Home Gaming Blizzard have improved Heroes of the Storm’s matchmaking significantly over the past few months

Blizzard have improved Heroes of the Storm’s matchmaking significantly over the past few months

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Heroes of the Storm

At BlizzCon 2015, Dustin Browder, Game Director of Heroes of the Storm, spoke about the poor state of the MOBA’s matchmaking. Okay poor state is a horrible choice of words. The system wasn’t that bad. It was actually alright, but there was still much room for improvement.

Following that presentation, Blizzard set out to make Heroes of the Storm’s matchmaking more balanced, and thus, fairer to players of all skill levels. They overhauled the system, and have spent the past few months since tweaking and adjusting accordingly.

And hey, it looks like there have been some significant improvements overall. Blizzard have been closely monitoring the stats since the implementation of the new matchmaking, and the results are quite something…

Last December, we rolled out phase one of our improvements for matchmaking, which featured an entirely new matchmaker built specifically to suit Heroes of the Storm. This new system primarily focuses on providing players with close games, in which each team has a 45% – 55% chance to win. Since the new matchmaker was implemented, we’ve seen great improvements in overall match quality and fairness. Take a look at stats from before the new matchmaker went live, and after:

Stats

As you can see in the charts above, the likelihood that you will receive a match within our target range of 45% – 55% win probability has been dramatically increased, from 66% of games before the new system went live, to 97% of games after.

That’s pretty damn impressive! We’re not talking some minute improvement here, but rather one that has Heroes of the Storm’s matchmaking closing in on perfection.

The only downside to the new system is that it takes a little longer to match players accordingly. The average queue time for a quick match on the new system has gone up from 80 to 130 seconds.

It’s quite a big jump. As Blizzard have pointed out though, while they don’t like seeing the queue time go up, they’d much rather have players wait a little bit longer for a much better quality match-made game – which is the whole idea behind the new system in the first place.

Personally, I agree. I really don’t see a big issue with waiting 50 seconds longer for a game where I’m up against players of my skill level.

Last Updated: February 18, 2016

No Comments

  1. I believe it, because pie-chat

    Reply

    • Hammersteyn

      February 18, 2016 at 13:15

      I believe it because Blizzard gave the stats. An independent company would only tell lies

      Reply

  2. Hargrim

    February 18, 2016 at 13:31

    Compared to last year, the game is in a MUCH better space in terms of matchmaking. Balance isn’t perfect yet, but I’d much rather face an OP hero played by someone of my skill level, than a balanced hero played by someone much better than me

    Reply

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