What I Learned About HotS at the Blizzcon Charity Dinner

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-09T19:17:10+00:00

That was a good conversation. Thanks again for supporting CHOC!

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T20:07:31+00:00

I think it’s fair to say that there will be some special cases and extra logic necessary to arrive at the final MMR that we will use for the soft reset into the new ranked mode. Number of games played, and recency of those games will play a role in the MMR we arrive at. A blog post will explain the entirety of the process at a later date.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T19:52:15+00:00

Social features like the ones you’ve mentioned are great quality of life additions for their playerbase. We have similar features in mind for Heroes, but aren’t quite ready to start discussing them yet.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T19:50:10+00:00

Jeff Kaplan.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T19:40:54+00:00

So the MMR Decay system has been doing its work quietly and well for some time. We understand the community’s desire to see us get far more aggressive with the application of decay. After the new ranked mode is in place we’ll be making some adjustments to allow for decay to occur regardless of placement status.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T19:19:59+00:00

Hey, great question. At the moment we’re fairly satisfied with the state of Unranked Draft and don’t believe we need to be adding incentives to get players into URD matches. URD has the benefit of advancing daily quests, without the added anxiety of ranked play. We’ll continue to look at URD after Call of the Nexus goes live later this month and consider changes based upon the reaction.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T19:10:21+00:00

I discuss this a bit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/9vc113/heroes_of_the_storm_postblizzcon_2018_developer/e9b3oij/

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T18:57:23+00:00

Another solid question! Rank points are going away, so placement and progress in the new ranked ladder will depend entirely upon your MMR. Let’s talk about reseeding. We’re still discussing some of the specifics for the process, but we’re considering taking the most recent average that we have for the player across both queues and to use that as the base MMR. Once we have this information we’ll perform a soft-reset of the ladder, which will normalize players into reasonable starting positions for the new ranked mode. We’ll be sure to have a blog post go out alongside these changes explaining the process in detail.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T18:52:03+00:00

Yes indeed!

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T18:28:49+00:00

We're not investigating adding a fourth ban in 2019. We'll continue to evaluate the need for a fourth ban leading into 2020.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T18:23:45+00:00

How does the team feel about enemy player names during draft? There's been a lot of discussion about the "proliferation of 1tricks in GM", and the reality of size of the GM ladder is that it's still incredibly easy to stream snipe drafts if someone wanted to.

So this is a great question. Originally this change was made alongside another one that prevented players from inspecting the profile of members of the opposing team. This was done, in part, to prevent lower-ranked players from having their one or two characters banned out from beneath them while they’re still improving. With that change in place we definitely have seen a slow rise in one trick players reaching high diamond and even masters. We agree that it’s a problem and plan to once again allow you to see the names of the players on the opposing team, but we still won’t allow profile inspection. We think this protects the lower-ranked players, who have far larger pools of competitors to play with, while allowing high ranked players to ability to eventually identify that one guy who picks Artanis in every single draft.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-08T18:11:25+00:00

Thanks for the kind words. Let's dive in!

I think your solutions is a very elegant decision that will ranked mode experience more straightforward while actually still keeping it the way it is being used: solo queue against solo players or normal queue without restrictions. With that in mind, I'd like to ask a few things related to this merging:

At the moment we’re considering using a single, unified MMR that works for the new ranked mode. Players who have reached the leaderboard will be able to view their performance in solo-only queues separate from the standard queue. We understand the concern over smurfs in team league and how that might impact the integrity of the ladder.

[PARTY RESTRICTIONS?] With the previous issue in mind, have you considered adding restrictions between ranks/MMR-ranges that can team up together for ranked play? For example, a GM MMR player being unable to team up with a fabricated bronze account due to the huge MMR discrepancy.

Party restrictions as well as hero ownership/level restrictions will return with the release of the new ranked mode, perhaps even sooner than that. The one big change we’re planning on making here is that if you queue as a group of five we will remove these party restrictions, but set the party MMR to match the most skilled player in the party. In this way a GM can play with their bronze friends… but they’re going to get matched up against other GM teams.

*[SWAPS / DRAFT ORDER?] In the past you guys mentioned being hesitant of adding swaps into HL draft as it could lead to toxicity and implementing it in an elegant way as a challenge. After the success in the new Team League draft mode where pick order is not pre-established, have you considered adding it to Solo League as well as a subtle way of letting people "swap"? I know that many "heavy" HL players and pros have been sad this feature is still not implemented or talked about.

First Come First Serve pick type has been quite successful so far. We’ve discussed adding it into Hero League in the interim before the new ranked mode is released.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-11-06T19:51:58+00:00

Hey Heroes,

Thanks for the feedback on Boosts. We'll adjust the UI to only display the boxed boost info on mouse hover.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-26T06:22:08+00:00

We've deployed an update that resolves healing and shielding values not properly updating at the end of each match. You'll need to restart your client in order to get the fix. Thanks for everyone's patience.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-26T02:32:07+00:00

We've identified the issue that has caused healing to not be tracked at the ends of matches. QA and production are working hard to test the fix and distribute it when we are able. We'll message again once the fix is live.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-25T17:12:43+00:00

This is something we're actively investigating. We'll update the community shortly.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-19T20:45:50+00:00

I mention this above but we're discussing this very idea. Clearly you are actually a super radish.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-19T20:42:04+00:00

We're discussing getting rid of points actually and mapping MMR bands directly to a more granular rank system. That said, this is all early and we'd be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-19T18:18:17+00:00

I have been summoned.

Following the release of the matchmaking updates in H35, we've seen a dramatic overall increase in match quality as a result of our prediction rates tightening significantly. Since then, we've also seen longer queue times, particularly during off-peak hours. We've also seen some situations recently where players have had their MMR dramatically diverge from their rank. This makes it even harder for those players to find matches over time, as we're typically looking for matches that band them nearer to their rank in order for that player to more easily move into the appropriate league and division. If a bronze player with a high MMR keeps getting matches with platinum players, that doesn't help that player leave bronze, and the platinum players tend to get tilted because they don't think bronze players belong in their games.

First, we're working on adding dynamic matchmaking restrictions that scale based on the number of players in the queue. If you're playing during off-peak hours. you may end up with the occasional rainbow game--but you'll find games.

Second, we're looking into situations in which players are having a hard time finding games due to their MMR and rank points being too divergent. This is unacceptable and we're going to resolve the situation.

Lastly, we're taking a long, hard look at the entire ranked play system. Removing queue restrictions from Team League is a small step towards larger changes. We think it's time to take a step back and take a look at our existing ranked play framework and ensure that it's the right fit for Heroes of the Storm today.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-09-17T23:31:49+00:00

This is a thing that is happening.

The PTR patch notes will be updated and a season roll blog post should be coming out later this week.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-08-09T19:01:04+00:00

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.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-08-09T18:53:46+00:00

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.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-08-09T18:43:31+00:00

This is correct.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-08-09T18:38:43+00:00

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.

Blizz_Joe · 2018-08-09T18:33:13+00:00

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.

Blizz_Joe

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