This Is Heroes of the Storm's New Way to Avoid Pairing New and Veteran Players

Blizzard has revealed a small new tweak to the matchmaking process for Heroes of the Storm's Quick Match mode that could help to reduce the number of games that match up experienced players with newcomers.

In a post today on its forums, Blizzard outlined the new matchmaking rule: HotS now takes into account the number of Quick Match games players have played. In other words, someone who has three games under their belt will be less likely to play with or against someone who has played 300.

This is important for both types of players. While veterans might be able to offer useful tips, newbies aren't always given a fair chance to play and learn alongside other inexperienced players. Meanwhile, experienced players can be put in a frustrating position when they're matched up with someone who is unfamiliar with the most basic aspects of the game. HotS offers a more competitive, ranked mode for experienced players, Hero League, but it requires that they first own at least 10 heroes, which not everyone does.

The adjustment is already in place, so you should begin seeing an impact immediately. Blizzard noted that this isn't going to completely eliminate instances of new and veteran players being matched together. In particular, entering matchmaking with a party of players with varying levels of experience can throw things off.

One side effect of this, Blizzard said, is that it may now take longer to find a Quick Match. This is because the pool of players you're eligible to play with is now initially going to be smaller.

"While this change for Quick Match does not address all of the Heroes community's concerns about matchmaking, we are still listening to your feedback, monitoring internal data, and continuing to work on further improvements," Blizzard's post explained. "For now, we'd like to encourage you to play a few Quick Match games, and then head back here to the forums to let us know how it went."

Heroes of the Storm is in the middle of a Diablo-focused event called the Eternal Conflict. As part of this, another character from the Diablo series, The Skeleton King, will soon be added to the game.