If you caught our post over this past weekend, then you also caught our plan to make a few changes to Ranked Season 1 play. Now that we’ve had a few more days to work on it (and gathered additional information), we are now ready (and have begun) to implement those changes.

What We Have Changed:

  • Starting later this evening, September 15, at 6pm PT/ 9pm ET, we will re-seed players into more accurate Divisions. Once this has happened, you may notice a jump in your RP and shifts out of the first Division of Bronze, Silver, and Gold into “II” or “III” based on your Preseason Matchmaking Rating (MMR)
    • Note: Players will only move up in rank because of the re-seed ; players who already surpassed their Preseason MMR will not move down and, instead, remain at their current standing
  • Preseason MMR and Skill “Uncertainty” have been restored to their previous levels, but with a new minimum Uncertainty so that your MMR doesn’t stagnate

This should improve the quality of Ranked matchmaking and remedy some of the issues caused by the initial Season 1 reset (which was creating matches with a wider skill variance than intended).

  • The Rank Points algorithm has re-enabled “Trending” so that, if you’re playing matches above your division, you will gain additional RP with Wins and lose less RP with losses. By default, the RP you gain or lose is based on match difficulty, but this is an additional measure for players whose skill (MMR) has outpaced their rank (RP)

What We’ll Be Watching

  • Matchmaking Quality. We will continue to observe the results of the changes we’ve highlighted above and fine-tune as needed if players experience a skill variance that’s too wide in Ranked games. We definitely don’t want to create match situations in which players only gain or lose 0-1 RP.
  • Rank Points System. We are still tuning and identifying specific situations where it might be more difficult than intended for players to gain RP, and we fully plan on addressing these situations as we encounter them. You should have already seen some changes to the RP system over the last 24 hours as we began to roll-out our initial changes (and we have seen very positive results, with better-quality matchmaking and RP rewards). As we move forward through Season 1, we will continue to improve the gameplay experience for all of our competitive players, and we appreciate you guys sticking with us.

Good luck!