Valve released an announcement about changes introduced in Dota 2’s new matchmaking system. While details and an extended analysis of the effects can wait for later, here’s all the things you need to know immediately...
Party and Solo MMR Combined
Dota 2 is meant to be played as a team game, and Valve clearly felt as though this wasn’t accurately represented within the state of the game. It’s common knowledge that in matchmaking, party MMR isn’t considered a true indicator of skill, with some people using party just to have fun with friends, or as a testing ground. By merging Solo and Party, Valve has essentially removed the incentive to play alone to prove your true skill.
What isn’t completely clear yet, is if matchmaking will still be done with each team trying to match up parties against parties. Valve’s new matchmaking system leaves a few minute questions unanswered, but it’s clear that there might be a new way to start climbing the Dota ranked ladder.
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Cores, Supports and Ranked Roles for all
Again, in a move that will please support players across the world, there is now a value given to being a support player. Where it seemed like supports had a much harder time being able to climb up in the rankings, now their rank calculation is completely different.
Your support and core rankings will be determined separately, and will have different leaderboards. No longer are you going to have support mains who are forced to play core since no one else wanted to, or cores who are forced to ineffectively switch to supports.
At least, that’s what Valve hopes. There’s a possibility that support players may eventually be incentivised to climb by variations in medals to come through, but there should still be a little bit of a slower upwards momentum while you’re grinding away ranked with a crystal maiden, as opposed to a Templar Assassin.
Testing period
This is all still a test period for Valve. It has said it would ask for feedback towards the end of the summer season, to try and rework all changes needed. Where League of Legends has particular rules for challenger players (Dota’s equivalent would be Immortals) where you can’t go more than a duo queue, something similar might be implemented for the upper echelons of Dota.
Similar adjustments are likely to come through continually, as Valve admits this to be an experimental phase in their period. Play as much as you can, and ready up your feedback. Dota 2’s matchmaking changes could end up being exactly what you needed in your day to day play.
In its official announcement of the new matchmaking system, Valve said: "These experimental changes will remain active for the rest of this season for you to try out. Sometime after The International concludes, we’ll issue a call for community feedback to help guide the next steps in our efforts to increase matchmaking quality for everyone.
"We hope to have your support and patience through this experiment as well as subsequent changes towards the path of making a better overall matchmaking system."
Fans react to new matchmaking system
The new matchmaking system, announced on Tuesday, August 7th, has gone down well with most Dota 2 fans, at least according to a poll on Wykrhm Reddy's Twitter.
Picture: Valve
