Upcoming Heroes of the Storm Post-BlizzCon AMA - Thursday, November 8, 2018

RANKED MODE MERGING

Hi! First of all, you all do a great job and it was a blast to see what was shared with us at Blizzcon. Regarding the ranked ladder merging into one, I think that's a very elegant decision that will unify and make the ranked mode more straightforward while actually still keeping it the way we are used to: solo queue with solo players or normal queue without restrictions. With that in mind, I'd like to ask a few things related to this merging:

1) I've seen plenty of streamers worried about this : How is the leaderboard going to work? Will there be a SOLO MMR ranking and a TEAM MMR ranking or will they both be unified into a single leaderboard with MMR changes from playing either solo or team affecting the same rating? I ask this because it is notoriously seen of people abusing "fabricated bronze Smurfs" to team with and raise their own ratings easily or other methods of... "account carrying" in the team-rank system.

2) With the previous issue in mind, have you considered adding restrictions between ranks that can team up together for ranked play? For example, a GM MMR player being unable to team up with a fabricated bronze account due to the huge MMR discrepancy.

3) In the past you guys mentioned being hesitant of adding swaps into HL draft as it could lead to toxicity and implementing it in an elegant way as a challenge. After the success in the new Team League draft mode where pick order is not pre-established, have you considered adding it to Solo League as well as a subtle way of letting people "swap"? I know that many "heavy" HL players and pros have been sad this feature is still not implemented or talked about.

Thank you so much for your time! -Mihr

/r/heroesofthestorm Thread