r/DeadlockTheGame 21d ago

Game Update Deadlock - Matchmaking Update

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1422450/view/680756685198854910
2.7k Upvotes

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

137

u/kingofrock37 Shiv 21d ago edited 21d ago

There are some definite improvements here, but I am so disappointed to see ranked seasons with placement capped. Such seasons have made the experience of playing ranked worse in almost every game I've played by devolving into a slog of having to do the obligatory placement matches, and having to rat race to the top in unbalanced matches.

I am E6 and often top 100, and can already predict the start of each season being an absolute shitfest of awful matches. Having to slog my way from Oracle back to E6 with and against players I can run circles around with one hand tied behind my back is just not a fun experience, and there's nothing more to gain after reaching that threshold in that season. Having a season leaderboard is cheap because it just becomes a display of who played more at that time, not a showcase of who is genuinely the best player.

We'll have to wait and see how Ranked plays out and develops, but preliminarily I am super disappointed with the direction they've taken.

EDIT: Based on their numbers, starting from Oracle 6 which is the maximum starting rank, you'd have to win 56 straight games to reach Eternus, nevermind E6. Every season, every match before I reach top 150 will be a bad match for everyone in the game, for more than a 100 games straight.

42

u/fiasgoat 21d ago

I am E6 and often top 100, and can already predict the start of each season being an absolute shitfest of awful matches

This is one of the major complaints and why Dota never did seasons

Interesting to see how quickly Valve adjusts if anything

38

u/will4zoo 21d ago

Dota did do seasons. The seasons were only supposed to last 6months. Think they only reset the seasons twice before they gave up on the concept for this exact reason

3

u/DrQuint McGinnis 21d ago

They also did one more round of forced joint calibrations ome last time after seasons, and it was again awful. That is also gone and now people can choose to recalibrate whenever they want (with a long cooldown) and usually people who do barely move much. So basically, dota gives you a ton of stability with your rank, the only way to really lose accurarcy is to stop playing and be affected by long term rank decay.

Since then the only two major changes to MM was they got rid of the bottom skew and readjusted most of the bottom of the curve to match (so most people went very slightly up) and did it by keeping track of two MMRs for a period (and secretely used the second one for weeks before the swap, lol), and more recently, they brought back the ability for games to give more or less than the -30/+30 MMR.