A DOTA 2 Pubber’s Look Into The Upgraded Matchmaking and MMR System

One of the biggest updates in recent years for DOTA 2 dropped just yesterday. This update is targeted squarely at the matchmaking system in the game, and is set to overhaul the existing MMR (matchmaking rank) system to prioritize team play.

Prior to this update, the MMR of a player was split into solo MMR, for solo games, and team MMR, for playing with a team of friends. With this update, Valve has scrapped this concept entirely, instead turning to a ‘Core MMR’ and ‘Support MMR’ model. These two ranking numbers are influenced by the kind of roles that a typical DOTA 2 player engages in, theoretically ensuring better team composition and coordination even in solo matchmaking.

Players will then be matched on the basis of either their Core or Support MMR, depending on their chosen position. Moreover, each of these MMR types have their own leaderboard, with current ranks being carried forward. However, Valve has also stated that these changes are experimental, and, if deployed in the future, will feature a separate initiation phase for ranking.

While these changes are monumental, the experience in the game for regular players is vastly changed. To discover the impact of this change on the Indian DOTA 2 gaming community, LXG got in touch with some players to ask them what they thought of this update.

Thoughts on the Update

To know about the effect of the update on avid players of the game, we spoke to a variety of players, from pubbers to professionals at LXG, Indiranagar. Ishant ‘Dexstar’, a 3.8k MMR pub player who usually plays position 4 safelane, praised the update. However, he also had some suggestions, stating, “It’s really good but people need to follow it. It doesn’t matter when you queue up as support and pick carry. There should be a strict restriction that if you are playing support, you pick a support and not anything else.” 

Anand ‘Shadowmoon’, a 3.5k MMR pub player with a preference for position 1 and 2, was all praise for the patch. He said, “I think it’s really good. This should have been introduced in DOTA 2 at least 2 to 3 years ago. It was there in LoL for a very long time, its come in DOTA 2 now.”

It’s much better, I’m happy as a mid player. I definitely support it, it has to go in this direction.

Shadowmoon

Santosh ‘UnknownTherapist’, a player with an MMR of 4.9k who has 8 years of experience in the professional scene and 14 years of experience in pubs, opposed the update. He stated, “I don’t like the new update. More or less, people aren’t doing what is actually asked. If you queue on something, they don’t do it. I’ve queued 5 games, in all 5 games no one picked for a role they are actually sitting on.”

He also said, “The punishing system should be completely different. If they are selecting a role, they should only get those roles as options. I don’t see why they are given the liberty of choosing a different role.”

Opponent Skill and Team Play

The update as a whole is geared towards improving the matching experience, for both team play and equally-skilled opponents. We asked their respondents for their opinion on this, as well as their experience in the game. 

Dexstar stated, “Some of the games I feel like my opponents are doing what they are supposed to, my teammates are doing the role they picked. Not all of the games though. Out of 10 games, you get 7 games where people are doing what they are supposed to do. The other 3 games are mixed up.”

Shadowmoon also claimed that there was a difference in the matched teams, stating, “I guess they have improved. 3k players are much better now. Its gone one step ahead, where 4k players used to play like 3k, now it’s the other way around. Because of this, at least people are sticking to their own role.”

He stated that there was a huge difference in team collaboration, stating, “Definitely, a huge difference in the collaboration between teammates. Teammates are instantly giving me wards and tango, people are tryharding more. It should have been like this 5 years ago.”

UnknownTherapist, on the other hand, stated that there was no difference, stating, “In skill, there’s not much of a difference. When you play 5 on 5, one guy is good in your team, one guy is good in the other team, the rest of them are fillers.”

I don’t see many good players in the opposition, regardless of their ranking system. Even now, you don’t get matched fairly.

UnknownTherapist

Conclusion

The general consensus regarding the patch is that it is good for the game. However, when considering the overall outcome of the update, it is clear that Valve has some improvements it needs to iron out. Enforcing the pick selection according the the chosen role is a sorely needed addition, as it is one of the biggest problems players have with the patch.

However, Valve has made it clear that player feedback is an integral part of the update. Several controversial features, such as marking certain role picks as ‘Faster Queue Times’ and defaulting to picking all roles, have already been changed. It is left to see what the final state of the game will be.