Valve Removes Immortal Draft For Players Under 8500 MMR

Valve has released an update to their Dota 2 match making system. Moving forward, Immortal Draft will only be used in matches that have a player with 8500+ MMR. This is a big increase from the previous 6500 MMR cutoff.

The new system comes with other changes, that include no more parties for ranked games, as well as preventing others from watching replays.

Parties cannot play in Immortal Draft anymore

Where my friends at?(Credit: Valve)

Immortal Draft works by making the two highest MMR players in the game captains. The captains take turns picking players for their side, in the hopes of a balanced match.

It's a good idea in theory, but it often resulted in the captains aiming for the lowest MMR team possible, to maximize their gain and minimize their losses. The matchmaking ignored roles when picking players, resulting in some lobbies having too many cores and not enough supports, or vice-versa.

Valve still believes that the system works. Instead of removing this draft style, they instead moved it up to 8500 MMR and above. Parties can no longer que together, an interesting fix for MMR inflation.

In the past, parties can que together and aim to be on opposite sides. Then each player takes turns throwing a game, while the winner doubles down. Players would trade wins and climb MMR.

You can't do that if you're under 8500 MMR now. As parties will always be on the same side. And above 8500 MMR, you can't even party together. It's an interesting approach but two friends can simply que at the same time and most likely end up together anyway.

No more Pro replays for you!

We're all veiled ones now. (Credits: Valve).

A controversial change for the community is that matches above 8500 MMR are now private. Players can't watch how the pros play unless it's on their streams or in professional matches. You can also tune in to matches live, but you have to catch them as they happen.

This has drawn mixed responses from the community. While some see it as a way for players to keep their strategies private, others see it as removing access to a valuable learning resource.

The pro scene has yet to react, but Filipe "Astini" Astini, the coach of Parivision, sees this as a win.

"If you were going to face us, you'd see that in the last 25 rankeds 9Class played 10 venom, 10 NS and 5 others. Then you get to the game and it's easy, just ban venom and NS.

Or worse... he invented NS 4, then in our next game they first picked it against us, because, “I'll see what else he's been playing, NS, it must be good, I'll try it out.”

In other words, it valued those who identified and copied strategies the fastest. Identifying was even the easiest thing in the world. It also valued those who smurfed. Liquid for example. Then you don't know what they're training.

In theory, we'll now be able to watch a lot more original and creative team strategies in championships. Because before you either had to develop in scrims (very difficult, because with the high level of Dota you need several matches with the hero to master it well) or you had to develop in Smurfs (breaking the rules)."

One thing this will definitely hurt is websites that use Dota 2 data. Private matches means we won't have access to what the best players are picking or how they build heroes.

There are a lot of changes hero and we aren't sure how to feel about it. Private matches seem like an overkill, while moving Immortal Draft to 8500 MMR is nice, but an overall band aid on a bigger problem. We hope that the system works or that Valve gives us a bigger update in the near future.

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Featured Image Source: Valve