This is great. Thanks for resolving the ability issue.
Could you guys also look into the unit lag issue? It impacts maps such as Risk Europe in which about hundreads of units can receive commands at the same time. Specifically, the bottleneck seems to be related to the number of commands that can be issued by each player, causing players with larger armies to lag while players with small armies being able to get an unfair advantage due to the lag.
This command limit has probably not been changed for two decades time so I am sure increasing it will not impact modern computers with moder networking.
Thanks for the effort so far and have a nice weekend!
Team stacking inside a match. Too often, two stronger players are placed on one side and two weaker players on the other, instead of “cross-seeding” to balance team averages.
Overly wide MMR spreads within the same lobby. In team queues, you regularly see very large gaps between the strongest and weakest players, which turns many games unabalanced.
AT vs RT changes hurt 3v3/4v4. Splitting arranged teams (AT) from random teams (RT) makes sense, but with a small population it inflated queue times or prevented matches. You can check leaderboard and see how many teams are playing. In 4v4 only 9 games total are played all season!
High ping. Make matchmaking to never pair you up with someone if ping is higher then 170ms, every 10 games I play, I get one game where ping is 400ms stable which is unplayable.
Ranking UI problems. Odd promotion pop-ups and “N/A” rank displays, also on loading screen you cant still see LVL and MMR sometimes.
Placement matches not showing. When you play any first five games you get screen that you completed all 5 placement matches.
Improvements
1) Start with a strict MMR window, then expand over time
Begin with a narrow search band (e.g., ±200 MMR for the first ~2 minutes). If no candidates appear, expand stepwise (±400, ±600, …). Try something, if the waiting time is too large then adjust it. We are willing to give you feedback.
2) Do “in-match slotting” to minimize team variance
When 4/6/8 eligible players are gathered, assign teams to equalize team averages and reduce variance. Don’t let “two strong vs two weak” slip through just because all players fit the window.
3) Revive team queues with partial premades (under guardrails)
Allow partial AT groups (e.g., 2 players in 3v3, 2–3 in 4v4). Offset the communication edge with a small, transparent MMR adjustment (AT should play against higher MMR RT). This fills queues without letting premades overrun RT.
4) Regional ping caps with staged expansion
Keep low latency a priority but set reasonable max ping caps per region (e.g., ~160–180 ms).
5) Be transparent in the UI
Show the current search range and how it’s expanding (“Searching ±200… now ±400…”). Fix promotion spam and “N/A” rank displays. Transparency makes longer queues more tolerable and builds trust. Fix placment screen.
6) Tackle leavers
Use progressive timeouts for serial leavers.
7) Prefer AT-vs-AT mirroring whenever possible
When feasible within the search time, keep AT vs AT. If time expires and you allow AT vs RT, apply tighter MMR variance for the RT side to compensate for the premade’s coordination advantage.
If I forgot something, please write it in your post!
Any more balance changes? As an UD player would love to see 1-base strategy viable again and 2-base play nerfed. The way it can be - to make a sacrificial skull cost a bit more and tier 2 or 3 tech being a bit cheaper, maybe it’s a way to make 1-base play vs every race a bit more viable again?
We appreciate the “numerous” fixes, but please, can you be more specific to not waste our time for the back-and-forth collaboration be more productive? If not engaging with individual posts is a Support and PR policy, would you at least point out the fixed areas so we needn’t retest something that hasn’t changed?
For the time being it sounds like the proverb from eastern European folklore tales: “Go there, I don’t know where, fetch that, I don’t know what.”
There’s been an issue for a few months now where the minimap on Mac (Arm, at least, unsure about Intel) has issues with incorrect terrain colors. Can that get looked at during this PTR?
I have mixed feelings about this. Providing this kind of technical information clutters the UI and can be confusing to people less knowledgeable about the game/matchmaking. On the whole I think it’s at least a good idea to let the player know when the search range is being increased due to wait time so they can decide if they want to stay in the queue and accept a match with a potentially wider skill gap or re-queue to keep the tolerances tighter- but I don’t think providing specific numbers is necessary.
When you see something like this, it’s because that’s all the community rep was given- Espeically if more crashes are being actively worked on the dev(s) may be hurriedly working on some other crash or something and writing an essay about all the individual crashes fixed may actually slow work on others.
(Note: I think they should provide the specifics- I’m only explaining why this was probably written this way, coming from someone with some game dev experience)
The AnimateDead skill will increase the population. Please fix it.
The lich Kersugaard should have his own voice. Please add it. Also, the model of the Fear Demon King Varimasas should be another one, not the ordinary one. You can take a look at the one in the campaign. Please correct it as well.
The issue with AI: When there are 12 or more AI maps, the AI will build buildings so densely that its units get stuck inside and can’t get out. Maybe you could optimize the AI function a little more. Thank you.
The issue with the Undead AI: When the AI’s Death Knight reaches level 6, it cannot use the AnimateDead skill. Please fix it.
When exiting the game, an error window will appear and the crash will occur at 0×FFFFF… Maybe I’m not professional, so please solve this problem. I guess it might be related to the game menu?
When the game has more than 12 AI, there is a high probability that it will crash. Please optimize the relevant functions or other factors. In fact, the problem of game crashes is the biggest issue.
While the NO.1 “bug” urgent to be fixed is the crippled balance in 2.0.3.
The Orc race, NE race, Hum Rifle meta and UD Fiend meta inappropriately nerfed please revert the heavy armor change back to revive the balance.
The balance advice by Leaders of Kaboom Party messed up the damage calculation table, so their career would be haunted by the crippled balance inevitably. As a mediator, Mr. Blizzard it’s your showtime to save them and save the game.
Your supreme right to change balance is our hope, as long as you didn’t use it in a self-denying way like “Piercing damage against Heavy armor decreased from 100% to 90%”.
Maybe they could add a hover option to see how much the MMR gap has increased. I get that it could be confusing, but I would love to have that option so I can choose to restart the search if I don’t want to play against a bigger MMR gap.
Yeah of course, thats what I said. First start for like 500MMR variance difference and then listen for feedback from us. 2k MMR is too big difference to start with.
That’s probably a little on the extreme side, but an RT definitely needs an MMR advantage against an AT, 100% agreed. That’s a lot better than just not letting firends play together at all.
