Dustin Browder recently confirmed that the Bronze - Grandmaster tiers seen in games like StarCraft II will be replacing the often criticized Hero League ranks.
The Hero League ranking system has been criticized for a long time now. Whether it's the top solo que players citing poor match making, or the popular thought that 'rank 1 doesn't matter', it was clear that something needed to change. Most of us can cite from personal experience how strange it felt to be ranked through the unique level 1-50 system: once you get rank 1 (which isn't that hard to do) what is there left to do. Risk losing rank from a loss? And what does this rank even mean?
When your ranking system feels more like a grind and less like a serious climb, motivation to play ranked matches reaches an all time low. To combat this, Dustin Browder has revealed a new "Bronze - Grandmaster" system will be implemented.
In the above table, you can see how the system works in StarCraft II. Grandmaster is an elite group that only the top 1,000 players at a time can obtain. As you go lower down the ranks, the numbers start to resembles a normal bell curve, with most players being around the Gold level. I'd wager that players will prefer this type of system, as it gives clear goals to work towards and a "God tier" league that helps differentiate the true pro's from the rest of us.
A very, very small percentage of players will ever reach Grandmaster and Master, and that isn't a bad thing. Heroes tried something different with a 1-50 ranking that allowed most players to reach the highest level. But as the saying goes, when everyone is special, no one is.
Blizzard developers have been very transparent over the last couple months and we should expect by now that every problem the community complains about, they are aware of. Browder's reveal of this new feature is further proof of this.
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