Matchmaking Update - December 21, 2018

General Discussion
1

Greetings Heroes,

We’ve just implemented a couple of changes to the Quick Match and Ranked Matchmaking systems (these changes will not require you to download a client patch) and wanted to take a moment to outline what has changed while also giving some insight into the results of our recent updates to this system as well as our matchmaking goals moving forward:

Call of the Nexus

With the release of the Call of the Nexus, we have seen a significant increase in match quality (in terms of meta composition) and have ultimately achieved the goal we set out to accomplish. However, we have also seen an increase in queue times, especially in certain regions, which we really don’t consider to be an acceptable trade-off. In response, we are going to temporarily loosen how rigid our rules are when it comes to enforcing meta compositions. Our overall goal with this change is to still create as many standard compositions as possible (Tank, Healer, Ranged Assassin) while also putting the quick back in Quick Match as we continue to make improvements to the system.

Hero League Matchmaking

When it comes to high level players (Master & Grand Master), the current iteration of the ranked matchmaker is heavily skewed towards focusing on match quality when it comes to creating a suitable game. This has the expected, but also less than ideal, side-effect of preventing certain high-level players from finding games in a reasonable amount of time. With that in mind, we are going to be expanding our rank difference requirements to allow the matchmaker to pull from a wider pool of available players if it can’t create a suitable game in an acceptable amount of time. With this update, the following ruleset will be enforced going forward:

Master and Grand Master players can now be matched with allies and opponents who are within Diamond league (Diamond 1 – 5)

Quality matchmaking will still be prioritized before expanding outwards into Diamond territory in times of need

As always, we will continue to iterate on our Ranked matchmaking rules and features following this adjustment and make changes wherever necessary moving into 2019.

Thanks!

21 Likes
3

It has to be said. This sort of change only encourages boosting type behavior. At some point it would be appreciated by everyone if Blizz would crack down on this.

Boosting is fundamentally contrary to the spirit of competitive play. One would hope that it would be punished the same as hacking or other TOS violations would be in other games.

10 Likes
4

How does this supposed to work? Does this means that we will get all Assassins or composition without tank or healer like in the past?

If this is the case, I would prefer you guys at least to put one healer for both team in non-tank team. Playing a game without healers are extremely unfun.

Then at least make it fair assigned like 2 GM + 3 Diamond vs 2 GM + 3 Diamond instead of 4 GM+1 vs 5 Diamond match.

If anything, I think you guys should always prioritize RANK over MMR. It is very annoying to play a game with a Silver (it has the same MMR range with you) when you are Gold. It made the whole fighting for RANK pointless as hell if MMR is the main indicator for EVERYTHING. Might as well remove RANK and just show us MMR.

6 Likes
5

Then at least make it fair

fair would have been GM based on mmr but blizz doesn’t like a “fair” ladder

3 Likes
6

Is this just in the regions most affected (I assume SA Asia, Australia and Latin America) or is this being implemented in all the regions?

7

And the reason why the players can’t control their own slider is?

13 Likes
8

A bit offtopic but… I have to ask.

Can’t you just completely reset MMR in the HL / TL and disable (in TL) queueing for 1 and 4 players? TL 1 season ago was better because we’ve had no smurfs, trolls and afkers. I mean… they were always here and there but now it’s just a lot of them in TL.
I know that you thought that the function allowing 1 and 4 players to queue in TL was a good move for you, but it wasn’t a good move for us. And that’s the reason why TL is just a crap for now and our rank means… well, almost nothing these days.

7 Likes
9

not to mention you can have more than one solo in your team- which is completely stupid

3 Likes
10

Hey Dylan. On the high level matchmaking I have a question: why you guys dont make it so players at the top are matched simply in descending order?

meaning if 10 GM players are queuing, just put them together and distribute the players on the teams to minimize MMR difference, going from top to bottom MMR value, just select the top 10 searching and make a game.

I don’t think going by team MMR would create a more fair match than this option

5 Likes
11

Now it makes no sense to play ml\gml ranked in the morning on EU. TY Blizzard :poop:

2 Likes
12

While I may not be 100% ok with all this decisions, I’m happy to see this new trend of communication by the Devs: finally you give us news and updates on what is going to happen and what you’re doing.

Keep it going!

8 Likes
13

That are some good changes. As someone who doesn’t care about a lack of tank and healer in his games, I’m glad QM is quick again

3 Likes
14

I would say I’m unhappy with the quality of QM overall but it would be dishonest if I said I didn’t ask for the changes to be tweaked or undone.

The new system wasn’t working correctly anyway and just lengthened queue times for no real benefit to match quality.

1 Like
15

I must ask it again.
When.
Tassadar.
Will.
Be.
BUFFED?!
Or.
Reworked?!

3 Likes
16

im glad to be able to play the game, the whole forced tank and heal made a terrible damage to the qm playerbase just to satisfy some snowflakes

1 Like
17

Tell me more about it. 3 QM games. Started less than a minute and I lost 3 games straight and it was a completely stomp. Not even a close fight at all.

1 Like
18

They are planning to remove rank in favor of MMR banding.

Additionally they are planning to consolidate TL and HL.

19

When they said that about removing rank?

20

During BlizzCon.