The New Frontiers: Matchmaking
Let’s be honest: There are eight billion people on the planet, and 99.99% of them are terrible at Dota. This means matchmaking can be a challenge, especially if you’re good at Dota, and like playing with people who are almost but hopefully not quite as good at Dota as you are. We’ve done a bunch of work and a bunch of math to improve the quality of our matchmaking across the board, for players of all skills levels.
Full Update Information Link: https://www.dota2.com/newfrontiers?v=2
MATCHMAKING WITH CONFIDENCE
Matchmaking Rating (MMR) is really just made of two numbers: Rank and Rank Confidence. Your Rank is an estimate of your skill, and your Rank Confidence is our confidence in that estimate. When you play a match, we adjust your Rank based on whether you win or lose. Your Rank Confidence also goes up, because now we have more data.
UNDESIRED CLUMPING: THE WORST KIND OF CLUMPING
Dota has traditionally used a modified version of the Elo algorithm to implement Rank and Rank Confidence changes. But over time we’ve noticed a few problems with our approach. For one example, the distribution of MMRs has gradually shifted lower, causing an undesired clumping in the 0-1000 MMR range. Another problem was that players who took a break and returned were having a hard time getting back to an accurate MMR, because their previous skill level was no longer representative.
NEW AND IMPROVED CLUMPING
To address this, we’re switching to a different algorithm called Glicko, which should let you quickly and accurately get matched with other players at a similar skill level. On the math side, Glicko lets us better factor a player’s Rank Confidence into our calculations, resulting in more accurate decisions about Rank gains and losses.
The switch to our new matchmaking system will feel a little like the start of a new matchmaking season:
- All players will be placed back into a short calibration mode, initially seeded by their previous rank.
- Calibration is no longer a fixed number of matches. Instead, a player is considered calibrated whenever their Rank Confidence is above a certain threshold.
- Upon calibration, it is likely that you will end up with a different medal than you had before. However, even if your medal changes significantly, you should expect to be matched with players of a similar skill level.
- Matches will no longer have a fixed MMR gain/loss. It will be variable based on a number of factors, including the Ranks and Rank Confidence of the participants. However, we will cap the gain/loss per match to prevent particularly negative outcomes.
- A player’s Rank Confidence will slowly lower over time if the player does not play matches.
We’ve been running both matchmaking systems simultaneously behind the scenes for a while now to help us build confidence in these changes. We understand that accurate MMR is only one of many factors that impact match quality, and like all changes in this space we’re interested in hearing your feedback.
IMMORTAL MATCHMAKING
At Immortal rank, knowing the other players, gelling with them, and choosing a nice balance of roles is more important than just MMR. So we’ve redesigned matchmaking at the Immortal level to account for that.
Matches in the Immortal ranks won’t use pre-made teams anymore. Instead, two captains will get to draft the other eight players onto each team, making your team more impactful than if you’d just relied on MMR to assign lineups. So if your match sucks now, you’ve got no one to blame but yourselves, Immortals.
See more: Gaming Midium PC Games, Gaming Midium Mobile Games, Gaming Midium Console Games
