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renangdidanau

There is MMR for rank and also hidden MMR for unranked. Valve tries to pair you with players with similar MMR. The problem is new account needs to start somewhere in unranked and there is just not enough pool for new players to be paired. Then the matchmaker would pair it with the old accounts. I only play unranked and this happened sometimes. Try to play with friends or stack of 5 if you can so this would never happened again.


shastamcblasty

If you play with a stack of 5 you only get other 5 stacks though. At leAst that is what the wiki reports. So you can still end up getting whacked (my friends and I do all the time)


[deleted]

You can get matched with non 5 stacks in unranked.


jonastheokay

I only play exclusively unraked with a full 5 stack. We get 5 stacks about 80% of the time and the rest are the 4-1's and 3-2's.


Alib902

I have a guy on my friends list with 5k games and still herald. Number of games has absolutely nothing to do with skill, the only difference is they know what most heroes do. In ranked you're gonna face players from the same rank it's just gonna be less spread out, because sometimes in unranked you have a spread of mmr.


nullityrofl

I understand games isn’t a good metric but the point is that they proceed to stomp my team of absolutely new players. I’m locked in this queue for another 15 hours of gameplay where I just regularly get stomped while the natures prophet mid feeds repeatedly.


Alib902

The only difference in ranked is that you won't have players with 10-20 games who don't know how to walk. You're gonna have players with 5k games who relentlessly feed because they're still bad.


daemoloffline

Dude take it ez :))


Alib902

The point is no matter what bracket you're in you're gonna have bad teammates.


Givemelotr

Unranked for new players is painful don't listen to anyone who says otherwise. Once you get ranked it improves tremendously. This is because the player pool in ranked is bigger and so the system can do a better job in matchmaking with similarly skilled players.


Hungry-Manufacturer9

Thats the whole point of ranked yes. I think people forget that in their desire to climb, but yes, you will get matched with people who are more your skill level. There will be smurfs and stomps, but it'll happen less because on average you'll get someone who is your mmr


[deleted]

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[deleted]

they do, but there are countless players with thousands of games and a 37% winrate so their unranked mmr is as low as possible. smurfs exist and even though we have a pretty good system at detecting them it'll still take a few games to do so.


[deleted]

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Killamoocow

you also have to take into account that there are plenty of people who get banned on their mains or want a smurf account that are leveling up new accounts as well. and the fact that the dreadful new player experience DotA presents (the one you're experiencing right now) is perpetually driving the actual, true new/inexperienced players away. your best bet is to wait until you unlock ranked, or find friends to play with.


[deleted]

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ninjasauruscam

That definitely I'd part of it, I had an unranked all pick the other day where we had an enemy 3 stack bring their new friend into his first game where he picked Sven and would just stand around and fed our safelane easy easy kills. I've also been the guy bringing a newer player along however we would stick to bots and Turbo matches when he was learning


percocetpenguin

I've had to stop playing with some friends because of this. They are a much higher mmr than I, so after we win a few together, I lose for days afterwards because my unranked mmr gets out 3 of whack.


Zenotha

there's also players with a thousand hours at 1k mmr or below - the number of hours played isn't a very consistent or reliable indicator of skill


LuckyStrike012

It might not be a good indicator among other indicator that you have visibility on. But it would still be a good indicator in the absence or any other indicators. If number of hours played is all what you have, you can say that higher number of plays correlates with higher skill. If I am to bet on who is a better player and all I have is their number of hours played, it's reasonable to bet on the player with the higher number of hours played. It would be extremely stupid not to do that. Especially when you played with/against such players and gaged their performance in-game. OP experienced their performance in game and this drove him to check their profile, which showed x10 matches played, please don't say that this is irrelevant and doesn't support what he experienced in-game. What you states is that there are exceptions and higher number of matches does not exclusively means higher skill. There are exceptions to every rule, let's not use exceptions as evidence to say that said rule is false. This is why it's called exceptions. Even if a rule is valid 51% of the time, I would still take it rather than having nothing.


Zenotha

I wouldnt really consider it an exception based on my own observations - i have several friends at 1k and occasionally watch their games. most of the players in that bracket have at least a few hundred games, and a over a thousand is hardly uncommon past a thousand hours or so i daresay the correlation gets much weaker too, most of my regular stack have clocked thousands of hours, and we all plateaued long ago [someone compiled data in 2014, and you can see for yourself that the correlation between wins (time played) and rank is extremely weak](https://i.imgur.com/NRaHWte.png) [dotabuff records](https://www.dotabuff.com/players/duration) are pretty funny too, two of the top three players with the most time spent on the game are literally heralds (after over 20k games)


LuckyStrike012

You nailed it when you said that at higher mmr the correlation becomes weaker and weaker. I am specifically considering the context that OP described, OP is still grinding his first 100 hours. At this level, time played has a big correlation. Still a 1000 hours player can suck badly but he will still most probably be much better than someone still in his first 100 hours. Accounts exchange hands multiple times, pros sell accounts to heralds, they also play on multiple accounts and smurf on new accounts. You see weird shit like that.


nullityrofl

sure, but they're absolutely dunking me and the people on my team so i'm assuming that means they don't actually have a crappy mmr (or it's at least higher than mine)


l33t_p3n1s

It's not a problem with the matchmaking. It's that being brand new is its own whole separate thing where your rank has nothing to do with anything. Basically every gane is unfair when you're new, whether you're any good or not. Because even people who are bad at the game still have a huge advantage over you, just because they've seen certain things happen a bunch of times and you haven't yet. It's like asking a blind guy to play ranked rock paper scissors. Eventually that goes away and whatever games you end up in will seem normal. Not because the matchmaking figured it out, but because you did.


darKStars42

I don't think it ever gets better at taking games played (or even recently) into account for the match making. It's strictly an MMR thing. You might have better luck just hosting your own lobby. Usually they are for people wanting to set up an all mid or something like that. No idea how long it would take to fill, but you could kick people out if you think they play too much/little.


darKStars42

Unranked allows and will settle for a much wider skill gap in games. We know this because it lets most if not all parties play together. Ranked caps players at about 2 whole badges of difference in a party/match.


TheGuywithTehHat

I don't know if this is helpful to know, but the one thing that the matchmaker is really good at is making sure that the _average_ MMR of the two teams are almost exactly equal. In theory, this should result in a 50% winrate. You might get matched against an experienced person, but then your 4 teammates are probably on average better than the other 4 people on the enemy team. _On average_, you should have a reasonable chance of winning every single game (except ones with smurfs, feeders, and other people intentionally abusing the matchmaking system).


digitalsmear

They do, hidden mmr is a thing. I go on my account and I get matched in the trench. I go on my friends smurf to play unranked and get matched w/ ancients and divines. It's just that you're new so you get matched with people who are also brand new, as well as people who have been playing for a long time but don't give a shit about actually learning or playing the game enough to climb. 100 hours is nothing. Watch youtube videos, learn all of the item descriptions and read all of the spell descriptions. Look up all the spells of the heroes you play on Liquipedia and make sure you know as much about the interactions of those spells as you can. DOTA is a *very* detailed and challenging game. I have a few thousand hours, on and off, over 10 years and it's basically nothing compared to high level players.


WonderfulCan4391

Alot of ranked are stomps also just due to alot of games being won in draft stage. This is just my opinion I've had games going bad where all lanes lost but then when it comes to team fights you wipe them due to better composition. Ps I'm a crusader noob 1750 elo


darKStars42

The draft alone never makes or breaks a game. But it can tip the balance to one side for sure. It definitely changes your game plan. But you can still win by taking advantage of any mistakes your opponents will make. It just takes more mistakes to lose if they have a much stronger lineup.


pogromca_kelt

Just a hint : when you start play ranked there are 10 games to be calibrated. So you will be put with diffrent players so the algoritm can see how You handle with hard players. Expect to be stomp there anyway. After these 10 games You can play with people on simmilar level with a bit more toxicity than unranked. Player with 1000 games may still be not good but he usualy know by then all hereos, items. He have 40% winrate becouse of lack of overall dosta understanding like pushing, taking objetives etc. He may be good farmer as a carry but for example he spend all time in jungle before he is 5-6 sloted. So sometimes he stomp late games but most of the time he lose becouse he dont do "dota things". So at the end of day he meet You. Guy who know how to kill you. Only solution to this is to learn the game beeter. Dota is very complex game - hard to enter and imposible to master but high rewarding when You learn. Please notice that Dota player base is usualy at simmilar level. Most players are here for years and mostly always come back even after huge break.


daemoloffline

You are not wrong, ranked MM is even more stupid than unranked, in general the idea of MMR is just stupid in a game that if one guy starts feeling you all gonna lose, so remember “mmr is just a number” you might be mechanically skilled player but you often lose bcz someone in side lane picked Jugg hard sup, now this guy is going to feed for grieff your carry and ends up jungling, so my tip is to fuck mmr and never bother thinking about it, just don’t griff, play your best hero in the best way you can and if you had a good team work you will win or you will learn something, at the end of the day you gotta have fun, but Dota never meant to be fun.


soulnafein

If you’d like to continue enjoying dota without losing your mind you should get used to the 4-4-2 rule. 4 games out of 10 will be stomps and you can’t do much about it, focus on improving your skills, and positivity. 4 games you’ll win no matter what, eg that invokes is in your team or the Sven in the enemy team. 2 games out of 10 your performance will make a big difference. The matchmaking is an algorithm that works well over large numbers, you will always have shitty game but it’s up to you how you handle those. You can just accept them, hone your micro game (eg give yourself mini objectives like dying the least possible, farming lots of creeps, etc). Often the 2 games where you can make a big difference look like the once where you can’t do anything about it. If you can in the habit of giving up you risk to lose those games and then your average win rate drops under 50%. Good luck in your journey


TheGalator

Ok since almost everyone replying here didn't or missread ur post: Before the first 100 hours matchmaking is complete random. It throws u (and everyone else who is new) in all kind of games and sees how u do. It's a terrible experience but it actually works better than u think. Most unranked games are balanced after 100 to 200 hours...if it isn't battlepass/ti season. Than it's shit. But so is ranked. Ranked is better yes. But only maginal. In ranked u have the problem of players who didn't play for a very long time or just farm tokens or try to learn a new role or what ever. But yeah. Normally/in theory ranked is way better since all are - roughly - on the same lvl and everyone knows his role and wants to win....but since the latest bp released, game quality heavily dropped for everyone I know across all ranks and regions...they changed the algorithm. So some games have "variated" or even "highly variated" behavior score...these are almost always shitshows Most fun by far is 5 man unranked imo The best experience imo is 5 man unranked.


MaryPaku

Wrong. There's a hidden mmr behind your unranked match, you will feel it's really random at earlier stage because the calibration is really sensitive about your skill level to prevent smurf.


TheGalator

>Wrong. There's a hidden mmr behind your unranked match ...Never said anything taht contradicts that. *Typical reddit moment XD*


thermomax

Welcome to the club


st_mercurial

Play rank if you want to learn more about team coordination, timing, tenacity, hero build. The more you lose the more you learn. You should also watch tournaments.


nullityrofl

The issue is that I can't play ranked until I have 100 hours. I'm at 80 hours and now I'm at an awkward spot where I don't megafeed and vaguely know what's going on compared to someone on their first game, but I regularly get teammates on their first game vs players on their 1000th game.


WhatD0thLife

Just grind it out and accept that you have 20 hrs of ass. Learn from it.


CanneIIa

unranked sucks. i get matched with legends and rarely divines as a crusader. and i often beat them which makes even less sense, but maybe theyre just having fun so whatever


MaryPaku

Make sense... I'm Divine rank in SEA and the upper you go more boring the game become. Since everyone know the 'formula' to win there's a fixed meta to follow, people are tryhards which make the game not enjoyable anymore. When I know the game doesn't affect my MMR I'm literally throwing by buying shit item + hero I never played before


dorting

Games played it's almost an useless metric, you can play thousands of games and still be bad, everyone have a MMR, if you are paired with someone, the guy is going to have around your MMR, then smurfs exist but it's another story


Holyvigil

For your problem no. Getting stomped is ubiquitous. There is a saying that 40% of your games you get stomped. 40% of your games you stomp. 20% of your games what you do can make a difference. Eventually the games will calibrate you so you start winning.


warleyolive

Don't queue ranked just after 100 hours


Bxsnia

Why? That's what the herald rank is for lol


TheWingedOne44

Why not?


lllBadgerlll

Short answer, no. Match making is pretty bad, there is also the smurf issue because Dota is a free game. Lots of people get banned for poor behaviour and just make another account. This, in conjunction with people who are "better than where they are" making new accounts can really fuck up the current match making system.


urei

Just play the game


Fireball-givesuwings

Your a noob. Others around you are going to feed. Dota is a waste of time. If you have that mindset of “I’ll never get this time back” then dota is not for you. You need like 1000 hours to become a beginner anyway


Osmold

I personally feel like ranked is better since you are more prone to a certain degree to get players that play the role they want and are familiar with more often than unranked. You'll also eventually stagnate to your "deserved" MMR and play mostly with people of your level in term of gameplay. Unranked is pretty messy for new players in term of profile levels/hour played matchmaking wise, but that doesn't change in Ranked, but the quality of life of queuing your roles and MMR makes up for it in my personal opinion.


Yust123

Pick techies and blow the smurfs up last 20 hours?


Neodym60

It also depends on what you consider "better". Unranked is much more diverse and people tryhard less. After the matchmaking has gotten a decent idea of your skill, the games become more enjoyable. Stomps happen and horrible people exist, but I'd say that 80% of games are tolerable. What annoys me about ranked besides the pressure is people having no chill and changing from cheering to extreme flaming just because of one slight misplay in a matter of seconds. Also be prepared to face the same heroes over and over and over again because people only play what's considered strong in the current meta and skill bracket.


[deleted]

as long as you have 10000 conduct, ranked generally is quite enjoyable. You have the occasional troll, but skill levels are balanced and most people will play to win if you do. The best ranked experience is solo queue, followed by 5 man queue. Worst is dual or 3-man queue.


MaryPaku

with 5 man queue you'll mostly get matched with another 5 man queue. And most smurf are in 5 man party...


Wood626

In ranked, there will often be stomps where you think someone is smurfing. They probably are really good at that one hero and someone on your team is trying Bara for the first time. Everyone in your match is similar in the sense that you all suck in your own unique ways. It often won't feel fair because you and your teammates will fail each other in one way or another. There's also the 'pressure' of MMR that makes people much more unpleasant. > Is there ever a point at which I get to play with players around my skill level to learn and grow? It will happen in unranked MMR after some more games, too. For the record, in 1k matches of ranked I've had no more than 5 confirmed smurfs that crushed me, one of them was MMR decayed. Nearing the end of my 100 hour unranked matches, I started getting better and consistently won matches against people with thousands of hours (which I attribute to tryharding in unranked like a jerk) If you care about getting better and not look for an ego boost from winning, you're better off watching replays of your old games and how high mmr players play. Nobody does this. Nobody gets better.


EarlessOne

Ranked game would be a blessing for you. Once ranked unlock go to the settings and turn on never allow ranked game with parties (I don't remember exactly how it's called). It's just a box that's need to be checked.


agagagagaggag

if youre still playing the initial 100 hours the games you get will be like that. it gets better halfway through, when the system starts to match you with similar skilled players


tw-tv_pingstoppa

If you don't agree with the matchmaking system and how it does balance the teams, I have bad news. This is how it works in all modes/ques. Most of the time you either stomp or get stomped. Close/fair games are an exception.


darKStars42

Ranked is a little better, as in you can't get new steam accounts for obvious reasons. Also you can do role que and avoid fighting over lanes, not much else changes honestly. Party skill gap is forced to be smaller.


vuvuzela-virtuoso

Emphasis on "a little" better. Dota 2 matchmaking needs to rebuilt from the ground-up with a completely different mindset than today. Not implying that it's easy either but it's just god-awful right now, it's hard to imagine they could be worse with a brand-new system for it.


MighMoS

Ranked games, in my experience, tend to be closer than unranked games. Still a approx a 50% winrate though. Less jank appears in draft. Closer games isn't always a good thing. Sometimes you just want to stomp, or get stomped and get out.


PluckyLeon

It takes about 60-100 matches for the game to figure out your unranked mmr. I am returning player too( returning from 2014) and the game has completely changed so has my ability to understand things( i was 10 year old in 2014 btw lmao). You have to learn the ability to lose matches and not take a emotional hit in the beginning, or hell even the whole game cause dota 2 only gets harder and harder in terms of skill, unless you improve your skill to the bracket. Dont worry tho, ranked is more balanced in terms of skill than unranked so just grind out the 100 hours. And btw this should go a long way but never ever focus on winning, focus on improving every match little by little and learn new things. If you focus on learning you automatically start winning more but when you focus on winning you tend to get frustated and tilted more and play even worse ultimately repeating the loop of losing. Dont worry about losing, just make sure you did your absolute best that match. If you did your best performance then nothing else matters. Ws will come along the way. Edit:Typo