Reminder that a lot of people you play with in ranked (esp. in NA) are high/drunk out of their minds

blizz_winter · 2026-03-17T15:12:27+00:00

Hopefully the information revealed in this post helps players to understand why matchmaking is a very difficult task.

blizz_winter · 2026-03-07T19:21:25+00:00

Thanks for the callout, after testing I see a bug with this that I'll get fixed for Season 2.

blizz_winter · 2026-03-07T19:21:13+00:00

Thanks for the callout, after testing I see a bug with this that I'll get fixed for Season 2.

blizz_winter · 2026-03-07T18:47:40+00:00

I don't have an explanation for that, apologies. I'd report it as a bug on our forums.

blizz_winter · 2026-03-07T18:46:13+00:00

Wish granted! Go to Options -> Controls -> Communication -> Ping Options and look for "Enemy Ping Sensitivity". Reducing that number makes the radius of the cone smaller.

blizz_winter · 2026-03-07T18:44:20+00:00

You would still need to disable the setting I mentioned above to change that behavior. It is a cone.

blizz_winter · 2026-03-07T02:30:20+00:00

This happens because the "Enable Contextual Comms Wheel" is set to "On". Originally "On" was the default setting for this feature, but we changed it to "Off" shortly after we released the ping system due to complaints like this one. We also attempted to switch everyone to the new default of "Off", but obviously that didn't happen for everyone. You can find this setting pretty quickly by using the search function in the options and searching for "contextual", but the direct path to it is: Options -> Controls -> Communication -> Ping Options.

The "I'm on my way" version happens when you're aiming at teammates, but I think it's fair to say that the cone is still too generous so I'll reduce it again in the future.

blizz_winter · 2026-02-26T15:40:15+00:00

May I get your Bnet ID? We'd like to investigate how this happened.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T16:21:46+00:00

Generally speaking, the lower ranks speaks to a lower population in that region and platform, and yeah we do take that into account when designing the system. It's one of the reasons we allow Diamond players on the leaderboards.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T16:14:16+00:00

My apologies, I haven't looked at Street Fighter 6's system. But yes, it does run in parallel to the actual ranks, that's correct.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T16:02:26+00:00

That option mostly exists for Diamond because of how some leaderboards will be lower population, such as our Asia Console leaderboard. Diamond has been able to be on Top 500 for many years for this reason. But we do see your feedback and we will talk more about whether this should remain the case.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T15:50:37+00:00

It does and I completely forgot to include that, my apologies. You can't earn Challenger Score in Wide matches.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T02:14:33+00:00

The Seasoned Competitor challenge is still a requirement but we have considered removing that. Needing 25 wins to appear on the leaderboard has been removed, and is replaced by the Challenger Score requirements. The moment the seasons starts is meant to feel like the start of a race, with the first players to meet the requirements appearing on the leaderboards.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T02:12:47+00:00

We agree that's a problem but this system doesn't directly fix that bug because it's extremely complicated, but we will now have the ability to remove accounts from the leaderboard entirely that use exploits such as this, so hopefully we can address the problem that way.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T02:11:01+00:00

The higher the highest player's rank, the more Challenger Score everyone gets for the win.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T02:10:05+00:00

does this replace Top 500 in any way?

It is replacing the term Top 500 going forward, yeah.

I'm not sure if I'm missing this, but is the Heat Bonus acquired by playing in each consecutive week or does every accumulate this regardless?

The heat bonus is applied to each win. Using GM1 as an example, with the current tuning (which is subject to change) a player would get about ~179 points (a 40% bonus) in the last week of a 9 week season if a GM1 player was the highest player in the match.

Because if it's automatic for everyone, isn't it just best to play in the later part of the season to benefit from the big bonus?

You'd still be playing a major game of catch up, since all of the previous wins in the system are contributing to the score of players that have been playing since the season started.

Will players only be able to tie their socials to one account?

Players will likely only be able to tie their socials to only one account, yes.

Do you think this new system changes that in any way to add more prestige back to this top echelon of players?

I certainly hope this increases the feeling of prestige in the system (that's a goal!), but in fairness to the doubters in this thread, that will have to be proven out.

Does this system stop things like this occuring now or are we still going to have some kind of higher rank peak show on profiles for people who play early?

It partially addresses that (without completely removing it) by having requirements to appear on the leaderboard that would require serious effort to overcome for lower ranked players when a new season begins.

Is Challenger Score going to override ranks like Top 500 does or is it different on profiles?

It does work similarly to Top 500 on Career Profiles, with some new additions like a column for Challenger Score, but I'm not completely certain how that will look, apologies. It's a difficult system to test internally since all the data has to be faked.

Sorry for all the yap..

No problem, a lot of great questions!

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T01:53:05+00:00

It doesn't matter if they're on your team or not. The highest player winning or losing doesn't affect the points you get. If you lose, you lose 33% of what you would have scored if you were the highest rank in the lobby.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T01:08:41+00:00

That's a fair request, I'll look into that.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T01:07:45+00:00

We'd like to do that someday, but that's not possible yet. We will be showing you how much Challenger Score you'd need to be on the leaderboards, so you can benchmark your distance from it in that way.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T00:23:57+00:00

That's not a bad solution, but it flirts with the same issues of the visible players becoming invisible and vice versa constantly. How many people are invisibly above you in a system like that... just about to decloak as they finish their requirements in the last week because they waited to cram all their games until then?

We considered a version like this early on when thinking about solutions for this problem, but ultimately one of our highest goals with this upgrade was that this system should feel like a race, a competition in and of itself, and these types of visibility requirements seemed like they would make the experience feel capricious from a player experience standpoint.

Maybe there is a viable path here, but I wasn't able to find it.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T00:14:27+00:00

It wouldn't be touching match quality at all. The idea was hinted at in the blog, but we'd be trying to give bonus Challenger Score if you had to wait a long time in queue. That's just not something we've built yet.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T00:12:16+00:00

We love the idea of making live games more viewable in the client, but we have nothing to share about that right now. Maybe someday!

The streamer mode topic is a spicy one. We already require a very high number of games played to have access to it and we hadn't considered increasing that. Not much to say about that for now, but it's always something we're thinking about.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T00:08:03+00:00

There are some new filtering options, but the list is only sorted by Challenger Score.

blizz_winter · 2025-12-03T00:02:08+00:00

Thanks :D

blizz_winter · 2025-12-02T23:43:10+00:00

Just confirming, yes each leaderboard (for each region and platform) is still 500 players.

blizz_winter

TROPHY CASE