Greetings Friends!
With the launch of today’s patch, a Battlegrounds MMR change accidentally found it’s way in as well. While this change was still going to happen, it was meant to go live after we messaged out what the change was… apologies on that!
Now, let’s dive into what actually was changed.
The Problem: Players at very high MMR were continuing to climb by playing lots of games. Despite playing against players with a lower MMR, the MMR awarded at the end of the match was still very high.
We got feedback from several of our top players asking us to adjust this downward, even though it will lower their rating and climbing speed after the change.
The Solution: At very high MMR, you’re more likely to matchmake with other players that have an average rating above or below you. In these cases, the multiplier has been greatly increased.
In the old system, if you played against 7 opponents with an average of 1,000 rating below you, you would still get ~90% of your points for first place. In the new system, you will get about ~50% of your points for first place in that same situation (please note that these numbers are not exact). So, if you land 8th place when playing against 7 opponents with an average of 1,000 MMR below you, you will now lose a lot more points than before.
If you’re paired against opponents with an average rating equal to your rating then nothing changes. This means that players around 3,000 - 5,000 MMR will not see any difference.
TL;DR: Players with very high MMR will see a change in how many points they are awarded at the end of their matches. The majority of players will not see a change.
In the future, we are considering an MMR normalization pass. What this means is that we would bring in everyone’s MMR closer to the 4,000 range.
We are continuing to keep an eye on MMR and how it affects your play experience. We hope you enjoy the balance changes and we’ll see you on the Battlegrounds <3
Cheers,
The Hearthstone Team
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12/5 UPDATE: In regards to the potential MMR normalization pass, we are aiming to adjust players above 5,500 rating down to 5,500. We will keep everyone updated on final decisions.
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12/6 UPDATE: We’re in process of reverting the change that was accidentally made yesterday. What this means it that everything will be just as it was before yesterday’s changes. As far as the future of the MMR system is concerned, we’re still discussing how we want to proceed. We’ll be sure to keep you all updated!
Being the last 2 in a match and losing because you only have 30 sec to change your board because you lost the last 2 times against the same number 1 spot, is just lame. All the animations are pointless, can we please have an option to turn all that crap off already?