UIThis update includes a new version of the matchmaker. The matchmaking pools are no longer split between normal and ranked, there is only one primary matchmaking mode and there are no limited hours.
Badges will update immediately whenever you gain or lose enough MMR to change badges. You no longer have to wait a week or play a certain game count. There will sometimes be monthly global maintenance updates where we readjust the global curve based on the population, cheaters banned, recalculation adjustments, etc (this will be done as needed and not necessarily every month).
Hero MMR is now used in the Matchmaker. Each player will have a "core" MMR and your MMR per hero will be offsets of your core MMR. When you queue, we will match you based on that hero's MMR. So if you are unfamiliar or play worse with a given hero, you will be put in an easier match than your usual. Judgement on your skill and familiarity with a hero will be based on the 20 most recent games with that hero. In your profile, we have UI that shows you what the matchmaker thinks your relative ranking for each hero is (give us feedback on this, we expect to iterate on this calculation).
Leaderboards are also included per region (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania). There is a top 1000 Core MMR leaderboard as well as a top 1000 Hero MMR leaderboard for each hero (for each region separately). To qualify for being considered in leaderboards in general, you must have 50 games played in the last 30 days. To qualify for a specific hero's leaderboard, you must have played at least 20 games on that hero in the past 30 days.
UIYou can queue as any party size, however there are a few details. If the range of skill in your party is too wide, the amount of MMR you can gain will be reduced somewhat based on the degree. This is especially true if it’s a player we don't know anything about (like a very high mmr player queuing with a "new" player, we will minimize updates to the known player until we are more confident we can trust the skill of that party overall).
The previous limit on high MMR party sizes is increased from 2 to 3. This applies to Ascendant 1 and above. This is the old limit we had on disallowing too many high MMR players to be in the same party together, for matchmaking quality reasons.
Given the updated no hour limits, if we think a match is a bad quality (like 5am games where there weren't a lot of players to pick from), we will weigh the match less heavily towards a rank update relative to what we would do with an average quality match.
If you prefer playing with only solos, there is a convar (mm_prefer_solo_only true) you can use.
UIWhen queuing as a party, you will have an option to override the default balance oriented lane assignment system and make the system prioritize putting your party members in the same lanes together.
UIAdded Swap Lanes feature. During the rooftop and zipline phase at the start of the game, you can now request to swap lanes with your teammates by clicking the button below their portrait on the scoreboard. If the other player accepts your request, you will immediately be swapped. You may decline an incoming request by right clicking it.
UIThere is an option to notify you anytime your rank levels up. There is also an option to show the average badge of each team for the post game.
