matchmaking,” Rank Points are being done away with, and the ten divisions that made up the first season will be replaced with 12 for the second, from “Prospect 1” to “Champion.”
But more substantive changes are coming as well. All players must begin the second season with ten placement matches in order to determine their starting Skill Division. Skill data from the first season will carry over, however, so existing players won't have to start over from scratch, and in fact Psyonix said placements will be “heavy influenced” by season one ratings.
The cap on the number of players in the top division has been removed—if you're good enough to be in the top tier, that's where you'll be placed regardless of how many others are there—and, perhaps most significantly of all, divisional promotions and demotions will be handled differently than they were in the first season, to reflect the goal of focusing on consistency over streakiness.
“You will be promoted into a division after your skill has risen consistently to the next division up,” Pysonix explained. “Once promoted, you won’t risk immediate demotion for losing a game or two.”
A full breakdown of the Season Two patch, including a shot of the new end-game scoreboard (not but a hard release date, as one hasn't been set yet) is on Steam.
