Ranked Play & Matchmaking Reddit AMA Archive Thread

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Ranked Play & Matchmaking Reddit AMA Archive Thread

When do you plan to introduce hero swapping to ranked play, if at all?
Hero swaps are one of the most commonly requested features from the Heroes community for ranked play. We discussed this in our April AMA as well which you can find here: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe..._2018/dxb89jk/

Since then, we've continued looking at the roadmap for ranked play. We do have plans to include hero swaps into draft phases for ranked play, but we don't have a timeline for when we'd expect that to come online. When we do decide to include it, I think it's very likely that we'll introduce it through Unranked Draft first, and message it well in advance. There are pros and cons with hero swaps, particularly for less experienced players that may be pressured to select heroes they are unfamiliar with for the promise of swapping later. When a player is only comfortable with a handful of heroes, it's difficult to want to hand control of your pick choice over to someone else. We've considered a few options:

• Adding Hero Swaps but disabling them below a certain league
• Allow players to lock-in their hero selection in the order they choose

I'd be interested in hearing some of your feedback on these ideas, as well as any suggestions for this feature. (u/Blizz_Joe)


Every now and then we find complaints about matchmaking, mainly because the system rules aren’t clear or visible. Are you planning on making that information available somewhere handy such as in-game?
We are currently iterating on our Hero League rules based on the feedback we are getting regarding match quality/wait times/game server as well as updating Quick Match with more concrete rules on team composition.

Once we are in a place where we think (and hopefully you also think!) that these rules create suitable matches for everyone in a reasonable time, having a discussion on putting out something that explains how these rules work would be a great idea! (u/Blizz_DGower)


I kind of find promotion and demotion games in the same league annoying. Going from Plat 2 to Plat 1 and vice versa, they don't make much of a difference to me. My question is, are you so far happy with this, or do you plan to change anything here? Like only making promo and demo games between leagues.
I tend to agree. I feel that moving between divisions shouldn't require this an additional layer of ladder anxiety. We intend to remove promotion/demotion games between divisions in the future, keeping these higher-pressure matches limited to moving between leagues. We don't have that on the schedule at the moment so I don't want to promise a timeline for delivery. (u/Blizz_Joe)


I wonder if they are going to introduce API in this year.
As in April, our focus remains on improving the gameplay experience for now. However, an API is still something we plan to do in the future. This year we have spent some time defining those plans in more detail in line with the philosophy we have shared before. One of the things that is affecting the complexity of this task is our commitment to protect every individual’s privacy as well as compliance with international rules such as GDPR. (u/Blizz_Stas)


The biggest problems that occur with matchmaking seem the be around the "failure mode"s, where the matchmaker fails to find an appropriate match in the required time, and makes a wildly inappropriate match right now. Is there work on the way in degrading that more gracefully?
Previously, the matchmaker search criteria would degrade gracefully to a cutoff point (for the party/player with the longest wait time), and then make the best match it can at that cutoff point. This would result in sometimes you being pulled into these matches being made at another players cutoff point. That is probably what you were experiencing, and we agree that this wasn't the best experience for the player. As a result we have made some improvements to it this season for Hero League. Each player now has their own search criteria. The players search criteria will degrade gracefully and only when players fit each others search criteria will they be placed together into a game—whereas previously it was based purely on the party/player search criteria who had the longest wait time. However, there is still a maximum cutoff of 15 minutes before the matchmaker makes the best possible match it can. This is currently live in Hero League and we are monitoring the experience. (u/Blizz_Zues)


Have You guys considered to cover the AMA online in the future? Like Ion & Josh from WoW?
Hi, ErothTV! We’ve approached answering questions about Heroes development many different ways over the years – from livestream or video Q&A’s with our team leaders, to reddit, forum, and social media posts by individual team members - and we will continue to try different things moving forward. We’re currently focusing our reddit AMAs on this format where we pick a specific area of the game and bring in the developers who work on that area to answer questions directly. I’ve been enjoying the way these have been going and think the individual developers being involved leads to more in-depth discussion, but please let us know if you have feedback on it or ideas on other ways we can continue improving our communication with the Heroes community. Thanks!! (u/KaeoMilker)


I feel like it would be a lot easier and more straightforward to just have mmr show if you're master and have top 200 mmr's be the GMs. This would fix all of the silly personal rank and grindmaster stuff that's going on right now. I find it really silly that someone can be like GM #8, never ban over anyone ever, have a sub 50% winrate, but still be high points because they play an obscene amount of games
Showing MMR for players over ranking is something we have talked about before (for our previous thoughts on this, check out: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe...ent=t1_e3w5w3u). We are still working on steps to roll this out in a way that is as organic as possible. Rank and rating generally go hand in hand, but there are cases where they can diverge and the posts we sometimes see on here (and we do read them!) about playing games where high masters/GM players are playing with placement people that haven’t played for a while are usually symptomatic of this (as an aside, our MMR decay system should stop this happening in future, as these players will decay out of being eligible for those games). Having a matchmaker work solely on MMR is one approach we have considered for helping with the quality of the games our players are in so we can show exactly why our matchmaker gave the games that it did. As Rating is a measurement of player skill and Ranking places players in an order, we must be careful when switching from one to the other when it comes to broadcasting this information to players, but it is something we definitely want to do!
Didn't the article about this season say specifically it would matchmake off MMR and not rank? Unless I'm misunderstanding, your comment is saying it currently does not put together games based off MMR
Our matchmaker finds players based on MMR, but has rules that limit the games it can make based on a ranked difference requirement. These slowly relax over time (which means if you find a game quickly, it will likely be between 1-2 divisions, e.g. Gold 3 and 4, but if you wait longer the relaxed rules will mean you can get Gold 1-5 or Silver 3-Gold 2 in the same game). This means when a player’s MMR diverges from their rank it can make it harder for the Matchmaker to find them a suitable game, which is one of the reasons we are working on showing MMR instead of Ranked points. (u/Blizz_DGower)


Do you have any ideas in mind to make Team League a more attractive mode?
We do spend time discussing all of our game modes, identifying what is working well and where we can make improvements. For Team League specifically, we don’t have any immediate answers. I can provide you with some of the ideas we’ve been brainstorming that would end up being a significant overhaul to TL. Bear in mind that all of this is very much still a work in progress and in an early discussion stage. We would love to hear the community’s feedback on any of this, so please let us know what you think or if you have any other ideas:

• Team League becomes a mode that is only available during specific windows of time for a limited duration. In this version, Team League wouldn’t always be available, but we would be creating a moment and celebrating the mode during these windows, encouraging players to play in it. This could mean the mode is only available on weekends, or something rarer like specific weeks out of a month block, or a handful of times throughout an entire ladder season.
• Team League is updated to allow all group sizes, including solos and 4-player parties.
• Combine TL and HL into a single queue. This has some obvious issues – we want to make sure that our dedicated HL players still feel like they can have that ‘pure’ experience. Maybe having multiple ladders based off your group size (specifically a solo queue ladder) would alleviate concerns here. At least then, solo queue players would be ranked only against other solo queue players.
• Turn TL into a more structured experience that embraced players forming permanent or semi-permanent teams. Essentially, players would create a team name, have a limited roster of players available, potentially customize something visual to represent their team, etc. In this version, teams would likely last an entire season, or this could be combined with something like the first option where this is your team for a limited window of time.

Ultimately, we do want to increase participation in Team League. However, as I know this will come up as a suggestion and we’ve seen it before, we don’t want to ‘force’ players into this competitive mode if they aren’t looking for this competitive experience. We want players to be happy engaging in whatever game mode(s) they enjoy, so increasing the number of games to unlock TL rewards from 10->30, or adding more rewards is not something we’re excited about. (u/BlizzCooper)


What plans do you think will be implemented this season? Next season?
The Season 3 patch included a ton of changes to Hero League, though not all of them are player-facing. We're still planning on making improvements to matchmaking rules, but right now, we're focused on fixing bugs, and improving our matchmaking data collection. For example, while investigating reports of rainbow matches in Hero League, we uncovered an issue where players will very rarely incorrectly ping lower to a region outside their own when they have "best site" selected in their options menu. When this issue occurs, a player will make matches on that server, which may have different matchmaking rules that allow for rainbow matches to occur. We're currently in the process of resolving this issue, which takes priority over feature development.

For Season 4, 2018 we plan to continue examining the quality of matches as well as the end of season impact of Rank Decay. Our feature development efforts have primarily been focused on hardening the Quickmatch matchmaking experience. We're also deep into development on a Loss Forgiveness feature that will prevent point/MMR loss for players who were stuck with a leaver while also punishing frequent leavers.

Here's a quick list of some of the changes we're considering for the future:

• Preventing returning ranked players from placing higher than Diamond 3 each season-roll after placements.
• Reducing the number of placement games required for returning ranked players.
• Separating out the regional GM ladders to allow players to rank up within their local playerbase and matchmaking rulesets.
• Adding draft swaps for Hero League.
• Further extending the Rank Point Decay to affect additional leagues.
• Creating more incentive for Team League a topic that U/BlizzCooper is posting about separately in a moment. (u/Blizz_Joe)

Why is Hero League seeded from Quickmatch, when they are fundamentally different game modes?
Thank you for your question. Generally when you begin playing HL in a new season, there are 2 cases. In the first scenario, a player has played HL in previous season, in which case we will use your rating from that season. In the second scenario, the player has not played in the last season. Previously when confronted with the second situation, the game would look at other queues to try and use more recent information to estimate the player’s skill. The order in which we would look at the queues is: TL is seeded from HL, HL is seeded from UD, UD is seeded from QM. We changed the algorithm with the last season roll. Going forward, we will only use another queue’s information to seed a player in new season if they have never played enough HL games in any of the previous seasons to place into a definitive rank, and if they did - we will ignore other queues for seeding purposes. In other words, the issue described in the post you have linked should be resolved. (u/Blizz_Stas)


Are there any plans to tighten the MMR differences GM players experience in their teams? Currently you can see #1GM players getting matched with 200 points masters/placements and i suspect the difference in MMR is quite big. Also showing MMR would shed a lot of light and transparency on how we are matched. Thanks.
Currently we observe there are a small percentage of players whose MMR and Rank Points have diverged. As a result, these players end up in matches like the one you described. However, it is important to note that both MMR and Ranked Points are used when determining which players get placed into a game. Because of the divergence previously mentioned, GM players may see a lower ranked master player in their game when, in reality, that player has a higher MMR than his current rank. We are investigating potential solutions for how to reduce this divergence. In regards to displaying MMR to the player, please refer to the following reply that has more details: https://old.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe...eroes/e3wcqoq/ (u/Blizz_Zues)


The HL/TL decay timers are only shown to players after they finish their placements. Does the decay timer secretly affect players who are in placements? E.g. suppose I play 5 placement games, quit for 40 days, then come back and finish my placements.
Hello minor_correction, thank you for your question!

So...a minor correction! TL doesn't have decay timers and ranked decay enabled! The decay timers do not secretly affect players who are in placements. Only when a player has finished all their placement matches, are the decay timers initiated. However, we hope our players remain actively engaged as there is always content coming out and you may miss out on some of our events if you quit for 40 days. I certainly hope you managed to catch Nexxomania!
So there is no MMR decay for players that don't play HL over seasons? So if a player quit playing say...a year ago, and comes back say....6 months from today. Their MMR wouldn't have been decaying over that period?
That is correct :)
The issue people are having is that they expect there to be decay for people who don't play for 18 months, but your reply is saying that that is not true, there is no decay for these players.
I completely understand your concerns, and they are things we continuously consider. With a feature like this, we'd like to see the impact of it and evaluate all the data before we iterate on it further to ensure we can make as informed a decision as possible. As always we look at the community feedback as well as measure the impact of these changes to make sure we are providing the best possible experience for all players across the community. Thank you again for your feedback. (u/Blizz_Zues)


What are the metrics for expected match quality in HL and TL? Is it limited to keeping the chance either team wins close to 0.5, or are there other factors as well, like player strength spread? If so, how are those weighed against each other? For example, would the matchmaker consider a match between some team A and some team B where it estimates exactly even odds of winning, where team A has a player in bronze and a player in GM better than a match of all GM player and Master players in both teams, where it expects one team to win with 0.6 odds?
I love stats questions!

Our Matchmaker uses several criteria to find a winrate. These include, but are not limited to:

• Games played
• MMR spread (when playing in a party of more than 1)
• How many games you have played with the hero you have (Quick Match/vs AI)
• Game Density (How many games you have played in an amount of time)
• Other spooky things

It then does a bunch of maths that I just about understand to calculate the expected probability of winning the game. This is also a rule, (other rules are listed elsewhere in this AMA) so it won’t accept win probabilities outside of a certain range. (u/Blizz_DGower)


what (if any) plans can you share about loss forgiveness for those 4 people who stuck it out?
We're working on a Loss Forgiveness feature right now that addresses these very concerns. In situations where a player deserts their team they will be punished appropriately, while their teammates will have no points deducted for that loss. If the undermanned team wins with an AI in-tow (it does happen occasionally!) they will still earn points for their grit. (u/Blizz_Joe)


Hi, when can we expect some “balance” changes for Tassadar?
Tassadar is someone the balance team has talked about. He could likely use some balance changes to address some of your concerns, but he may also need a larger update to better position him into a definitive role for the team. We do find that his role as an enabler for specific characters is pretty unique and can have a significant impact when paired with someone like Tracer. Whether he stays in this ‘enabler’ role or shifts to a more pure Assassin or Support is still up for debate.

As far as matching Tassadar in QM games, we do have some changes to QM coming this fall that will help ensure games have a Tank, Healer & Ranged Assassin. This means you may still run into Tassadar vs. Abathur scenarios, but each team should also have a healer to minimize any disadvantage Tassadar may have in this specific matchup. (u/BlizzCooper)


would it be possible to steal the ear-destroying Dota2 ready sound? I get tired of losing 600 points and having to play low-priority. ;)
I’m not sure Valve would be too happy with that, but we are in discussions about a form of ready check.

Personally, I would go with Murky’s March of the Murlocs horn or Whitemane’s laugh as a ready sound! (u/Blizz_DGower)


Do you plan to make the term of MMR & RANK Decay shorter? The decay standard now seems to be a bit long.
Hello! We are always looking to iterate on changes we make to Rating and Ranked Decay. We are monitoring the impact Ranked Decay is having on Hero League. The decay timers may be adjusted as a result. However, we won't be making any changes to the decay timers in the middle of a season as we want to ensure all players are aware of such changes before they play their placement matches (which is when the decay timers get initialized). (u/Blizz_Zues)


Do you have any estimate as to when we will see performance-based matchmaking in the game?
The two big features on the horizon for Hero League are Loss Forgiveness and Performance Based Matchmaking. Of those, Loss Forgiveness is the first in line for development, while Performance Based Matchmaking will follow shortly after. I can't commit to an exact timeline for these just yet. (u/Blizz_Joe)


I feel like one of the issues in ranked play is that some players only play for the minimal amount for the seasonal rewards. What's your take on increasing the amount of games required for the rewards, making a tiered system or other incentives to encourage these people to play more?
This is good feedback, and something that the design team had discussed leading up to Season 3. We're actively considering adding a "Season Quest" that players need to complete in order to obtain their season reward. This may take the form of a tiered system, as you suggest, or it could be a flat and simple objective. In either case, we agree that there is an opportunity here. (u/Blizz_Joe)


When will we have quick match matchmaking where there will always be a tank and a healer?
Sometime this fall, coming to a quick match near you:) (u/BlizzCooper)


Why Matchmaking changes are taking forever to be done ? We see new events and skins very often, are you investing more resources to make the game "prettier" instead of better ?
We do have separate, dedicated teams focusing on each area of the game, so releasing a new Hero or a new skin does not take away attention from matchmaking or other feature work. It's critical that we continue making content while also making the game better - these things are equally important to us, and our team structure reflects that. The sensation that we move faster on content is really speaking to a different thing - content changes are more visible and tangible.

Matchmaking is an area of game development that is incredibly challenging and perpetually evolving, not just for Heroes of the Storm, but for all games. There is no perfect matchmaking; it's always a series of trade-offs where we're striving to get the highest quality matches for the largest percentage of players in the most reasonable timeframes, all while attempting to balance an ever-increasing number of extremely impactful variables.

Over the past 5 years, we've invested heavily in the ongoing quest to improve the Heroes matchmaking experience across the game and have made great strides along the way with changes that have been behind the scenes as well as public-facing. We've also developed tools that strengthen our ability to predict and understand the far-reaching implications of the changes that we want to make. Through all of this, we've been able to consistently improve the matchmaking experience for the vast majority of Heroes players. And while we've had setbacks, bugs, and fringe cases negatively impact some players as we've evolved the system, we believe matchmaking is one of the cornerstones of our game and will continue to dedicate a significant amount of time and resources to improving it forevermore. Speaking of which - we're always looking to hire talented Server Engineers to join the Heroes team and help support matchmaking as well as other feature development. Please apply! (u/KaeoMilker)


Do you have plans to show mmr to the players and when would that be?
We intend to display MMR to players as part of the Performance Based Matchmaking system. We have a new visualization of hero performance that helps reinforce the MMR means. I don't have a date for the release of this feature just yet. As we get nearer to its release we'll be sure to get a blog post up that describes the system, and the changes that will be coming along with it. (u/Blizz_Joe)


[Perception of negative experiences in the game]
This touches on a lot of the things we are currently working on to make the experience better for everyone:

Loss Forgiveness
It sucks when you lose a game because someone disconnected and never came back and you had to play with the AI and the AI did things that aren’t becoming of a Diamond 3 player and now your Core is on fire and your team is sad and that player who left is sitting on a beach somewhere and you wish all their books became the Twilight series (or whatever kinds of books you don't like).

Our aim with this is to make those games not count against you anymore, so you are not punished for having to complete a game in that situation, which should lessen the negativity felt for it (you still had to play it, which is a tough situation, but the result of that has been negated, and the leaver suitably punished).

Hero League
This kind of perception also extends to the matchmaker, when players ask, “Why am I playing a game in high GM with this low Master’s player?” This usually happens when their MMR has diverged from their rank. As we work towards switching to showing MMR for some or all our leagues, this should remove that negative perception, too.

Quick Match
When people are given quick match games which are 5v5 assassins, or games that feel like the balance of the players or heroes is off, this can reduce enjoyment as well, so we are working towards hardening the criteria for team composition to make the mode feel both more enjoyable and more like our other queues. (u/Blizz_DGower)


With voice comms it feels like the main disadvantage of duo queue has been eliminated. Have you considered adding duo queue back to HL?
This is something we've discussed internally. We think there is value in ensuring players can play with friends and make new ones in Hero League. There are complications, and many differing opinions, but it's something we're considering for next year. (u/Blizz_Joe)


Question about matchmaking in master hl. How matchmaking works currently in master? Because i have feelings that before grandmasters are up, it was different. In 2 first weeks of season I was matched with 5-9k players having 3k and then when grandmasters were announced i was started getting 0-1,5k master players having 5k points. And quality of matches were much lower. Does this work on purpose because of lower playerbase in master and harsher requirements for grandmaster players?
Hi Ynous, thank you for your question. Whenever Master players are considered, the matchmaker will first try to make a game with players from one division, before expanding the search to the adjacent ones. It won’t let Master players be in a game that has more than one division spread (e.g. Diamond 1 and Masters are OK, Diamond 2 and Masters are not OK). This spread will only be allowed if all players to be put into a match have waited in the queue for at least 4 minutes. From matchmaker’s perspective Masters and GMs are considered to be different divisions, so when GMs were formed that player pool became separated from Masters by a wait time barrier in addition to all the other rules. In any case, for both Masters and GMs matchmaker is looking to not only make a fair game but to keep player’s MMRs as close as possible – with allowed MMR spread growing slowly over the first 15 minutes of wait time. Currently, the amount of rank points a player has inside a single division are not taken into account by HL matchmaker, so the games you have described were formed based on the MMR of the players involved. In your case, my guess is you probably were a lower MMR player in the matches before GMs were up, and now you’re probably a higher MMR player in those matches as there are fewer high-MMR players (as in, they are more likely to be in GMs now, which is a separate division). (u/Blizz_Stas)


How do you feel about the current state of "solo laners" and how do you feel about the current state of pocket picks like Murky?
Solo laners create an interesting dynamic that is influenced a lot by the battleground you’re playing on. For the most part, we think this is an interesting role for the team and as these are typically bruiser characters, they fit well into many team compositions providing a second frontline character. In general, we see a decent variety of viable solo laners, but there is a lack of ranged character involvement. This is mostly okay but seeing a wider variety of heroes involved would probably be an improvement and something we can chase on the design and balance side.

In terms of pocket pick characters, I think these are fine if they’re seen occasionally and in the right situation. We definitely don’t want to see the game become a “Murky meta”, but having the occasional Murky pick is fine. A general rule of thumb here would be that the more a hero forces the other 9 players in a match to drastically change their play, the more cautious we are about that hero being overly common. Murky of the old days typically meant he would split push the entire match, forcing his own team to fight in a lot of 4v5 situations which wasn’t fun for them. On the flip side, the 5-player team also had to babysit against Murky which also wasn’t fun. Assuming Murky is playing a bit more of a ‘standard’ game and participating with his teammates, then I think the situation is more enjoyable for everyone… sorry, bit of a tangent but hopefully still relevant :) (u/BlizzCooper)


[On the topic of queueing in minor regions]
Hi camerontenten! Thank you for your questions. You've touched on a few different topics so I'll do my best to try and address each of them. We are currently aware of the challenges that minor regions experience and are investigating ways to create additional incentives for players to participate in these modes that are facing challenges.

Being able to queue for multiple modes is an interesting idea and compelling. However, there are many challenges that come with that. For example, when a player is eligible for matches in different queues, what happens? Is it a first come first serves? What happens to the other 9 players in a match you choose to not go into? We have a holding mechanic that allows players of higher ratings to place a hold on players they feel they could make a match with in the near future (whoa...psychic). A change like this would have far reaching impacts across numerous game modes and potentially create scenarios where all game modes would have a degraded performance. Don't get me wrong, I love this idea and it has been discussed within the team. However, when we make changes to the matchmaker, we validate our changes across historical data for the the population to understand the impact of the changes. With a change as complex as this we would have to verify that all game modes observed a net positive in terms of quality of games as well as queue times.

In terms of duo queuing: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthe...eroes/e3wk30v/

I agree, the game is very enjoyable with friends and I assure you we are very much invested in trying to improve the experience for our minor region heroes...of the storm:) (u/Blizz_Zues)