by dota 2The latest update, released on Wednesday (July 6), introduces several changes to public matchmaking.
Before you get too excited, developer Valve Software has expressed that these changes are experimental and therefore may not be permanent.
The new changes focus on improving matchmaking for full five-man groups, allowing full stacks to play against teams that don’t field full groups and allowing teams to lose matches.
Players can find the full changelog on the Steam website, though the changelog itself is relatively short, consisting of three changes in total.
In the past, the dota 2 the matchmaker only allowed full groups of five players to play against other groups of five.
This sometimes caused overly long queue times for parties of five, as well as unbalanced games in some situations where there weren’t many full parties available to play against.
Valve has changed the rules to allow groups of five people to queue up on any valid opposing team. This means that five-man teams can play against a group made up of two-man and three-man groups.
This change encourages players to queue up with as many friends as possible, but it also means that a group of two players will play matches against groups of five, which seems a bit unfair.
The second matchmaking change is ambiguous, as Valve is simply stating that full party matchmaking will be faster. This probably means that the MMR caps when parties are looking for matches have been relaxed, though we can’t be sure. Hopefully Valve will clarify what it means in the future.
When can players lose?
The latest change to matchmaking is allowing entire groups to surrender in public matches, something that in the past could only be done by private lobbies.
Only a group of five players can choose to surrender and they are only allowed to do so after 30 minutes have passed in the game.
Teams that choose to surrender have 10 seconds to change their minds, the same time given to private lobbies and professional matches.
not like others MOBAs titles like League of Legends, dota 2 never had a surrender option for normal matchmaking games, with the feature previously only available in private lobbies and professional games.
While a reason for this was never officially given, it is widely understood by the community that the lack of a surrender option is intended to encourage players to fight to the bitter end.
While this can stretch games out longer, it also gives losing teams a chance to bounce back.
Also, unlike League of Legendssnowball in dota 2 It is not a guarantee of victory.
dota 2 has multiple comeback mechanics built into the game, giving losing teams a chance to revive while forcing winning teams to play with their toes to avoid one.
While the option to let parties surrender is understandable, hopefully Valve will maintain those restrictions in the future. dota 2 is a dynamic game and pub games are full of amazing comebacks and heartbreaking throws.
Pray that Valve will avoid allowing random pub players to give up in the future, as that would deprive players of the chance to come back and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
Otomo is a long-time game enthusiast and caster. He has been playing since he was 10 years old and is the biggest fan of Dota 2.
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