[2021] Bracket Changes, and What's Next

Hi everyone,

Now that players have had a chance to experience Game Update 6.3, we wanted to follow up on a change we had made with PvP brackets. Currently, there are now two brackets instead of three.

Previous brackets:

• Levels 10-42
• Levels 43-74
• Level 75

Current brackets:

• Levels 10-74
• Level 75

The intention behind the change was to increase the number of PvP players available for the whole queue. We are in the process of analyzing the data for this change and also gathering feedback from players who participate in PvP.

We understand the impact that this had on our PvP community, and will be mindful of communicating changes such as consolidating the number of total queues and their intentions ahead of time before they are implemented.

While we are on the topic of PvP, we are aware of the questions regarding the future of PvP and what that looks like.

We briefly touched on some of the longer-term plans in a post last fall . Our overall goal for PvP is to support modes that accommodate safe, healthy competition. We believe that if we can do this, we can encourage more players to try out PvP and foster a growing, positive community. The more players we have playing PvP modes, the better quality the experience becomes overall. As a result, queue times are reduced and matchmaking algorithms have more players in the pool to work with. To get there, we have been working on what the future of PvP could look like.

We have made great progress here, and laid out a couple of initiatives in-line with the transition. First, were keeping the existing Seasonal structure and rewards plan through Season 14 to allow us the time to finish our exploration and implement the next version of PvP. Next, weve been gathering feedback from the community on what sort of changes you would like to see. We are exploring things like map voting/selection, accounting for classes in matchmaking, tighter brackets in matchmaking, and the reward structures in all of the current ranked and unranked modes.

Thank you all for your continued feedback!

-Chris

Hi everyone,

Based on the feedback we received from the community, the PvP brackets were reverted back to what they were prior to 6.3. The brackets are now 1-42, 43-74, and 75. This update was implemented with 6.3.1, but was missed in the patch notes. We are updating the patch notes to reflect this change.