Ever since Battlegrounds Parties were introduced in yesterday’s patch, a lot of players have (rightfully so) complained about unfairness of the 2-4 player queues. For example, if you’re a solo player who faces a 4 player party in ranked, they will work with each other – e.g. try to match power level when facing each other, giving each other intel on the players they face and so on. It makes your chances to win slimmer, and yet the matches still count as ranked.
Hearthstone Designer Dean “Iksar” Ayala replied to those concerns on reddit. In short, they’re collecting data and looking for a solution to make things more fair, such as adjusting the matchmaking of players grouped together (e.g. groups will face higher MMR opponents). The goal is for the expected rating adjustment to remain as it was before the patch, no matter if you’re queuing solo or with 3 other players. If that doesn’t work, there are other options to explore, such as disabling group queues above certain MMR or matching groups only with other groups.
Another, also very important piece of information is that players MMR will reset in Patch 18.4 (we don’t have a date for it yet, but given the usual update schedule it should be out in a month or so) and then in every other major BG patch. However, only the visible rating will reset – your hidden matchmaking ranking will remain the same. It makes the resets quite similar to how they work in Constructed – e.g. you’re taken back to 0 rating (in case of Constructed it’s R10 Bronze), but you still face people of roughly the same skill level. Both of your ratings should align again after 30-60 games according to Iksar. There’s no mention of something similar to “bonus stars” from Constructed, but I would imagine that high ranked players will get some sort of progression boost. MMR resets will get adjusted based on players feedback.
You can read his whole comment below:
We have two core goals directly relating to group queuing. One is to allow you to play with your friends when you want. The other is to create a fun and fair experience for all players involved in a game. Ideally, there is a solution that allows for both of these things to happen.
There are a bunch of potential solutions to solve group queue issues relating to competitive integrity. The TL:DR is there is some data collection involved in understanding the kind of advantage group players have over solo players so we can accurately matchmake and rating adjust. Once we have an accurate baseline of the advantage different skillsets of players get (4k, 6k, 10k, etc) by grouping together, we can adjust the matchmaking rating of those grouped players to create a fair experience. There are many more details about how the end of game rating calculation would work, but the general idea is that whether you queue up into a game with grouped players or solo players your expected rating adjustment end of game would be the same.
If this doesn’t work for whatever reason (actual or perceived fairness), there are many other paths we can go down. We can disable group queue, disable group queue about a certain MMR, only pair groups together, create a separate queue, etc, etc. All of these solutions involve some amount of downside that we’d like to avoid if there is an alternate solution with minimal downside.
Beyond 18.2, we have plans for a rating reset in 18.4 and we will reset again every major battlegrounds patch. Rating reset will also likely involve some iteration based on player feedback, so we’ll continue to adjust until players feel like we’re in a good place. In the interim, hope you are enjoying BG and you get really big pogos.
Matchmaking Rating: Your rating that we match you with Visual Rating: Your rating you see on your account
When reset happens your visual rating will go to 0 and your matchmaking rating will stay the same. You will progress from 0 for 30-60 games until you matchmaking rating and your visual rating are roughly aligned, at which point you will stay the same rating unless your skill level improves.
It’s very similar to how the star rating reset system works in constructed Hearthstone. We feel like that system was relatively successful because hardcore users zoom through the system pretty quickly and less hardcore users get to play in a system that is mostly progression based. It can feel pretty crappy if you are new bg player and your experience is just tanking your rating for your first X games.
