During the official Blizzard stream at Gamescom, the newest Starcraft support hero was revealed along side new matchmaking announcements and other quality of life changes.
Dustin Browder and Kaeo Milker showed up on stream to answer some questions and even unveil some more upcoming content. Among the list of features, to everyones surprise another new hero was revealed. Check out the clip below for the magic medic moment starting at 22:00.
The Medic is very much inspired from the Starcraft and Starcraft II interations of the character. One heroic already revealed is the Medivac, that as seen below allows allied heroes and The Medic to quickly move to any location on the battleground.
Inside the Medivac
Along with this exciting reveal, Browder also went a bit into the matchmaking problems that players are expressing. He explained that part of the problem comes from the fact that their system currently takes a while to judge a player's skill level and then even more time getting them to the associated rank. They plan to change this by putting new players in a rank-less trial period while they have the system figure out their actual skill. After around 20-25 placement matches however, the system will be certain enough of the player's skill to actually immediately put the player in the rank associated with that level of skill. This fix will hopefully stop the game from putting you in games with inferior (or superior) other players after the initial placement phase.
A final point of change that will be introduced is the seperation of 5 man teams from the rest of matchmaking. No longer will there be any possibility of playing against a 5-man team unless you are also part of your own.
When asked about the Grandmaster League, Browder confirmed that it is still 'weeks and months' away.
Medic concept art
The stream finished its Heroes of the Storm section with three questions from fans:
One fan asked what the release plan is for the new heroes, and if we can expect to get more than one hero in the same patch. They got the answer that they are still planning on releasing heroes every three or four weeks. They did however state that both the new Map, Infernal Shrines, and the Monk will join the PTR on Monday the 10th of August!
The second fan wanted to know if Blizzard had an idea of how many maps they wanted to add to the game. While Blizzard had no number in mind, they did already hear that the current number of 8 made the game a bit complex for newer players to master. As such, they are very much researching good ways to introduce map rotations to the game.
As a final question, a fan wondered if they could change bundles in the store so that you are not overpaying for a bundle if you already own part of it. The Blizzard developers actually had good news because starting soon people will pay the proper price for any bundle through the introduction of 'dynamic bundles'. The price of any bundle you buy will be lowered in proportion to the percentage of the bundle that you already own. They even stated they will find a way to give back to players that paid to much for bundles in the past, possibly handing out gold rewards.
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