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!