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Blizzard Entertainment will introduce an unranked draft mode in an upcoming update for Heroes of the Storm, the studio announced. The new style of play will come as part of a larger revamp of the game's ranked system, and Blizzard hopes that it becomes players' preferred Heroes of the Storm mode.
Features included in unranked draft include Hero League's ban system, which allows players to ban certain characters from appearing in their random matches. The mode will also come without party restrictions and include its own matchmaking rating.
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Drafting is currently only offered in Heroes of the Storm's more competitive ranked mode. Introducing the system, and particularly its banning features, to the less intense unranked modes will offer a wider variety of players to try out the system. To ensure that matches remains efficient with the new unranked draft mode, Blizzard will tweak players' matchmaking ratings, in an effort to create faster wait times and fairer games across a wide variety of players.
"Our hope is that Unranked Draft will be the preferred queue for players looking to draft with a few friends or play in a more structured environment than Quick Match but without the pressures of ranked play," Blizzard said in the post.
The major ranked play update, which will also kick off the multiplayer online battle arena's first competitive season, will arrive in Heroes of the Storm during the week of June 14. Along with the new mode, it will come with a tiering system and other features.
