Dota 2 matchmaking update changes party queuing, ranked medals

Valve has once again shaken up Dota 2’s matchmaking system.

The latest Dota 2 update rolled back some of the changes made earlier this year after sustained complaints from players. In particular, Valve is overhauling party queuing in ranked matchmaking.

Though the company tried to improve the social aspect of the game by making it easier to play with friends in a ranked environment, this new system introduced flaws that impacted many high-level players. As a result, Valve is making some serious changes to how players are matched against each other in order to fix some of the frustrating and exploitable issues this created.

Matchmaking with friends is much harder in Dota 2

In a surprising move, Valve rolled out some rank-specific changes that directly impact Immortal players.

“Due to the unusually high frequency of matchmaking abuses found in party games in high level matches, we’re adding a new rule to party matchmaking for Immortal ranks to help reduce some of the negative behaviors that have become common at these ranks and to help make solo queuing more viable,” the update reads.

Similar to Battle Cup games, parties that include an Immortal player will be considered a full party of Immortal players. Valve notes that this is likely to adversely impact parties that involve players that coincidentally happen to have large disparities in skill, but dismisses this tradeoff “because matches are unlikely to be of high quality anyways.”

Additionally, party size will also be addressed. Parties of five will exclusively be matched against other parties of five, while players queuing solo will be partied against one party of two at most.

Players no longer able to hide rank after Dota 2 update

For the fourth season, medals have returned to having just five stars rather than seven. Valve also confirmed that it had implemented mechanisms that caused rank ranges for a specific medal to shift over the course of the season. MMR values will now be constant and Valve will use the same curve it had in the final months of the previous seasons.

There’s a catch, though. Medals will no longer remain in place based on the player’s high points during the season. As the player’s MMR decreases, their medal will change to reflect this.

Medals will be adjusted for players who already calibrated to accommodate this change.

Valve encourages players to actively give their feedback regarding this new matchmaking system. Players should include their match IDs for review.

More information can be found on the official Dota 2 blog.