Already in December, shortly before the start of the new ranking season, Blizzard made several updates and hotfixes to the player assignment and placement in Heroes of the Storm worked. Unfortunately, some of the changes resulted in bugs and players reported problems. Some players struggled with negative rank adjustments after several ranked games and the system rated them as lower than would have been correct.

Heroes of the Storm - Developer Statement

Blizzard is already working on a solution for how Community Manager Xenramek posted in the forum a few days ago:

Commissioned by lead game designer Travis McGeathy

We have had a lot of reports lately from professional players who have received persistent negative Personal Rank Points at the end of matches. Therefore, we would like to explain to you in more detail why this is the case. With the changes to the player allocation this season, the curve for determining the number of players in the individual ranks has also turned out to be a bit flatter than usual. That pushed more players either in one direction or the other and resulted in a larger proportion of the players ending up in the bronze or master league. Until now, the system has always regulated itself. Players in the bronze league were awarded positive points to compensate for this, while players in the master league received negative points.

This behavior balanced things out again, but we don't find it exactly motivating to constantly receive negative personal ranking points. For this reason, we have deactivated the self-regulation function. Instead, we allow the system to balance the distribution at the start of the next season with the usual normalization for each new season. Thus, the additional players in the bronze league will receive the rank of silver and the surplus players in the master league will change to the rank of diamond. We would like to thank the players for alerting us to this issue and we apologize for the confusion and frustration caused by these adjustments.

Heroes of the Storm - Performance-based player assignment has been switched off for the time being

Even so, the problems led many Heroes of the Storm Players to frustration and incomprehension. Because Blizzard did not comment clearly on the problems for a long time and provided clarity. The developers apologize for this and there is one as a small compensation epic loot chest. However, these are only available for players who have completed at least one ranked game in the Heroes or Team League between the start of the season and January 31, 2018.

In general, the new system for line-based player assignment needs a little more time to level off. Since the system adapts itself, i.e. learns, so to speak, it first needs as many as possible Data and results. The Heroes of the Storm Team has deactivated the performance-based player assignment at the moment and revised some minor bugs. It is only activated when the team is sure that there are no further problems and that the rest of the ranking season will not be affected.