Your next Heroes of the Storm game should be closer to a match made in heaven … or the fiery pits of hell.
Blizzard has implemented changes to the multiplayer online battle arena’s matchmaking system today. Previously, players complained that the game would bring heroes together in unbalanced teams. The changes Blizzard today should make for fights that are more even.
“When Heroes of the Storm matchmaking was originally implemented, it was based on the system we used for StarCraft II,” Blizzard stated on the game’s site today. “This works great for a game that’s primarily centered on 1v1 play, and StarCraft II matchmaking has historically been pretty solid. However, Heroes is team-based, and we had to create several rules, such as team composition and party size restrictions, to help tailor this system to a 5v5 game. The more rules that we added, the more difficult it became for the matchmaker to put together high-quality games. While the majority of games that the previous matchmaker put together were reasonably fair, the system still wasn’t quite hitting the mark as often as we had hoped.”
The new system will pair players together with those closer to their skill level, even if means a slightly longer wait in the matchmaking queue. Heroes of the Storm will also match parties differently. Previously, it prioritized pitting equally sized parties against each other, regardless of their skill. Now, the matchmaking focuses more on the overall skill of both of teams.
Heroes of the Storm is a free-to-play success for Blizzard. It had 17 major ($25,000-plus) tournaments in 2015, in total paying out over $2 million. 2016 could be an even bigger year for the MOBA.