Rocket League's second season will kick off in February

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.

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.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.