Season 9 has started, and the Redraft has been implemented. It carries several implications for the Official Ladder.
REDRAFT
Players familiar with the board game will know this: redraft can be customized in many ways by adjusting the budget cap or bonus values.
For this first season, we’ve chosen to go with a redraft every 20 games, and the standard redraft budget cap of 1,300k. In this initial setup, a coach’s record (wins, losses, draws) will not impact their redraft budget.
This approach allows everyone to get familiar with the feature while we monitor its impact over the course of a full Official Ladder season.
Budget cap, win/draw bonuses, and even the frequency of redrafting, all of these settings will be open to adjustments in future seasons if we believe they can improve the overall experience
MATCHMAKING
We analyzed matchmaking data from recent seasons, reviewed community feedback, and considered the impact of both multi-queuing and redraft. Based on this, we believe the Official Ladder is now ready for a stricter matchmaking system designed to improve overall match balance.
Matchmaking has generally performed well in terms of wait times and SR/TV balance, but we recognize that match quality can suffer under certain conditions, particularly at the very top or bottom of the rankings, or during low-activity hours.
For Season 9, we are introducing changes to reduce the acceptable SR range between two teams, including hard limits that will prevent certain pairing altogether.
While this may lead to longer queue times in some cases, it should result in more competitive and balanced matches overall.
We strongly recommend queuing with multiple teams when playing during off-peak hours. We will continue to monitor these changes closely to ensure the best possible experience on the Official Ladder.
To sum up, the matchmaking changes in 2 ways:
Protecting un-redrafted teams (less than 20 matches) to play against redrafted teams (more than 20 matches).
Preventing teams to find very unbalanced matches, at the risk of increasing the waiting time.