Dota 2 just made a major changes in the Matchmaking focusing on improvement for all players including restoration of the Solo Queue and a new requirement before joining Ranked Matched and other adjustments.
The new changes ensure a quality matchmaking as it’s a core component of an enjoyable match in Dota 2, and it addresses several issues that affect players in queuing for a game.
New Requirement before joining Ranked Matched
Players now have to register a unique phone number to their Steam account in order to play the Ranked Matches.
This is to avoid players using multiple accounts in the game that create negative matchmaking experience at all MMR brackets, and their goal is to add a new measure to reduced spam and abuse players from joining the game. Also, having an active primary account will have a positive effect on both Ranked and Unranked match in Dota 2.
Starting today, all players has two weeks to comply with the new requirement. Because on May 4th, players who didn’t register their phone number can be no longer eligible to play Ranked matches. A phone number can also be removed in their account, but it takes three months to take effect the changes – this is to ensure and prevent abuse by using the same number in multiple accounts. Note: Online services that were using a virtual phone number for activation are not allowed in steam, don’t ever try as Valve put a strict policy in this case.
SOLO QUEUE
Dota 2 just returns its first Solo Queue. Solo players can now play Ranked match against single players too. Any players who will select this type of matched will be queued against with other ten solo players from queuing.
Party Changes in MMR
Now, if a player’s Solo MMR is higher than their Party MMR, queuing in a party will result in assigning a higher MMR to the player. So if you join party MMR and your solo MMR is a little bit higher, you will assign a higher MMR to the matchmaking to ensure a quality match for both teams.
Match Making Behavior and Bots
The update also intends to remove undesirable behavior in the matchmaking pool both in Ranked Matches and Unranked matches.
The first one is in the low-priority mechanism. They now add a duration-based ban on the top of the game count based low priority requirement. With this, the ban will add a threshold of a few hours and increases up to four days for players who are frequently in low priority.
Intentional feeding and ruining the game are also addressed on this update, they’ve added a new way to detect clear cases of intentional feeding. So say goodbye to players who intentionally feed their matched just because they don’t like their team or other childish behavior. They will apply strict punishment to players who violates this rule.
And lastly, to players who are using boots are now permanent ban if they’re detected. This should resolve the issue in which bots account are joining matchmaking for MMR and gives a negative effect on the gaming experience.
Regional Changes
Ranked Matchmaking will be no longer available in South Africa, India and Dubai. This is because of low numbers of Ranked population in this region, while unranked population are growing and need to split the user base into ranked and unranked queues to prevent abuses. They’ve detected other players are pointing in this region to earn MMR quickly as many new players are in ranked matches that gives them advantage of winning the game. Although, they can still play Ranked Match by just pointing to other nearby regions.