The MMR refers to MatchMakingRating, which shows you in what bracket you are placed among the other competitive players.
This mode is aimed at experienced players who want to play in a more competitive environment and know their matchmaking rating (MMR). Dota 2 matchmaking has always calculated MMR and used it to form matches; in ranked matchmaking the MMR becomes visible.
Here’s what you need to know about ranked matchmaking:
- Ranked matchmaking is unlocked after approximately 150 games.
- All players in the party must have unlocked the mode.
- Currently, only All Pick, Captains Mode, and Captains Draft are available.
- You may not participate in ranked matchmaking while in the low priority pool.
- Coaches are not allowed in ranked matchmaking.
- Matches played in normal matchmaking do not impact your ranked matchmaking MMR, and vice versa.
- Your ranked MMR is visible only to you and your friends. The MMR used for normal matchmaking is not visible.
- When you first start using ranked matchmaking, you will enter a calibration phase of 10 games. During this time, your ranked MMR will not be visible.
Your Matchmaking Rating (MMR)
Dota 2 uses standard techniques to quantify and track player skill.Each player has an MMR, which is a summary metric that quantifies your skill at Dota 2. After each match, your MMR gets updated based on what happened in that match. In general, when you win, your MMR will go up, and when you lose, your MMR will go down. Win/loss is the primary criteria used to update MMR, but individual performance also plays a role. It is possible for an individual MMR to increase after a loss or decrease after a win, but in general the winning team’s average MMR will increase and the losing team’s MMR will decrease.
New accounts and those playing in Ranked Matchmaking for the first time have high uncertainty. Higher uncertainty allows larger adjustments after each match, and lower uncertainty leads to smaller adjustments. Together, the MMR and uncertainty can be interpreted as a probability distribution of performance in your next game; the MMR itself serves as the mean of this distribution and the uncertainty is its standard deviation. If the match outcomes (both the win/loss and individual performance) repeatedly match the expectations, the uncertainty tends to decrease until it reaches a floor. A surprising match outcome will tend to cause an increase in uncertainty.
There are actually four types of MMRs for each player:
- Normal matchmaking, queuing solo
- Normal matchmaking, queuing with a party
- Ranked matchmaking, queuing solo
- Ranked matchmaking, queuing with a party
Each of the two ranked MMRs has its own calibration period. Under certain circumstances, the calibration may need to be recalibrated, if Valve thinks the MMR is inaccurate.
Note that this distribution is from normal matchmaking. The players who participate in ranked matchmaking will be more skilled, more experienced players. Any given player will have different expectations and play the game differently in ranked matchmaking compared to normal matchmaking.
The ultimate goal of automated matchmaking in Dota 2 is for players to enjoy the game. The matchmaker seeks matches with the following properties (listed in no particular order):
- The teams are balanced. (Each team has a 50% chance to win.)
- The discrepancy in skill between the most and least skilled player in the match is minimized. This is related to team balance, but not the same thing.
- The discrepancy between experience (measured by the number of games played) between the least experienced player and the most experienced player is minimized. More on this below.
- The highest skill Radiant player should be close to the same skill as the highest skill Dire player.
- Each team contains about the same number of parties. For example, the matchmaker tries to avoid matching a party of 5 against against 5 individual players.
- Players’ language preferences contains a common language. Lack of a common language among teammates’ language preferences is strongly avoided. Lack of a common language across the whole match is also avoided, but less strongly.
- Wait times shouldn’t be too long.
What About Parties?
When parties are involved, things get a bit more complicated. Parties often contain players with a wide discrepancy in skill and experience. For the purposes of measuring the goodness-of-fit criteria listed as #2 and #3 above, the matchmaker assigns each party aggregate skill and experience numbers. It is these party numbers that are used rather than the individual. In general, when a party with a wide skill range is matched with a solo player, the solo player will have skill and experience near the average of the party. If you notice that one player seems to be significantly less skilled than the other players in the match, it is very likely that they are partied with a high skilled player.
Also, when players are in a party, they typically perform better than players of equivalent skill who don’t know each other. We account for this in two ways. First, your skill is tracked when queuing alone separately from when queuing in a party. Second, the effective MMRs is adjusted based on the number of players in the party and the distribution of skill within the party.
Conclusion
Hopefully this blog post has given you some insight into how the matchmaker currently works, as well as how the success is evaluated. Like most everything else, matchmaking is subject to constant reevaluation. Matchmaking will never be perfect, don’t give up easily !
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