Ranked Mode Overhaul Matchmaking - Frequently Asked Questions
Blizzard just posted an overview of frequently asked questions about the new ranked system and their answers, including the hot topic of if tanking your MMR will help or not. Read all the questions and answers below:
Quote from BlizzardHey everyone! We put together a general matchmaking FAQ here for our new ranked system to help answer questions you may have.
For general description of this new system, please refer to our Year of the Phoenix blog.
If you want to learn some basic concepts of matchmaking, here is our previous blog about matchmaking in Battlegrounds.
Q: How does matchmaking work for each season?
A: There are two matchmaking pools: matchmaking by rating (aka. MMR) and by rank.
When your star bonus multiplier is bigger than 1, or you are in Legend rank, you are (generally) in the first matchmaking pool; when your star bonus drops to 1, you are in the second pool.
Q: Why are there two matchmaking pools?
A: Since each player starts at the bottom of the ladder at start, we want fair matches for everyone (aka. win-rate close to 50%). At that time, your progression on ladder is protected by your star bonus, thus your net expected gain will be positive through the ladder. Once other players run out of star bonuses, matching by rank will allow for good players, or players who want to push themselves a bit, to be able to progress to a higher rank.
In short, having two matchmaking pools helps players progress in the ladder without having to grind as much, while still making most matches fair.
Q: If I “tank” my MMR at certain rank floor, will I be matched with easier opponents next season because you are matchmaking by MMR at the start?
A: No, in general you won’t. At the start of the season we will recover your MMR to certain threshold if it is dropped below that value, which is based on what your rank is in the previous season. Therefore, there would be no benefits to intentionally tank your MMR.
Q: How many stars bonuses do I get at the start of the season?
A: It depends on your current MMR and the rank you reached from your previous season, whichever gives a higher value. Generally, the minimal initial star bonuses you get for each rank floor you reached are:
Best Rank Minimal Initial Star Bonuses Bronze 10 2 Bronze 5 2 Silver 10 2 Silver 5 3 Gold 10 4 Gold 5 5 Platinum 10 6 Platinum 5 7 Diamond 10 8 Diamond 5 9 Legend 10
As you can see, every player starts with at least two stars bonuses.
Q: Do you reset MMR each season?
A: No, we do not.
Q: Will the value of my previous season’s MMR be exactly same as the new season?
A: Technically no, although the change will be very small and the “value order” will be kept (Player A whose MMR is larger than player B in the last season will still be ordered as such). Mathematically, a re-normalization process takes place at the start of each season to keep the distribution in a nice bell-shaped curve.
Q: If I missed one season, will I lose my star bonuses when I return?
A: No, you won’t.
Q: If I missed multiple seasons, will I lose star bonuses when I return?
A: Based on how long you are absent, there will be some small decay applied to your MMR. Therefore, you may (or may not) lose some star bonuses.
Q: Where do the win steak bonuses end?
A: Diamond 5.
yep, less stars now, less time grinding to legend.
Don't agree. Blizzard can stick up their nose that "50% winrate policy" .Climbing was much less frustrating in the previous system - for me at least
I feel like I have to react to this. From my perspective I can no longer have fun on ladder. For past months I almost didn't play ladder, I was just focusing on BG. But when I tried this stupid new ladder system, I only face people with Legend cardbacks, full golden decks, golden heroes. I didn't play that much last year, yet I face emoting tryhards now. Can someone explain? I mean I play Hearthstone since 2014 and I have so far 2 golden heroes and King Anduin. I have same bad experience in Standard and Wild. I don't think keeping the winrate of everyone to 50% is a good move. I mean this system makes sense on like bronze / silver, but then it should be just the rank and not some stupid MMR.
Seems like new players are more important that players playing for 5+ years... Thanks Blizzard
doesn't make sense what you are saying. You played almost only BG and now you are on MMR with legend players? This is ridiculous. You can face legend players (that were legend on March) only if you have 10 bonus stars. If a person does have a legendary card back - that doesn't mean he is a top skill player. Maybe he got legend 3 years ago and dumped HS and now he is back cause of the Hype around forthcoming DH and a year of Phoenix.
As for not having fun on ladder - what is the problem to have fun playing against full golden deck opponents? I know a lot of people who craft all golden cards just for themselves. It also doesn't mean that they are crazy hardcore grinders. I was legend previous season and all my opponents are the same level as i am. Yesterday i even faced the same opponents 2 games in a raw. That means new system works and i cant face for example bronze 5 on my way through diamond league. That means you can not also. Pretty fair for me. And also there are huge end-season prizes and first time prizes during the laddering. Thanks blizzard!
I suspect that they've initialized MMR based on your best finish as opposed to last month's performance - but regardless, you're wrong, you don't match based on number of bonus stars. When you have ANY Bonus stars, you will only match up against those with bonus stars and those at legend (matches done based on MMR, but that seems not to be producing reasonable matches, which makes sense when there's stupidly high variance combo decks and bad fun decks). As people lose bonus stars, you'll slowly morph into a pool of pretty much only legend players unless you manage to grind up to whatever rank it deems you deserve. And skipping seasons doesn't really help, as the decay sounds very minor.
My suspicions on initialization are based on difficulty skyrocketing with both STD, where I barely play and only play jank at low ranks, and Wild, where I used to push to R10 with a roughly 50% WR sketchy combo deck, having previously hit legend in wild and... not sure in STD, depends if it counts before that was a thing :P
read the article mate. it is clearly said:
Q: How does matchmaking work for each season?
A: There are two matchmaking pools: matchmaking by rating (aka. MMR) and by rank.
When your star bonus multiplier is bigger than 1, or you are in Legend rank, you are (generally) in the first matchmaking pool; when your star bonus drops to 1, you are in the second pool.
what the hell you are talking about refering to "reasonable mathes" ? you have stars - you go against players by MMR, you do not have stars - you go against people by rank.
And what I'm saying is that there's a big gap between rank 17-16 last season and the stuff I'm matching up against - it feels like my MMR in STD is heavily inflated compared to what it should be if it was based on recent performance.
I know that it matches based on MMR. It just doesn't seem to be doing that WELL. Probably due to high variance in decks I play. MMR based systems feel a lot better for more deterministic and less random games.
Well they gave me 10 stars, but I ended up rank 9 last season and in Wild. In Standard I was like rank 18. I managed to hit legend 2 years ago. So I guess for some reason I'm in the upper most bracket, perfect.
There is not a gap, people are just lower ranked right now because everyone got put in the bottom bracket.
Chill your tiddies and give the good players a few days to climb out
And he still gonna get them because of his mmr until star bonus ends. Unless he loses - a lot.
Wait, so at legend you get 10 bonus stars? I thought they said 11 was the max bonus star multiplier. Is that last star dependant purely on mmr? How will we be able to know whether or not we have enough for the 11th star. Is it at high legend?
Legend players get 10 stars. Top 200 legend should have got 11 stars.
Bronze 8 is snowflipper penguin... How do You expect me to rank up now...
Great change overall! And it's much more enjoyable and rewarding.
Also win steak in last question XD
absolutely on your side mate. I got several classic packs for the first time rewards and opened legendary hunter card yesterday. This is already better than rank 5 end-season reward :)
So, those with bonus stars and those at legend are the only ones using the MMR system. So if I don't use all my stars until late in the season, I'll be matched up with legend players whilst at bronze 10? Even harder to use standard as 'ah, may as well do some qs on the ladder with jank'. Not that that was ever great, with the R20 top decks, but at least they weren't generally great pilots.
Yes, forget about trying meme decks as long as you have those star bonuses. You're only facing try-hards.
Once you get rid of them you can start having fun again. Until next season that is when everything repeats, because losing you're star bonus even tho you don't play for months is impossible.
All these shady rank systems.
Just let me play against someone with the same rank as me. If i'm better i'll rank up, if i'm not i will downrank. Problem solved.
A simple system is too easily exploited by experienced players wanting easy wins, which ruins it for new players.
You might be willing to play it straight but there are a lot of experienced players trying to play "for fun" or just to straight up farm, either of which translate to repeatedly smashing less established players.
They want to add some fun to the system besides the usual up and down.
This should have been achieved with special ladder quests not the current absurd streaks and meaningless bonus pool climb however.
Anyway, they would change it in an year I guess and in the meantime we'll see how the social experiment with HS players adopting "co-op" goes.
Don't they have a separate ladder now? Like the rank 25 to 20 from before.
And do you ever see the rank of your opponent anymore? Or just the name.
Huge red flag to me, at least before you had some idea who your opponent was. Now it's just: "trust us bro it's 50/50 we promise"