Summary of Upcoming Changes to Heroes of the Storm Matchmaking

Almost a month ago, Blizzard asked Heroes of the Storm players to submit reports for matches they felt were extremely unfair, or where the matchmaking system had failed. This was done as part of an ongoing effort to improve what has long been abysmal matchmaking in an otherwise extremely well-received game. Today, they announced some of the areas of focus for the future, based partially on those player reports. Here is a quick and dirty rundown of what Blizzard will be tackling:

Parties vs solo players: Changes are being considered (but not immediately implemented) that will cause the matchmaker to place higher importance on matching teams with the same number of solo players/same party size. They are not planning to remove the possibility to match against four and five-player parties from Quick Match right now. Coordinated team compositions: They are investigating changes that will help limit certain types of team compositions from being formed when solo players are matched into a team. For players that are extremely concerned with team composition, Blizzard recommends queuing up for Hero League instead of Quick Match. One-sided matchups: These are still occurring when players spend a long time waiting in queue. They are making "vast improvements" in this area, though the possibility won't be completely eliminated. They'll continue to tune the MMR spread across the players in a game, and will be focusing on ranked play in particular. Unskilled players: Just because someone on your team is playing terribly, doesn't mean it's a problem with matchmaking. Sometimes players just have a bad game, or a bad day. It's happened to you too, don't pretend like it hasn't (that last part was added by this writer who wants you to stop flaming people for playing poorly.) Long queue times: Specifically, right after a new Hero is released. At that time, a lot of people queue up to try to play that Hero, which results in longer queue times. This in turn causes the matchmaker to be willing to place players in lower quality games. Blizzard is discussing ways of indicating that a certain Hero is very popular in queue, which could affect the player's decision to try to play a different Hero to avoid this situation.

 

Blizzard is still reviewing player reports, as well as their own internal data. They "have a strategy in place" as they move towards phase 2 of matchmaking improvements, so we should see things get even better as time goes on.