Upcoming Matchmaking Rework this Friday!!!

Since the release of matchmaking last year we have seen more of our community choose to play games utilizing the matchmaking system than we could have ever hoped for. You have all made matchmaking a success and it is only fitting that we continually try to improve upon our system to get it to where it needs to be. Although during the past year we have made many improvements to our system, the community has raised questions and asked for changes to be made in order to create a better matchmaking experience. In light of these requests we have taken some of the most pressing issues related to matchmaking and will be addressing them in a patch this week on December 9th, 2011. Along with many other features we've been working hard on, this patch will also include a complete matchmaking re-work. This re-work includes changes across all areas of matchmaking :

• The "Average Wait Time" displayed when waiting for a match should now be much more accurate.

• Group leaders can now select whether they prefer to have a shorter queue time or a fairer match when queueing for matchmaking, this option can be changed without leaving the matchmaking queue.

• Introduced a "Provisional Ranking Period" for new players that will facilitate adjusting them to their true skill level (whether higher or lower) much faster than before.

• Players with team members who have been terminated should lose less points for a loss, and gain more points for a win.

• Made numerous changes to the way MMR is calculated such as how many points players gain or lose each match, how match predictions are calculated between two potential teams when searching for a matchup, and many other changes to the backend calculations that should make the MMR progression much more accurate in predicting and placing a player at their true MMR rating.

• Optimizations to the matchmaking algorithm that should reduce queue times across the board.

• The game lobby and hero select screens now show match gain/loss values with more precision as it is now possible to gain/lose fractional amounts of MMR.

• All players will have their Normal and Casual MMR compressed towards 1500. Take for example a player with Normal MMR of 1700, and Casual MMR of 1600. After the compression their Normal MMR would become become (1700 + 1500) / 2 = 1600) while their Casual MMR would become (1600 + 1500) / 2 = 1550)

• The minimum MMR has been increased from 750 to 1000.

For more information on on the changes click here or simply scroll down to the next post. If you have any further questions on the changes feel free to post and we'll do our best to answer them throughout the week.

[S2]JamesTowN

S2 Staff Member