Reconnect if Disconnected

Some of you have suggested that if you leave a match or get disconnected, we let you rejoin that match. I don’t mind this in playlists that don’t have Join in Progress / Backfilling during a match. I personally like the idea that if you leave a match in any form, the only thing you can do is get back into that particular match until it ends. I could consider allowing players to play Social instead, or mayyybe another playlist, if the reasoning is they left because they didn’t want to play that mode anymore, but waited a little too long to back out.



I think it’s a cool feature, but not one we’ll be seeing in the near future. Definitely worth considering though.



FFA Settings

There have been some suggestions that we refresh the FFA playlist. This is something we are definitely looking at. Some of you have suggested we just switch to using the HCS settings. We have to be a little careful there because unlike Team Arena or HCS, the FFA playlist has not traditionally been 1:1 with tournament settings. We don’t have evidence that all the people playing FFA want to play on the new settings, and we prefer to not split our population because it has consistently made matchmaking worse for both parties afterwards. I do empathize with the need for a refresh though.



Some of you mentioned that if we switch to HCS settings changes, more people will play than did before, so we’ll be fine. However we haven’t seen enough evidence that this will happen given our experience in other playlists, including the main HCS playlist itself. With a lack of evidence that major settings that split the audience can cause growth, we’re being careful moving forward.



This isn’t to say we won’t do anything, but only that we have good reasons for being careful.



Whatever changes we do make will require the same amount of work I’ve described in past updates, which needs to be balanced against any other playlist work we are considering.