General Matchmaking Feedback Thread [READ OP]

[slowreflex]

After some feedback from the devs, we are attempting to make feedback more useful for them. Please provide your feedback regarding matchmaking in this thread only. We only appreciate precise, objective, constructive, and to-the-point feedback. Simply saying, "I like/hate matchmaking" does not help the devs to improve it. When posting please post in the following format:

LIKES
- I like x aspect of matchmaking.
<some comments if you have further suggestions to improve this aspect> (OPTIONAL)
- I like y aspect of matchmaking.
<some comments if you have further suggestions to improve this aspect> (OPTIONAL)
- and so on

DISLIKES
- I dislike x aspect of matchmaking.
Explain why you do not like it. Give examples (with matchID if possible).
Finally, you must tell us what we can do to improve this aspect. (MANDATORY)
- I dislike y aspect of matchmaking.
Explain why you do not like it. Give examples (with matchID if possible).
Finally, you must tell us what we can do to improve this aspect. (MANDATORY)
- and so on

If you do not follow the proper format in this thread (esp giving your reasons) or post off topic, your post(s) will be deleted. Do not reply to others posts in this thread. If you keep posting again without following the proper format, you may have your posting privileges revoked.

General Information about Matchmaking (note that the quotes link to fruitful topics that you might want to read too)

Vlog by Purge summarizing many aspects of the current matchmaking

we use a Elo-type system. We have data that shows that it correlates well with a number of quality metrics.

As far as Matchmaking is concerned none of those buckets [low, medium, high] exist - We match on a continuous scale.

the easiest way to think about it is as a percentile rank so 100 levels.

There is a maximum range that we match to that decreases based on your party size. This is why when you have a stack of 5 you end up taking longer to match since we can only match you to a few percent of the population.

Typically the trade off in matchmaking is wait time versus match quality. We could always try and slow down the match time in an attempt to provide higher accuracy matches but this will get better naturally as we add more players so I'd rather keep match times snappy.

- High skill games are definitely an area that will benefit as we get more players. It's also an area has had issues with match times in the past so I'm sensitive to how long this group needs to wait.

- There can be no guarantee of how a game will play out even with perfect matchmaking. Hopefully someone can help me out with the details of that recent tourney where the winner of the winners bracket was in the finals and got destroyed in one game then destroyed the other team in the next. I think it's actually a good thing that the outcome of a match isn't set from the beginning but depends on the decisions that individuals are making during the course of play.

- Building on the previous point, even with good matchmaking there are plenty of things that can go wrong:
* Being conterpicked or having a bad team comp (overdependence on farm, no heroes that can stop a push, lack of DPS, bad teamfight, etc.)
* Allowing teammates to lose a lane early
* Luck
* Natural variations in individual performance
* People trying a new hero or strategy

- We don't enforce a 50-50 win rate (Maybe we should?) instead we always try to make the best match possible. I'm always happy when I see someone with a win rate close to 50% though since it means that we haven't been skewing one way or the other in giving matches that were too hard or too easy. I totally agree with your desire to have fewer stomps though.

- We don't try to match high skill players with low skill players instead we try to get 10 people that fit together the best. Parties can sometimes create a very big gap in skill on a team though and are generally the reason for anything that seems really wacky. Remember too that people people will always have good games and bad games so that person that seems terrible might just be having an off day instead.

- The outcome of a games is determined more by the best person on a team rather than the worst player. My assumption was originally the same as yours but I had to change my mind once I saw the stats showing otherwise.

Battle Points and Battle Level are not used in matchmaking.

Performance Bars are not used in matchmaking.


Q: What makes a "high quality" match?

a perfect match in a perfect world is where everybody has the same (correctly measured skill).
a "high quality" match tries to get as close as possible to that result.

Consider a 4-stack with a big skill differential between the players. What we try to do is match them such that the teams are as equal as possible, player-by-player. (Sort the players on each team by Elo, and then examine the difference in Elo of corresponding opponents. Ideally the best playes on each team are evenly matched, the 2nd best are evenly matched, etc.) So that is pretty straightforward for figuring out the ideal thing to put on the other team, and notice that average Elo is not necessary. But what sort of a party should we use to fill the 5th slot as his ally? Would it be a good idea to find a single guy who matches the lowest skilled player on the 4-stack? The highest?How would that guy appraise the match we made for him, being the best player in the game playing with a bunch of players far worse than he is, or the worst player, with players much better than he is? What if we cannot find a 4 stack that matches him well? Would it be a good idea instead to take two 2-stacks, one that match the top two players, and one that matches the bottom two? What is going to be their reaction to being put in such a match?

What would you say is the optimal way to match a stack with a large spread in skill?

Q: Do you add the percentile points for each team member and swap players until both teams are even, or something more complex?

We have two stages to create a game from Matchmaking

1) Try to find 10 players that all match well to each other

2) Try to split these 10 players into two groups of 5 that will create a balanced game

Q: Why can't i see my Matchmaking Rating?

Showing players their Elo has proven to cause a lot of unwanted behaviour. (The same problems exist in Chess.)

We know that there really is value in knowing how the match was formed [...] It helps to analyze your own skill and try to understand how to get better. We are actively working to try to figure out what data we CAN provide to players [...] without causing too many of the undesirable effects

Elo is a TERRIBLE way to give players a sense of "progress." Many (most?) people reach a plateau, and their Elo stabilizes. It is simply not mathematically possible for Elo to keep increasing in general for players indefinitely as more and more games are played.

Given this reality, if players used Elo to measure "progress", we would constantly be reminding them that they are NOT making any. That would be really bad.

Q: What about if someone who reported someone else, are they ever matched again?

Yes, they are. Several Suggestions have already been made in that direction:
[Sugestion] Black list and "white" list
Personal Banlist
Prefer/Avoid Player Function & Karma System [alternative to banlist]
Ignoring people so you don't have to ever play with or against them ever again

Q: Does matchmaking take players who only play one or two heroes into consideration?

No. At least not yet.

Q: Does matchmaking take the type of hero a player likes to play (support, pusher, carry, random...) into consideration?

No. At least not yet. But there are threads about it: [Suggestion] Pick role before sign up for a game!

Q. Does the commend/report system affect ones percentile?

No.

General advice:

the longer you search for a match, the broader the search range gets. unbalanced matches might be results of a broad search range. either change to a better populated server (in case you are playing at odd hours) or simply reset the search to restart at a finer search range.

[Pie Flavor]

ok let's try it then:

LIKES
- I like it that it appears that normally it matches people with similar skill levels, after your k-factor has settled down (aka you got out of newbie island) you get to see how your opponents and your teammates seem to improve and thus you are forced to do so. Now this is something expected of a matchmaking system but it seems to be especially notable in dota 2. This might be due to the sheer amount of playerbase to pick from. Comparing it to other games, I played SC2, HoN, LoL and BLC; in SC2 I found not much difference between bronze and platinum (being platinum the highest I reached) I would always get crushed in the same manner and always crush people by the same way, maybe it's because SC2 is way more focused on mechanics than on actual strategy.

In LoL, the road lvl 1 to 30 was pretty plateau, you would start getting crushed over and over and you would end at lvl 30 owning everybody, in spite of the massive playerbase. In HoN... well in HoN it was special wasn't it? also I never played long enough to actually gain a sense. In BLC the sample for matchmaking was too small, and the skill differences between skilled players and new players was abismal, although if given a big enough playerbase it would feel similar to current dota 2.

DISLIKES
- I dislike the lack of information regarding this system, so often times we make a lot of wrong assumptions on the topic, I'm not even sure that group matchmaking puts you on a slightly higher skill level becuase nothing has been confirmed, the game skill bracket also seems to be a bit arbitrary, I would indeed get into high level matches if stacking, but go back to normal skill matches when soloing, then every now and then I have a seemingly random match on solo queue that I end up in high skill bracket and more often than not I get crushed...

Thing is strangely it doesn't matter much because in spite of me never getting into higher MM brackets I still feel like I improve due to the aforementioned point about the feeling that your opoonents and teammates improve.

How to improve this? I'm sure valve has something in mind about this, or simpyl we are just not supposed to be able to know all this info to avoid exploitation, I'm fairly happy with the current game state and can't think of why would people be unsatisfied with the matchmaking system, but it wouldn't hurt to at least know a bit more about the system.

[Mystery]

I still have a tiny bit of hope left in leaving feedback for you Valve, even though you've been ignoring everyone for a year now, so here goes, don't let me down.

LIKES
- Matches are usually found fairly quickly
- Ability to choose server locations
- Ability to choose game types
I think this can be improved by allowing to choose games based on more options, such as: Find Lobby (10 players in a lobby before a game starts like in L4D), Wins Range (find players between x and y wins) and other variables, basically you should give more control to players that want it, 100% automated matchmaking is too restricted, give us at least a bit of control over who we would like to play with.


DISLIKES
- 95% of the games matchmaking makes, because they are mostly completely unbalanced, improvement is in the likes section, but if I had to expand on that I would say the current automated matchmaking system needs an algorithm that feeds on more player info, including deaths/kills/last hits/denies/number of "combos" with other players, number of times they die in the first 5 minutes of a game, how aggressive they are, how defensive they are, if they die a lot 1vs5 etc...

All this data can be or is already being collected, it should all be fed into a player rating and player type (defensive/aggressive/supportive/suicidal) and then the player rating and type should be used in the matchmaking.

Basically there's two ways to go about a good matchmaking system as far as I can see: either you create a REALLY impressive automated system that crunches lots of data or you give players more control over it, because right now I can tell you which game is a stomp and even with some degree of accuracy which is going to be 60+ minutes long just from the first 10 minutes. Humans are smarter than your current matchmaker, use them, at least in conjunction or until you get a proper automatic one going.

[ranaki]

Valve, I really hope that this thread has a bit more interaction with the community. As you might have noticed, the dota community is pretty unique and is used to get at least some sort of info.
I am afraid that this thread will become another useless 350 pages with only complaints but here we go:

LIKES:

- Matches are found pretty quickly and servers don't lag
- New players have better opportunities to learn to play the game than in HoN and the original dota.
- Bot matches are great for new players
- Server selection is great and I appreciate very much that there is no region lock
- Low Priority works great and keeps out a lot of flamers and griefers from the normal pool


DISLIKES:

*Matches in high and very high tier are of very poor quality compared to other games' matches.
- Explanation below

*There is no sort of visible rating or any sort of statistic to the public in game or in the client.
- Which is a cause for matches being bad because of confusion and lack of knowledge of your teammates. this is a heavy team-based game after all. Of course adding a visible rating wouldn't improve matches right away. Community based brackets would first have to form and then when everyone knows where their place is, matches will improve for them. Expectations and quality will rise along with a players rating. This would make it harder for newer players though, my suggestion for that is to add another matchmaking queue - More about that further below.

* There is only ONE queue for a lot of different people who have a lot of different goals to play this game. (become better, play for fun, competitive practice etc)
- At least having two different matchmaking queues; one for casual and one for hard-core players would be my suggestion. (ofc they should work differently and the rating should be censored for the casual queue) In addition to that it would be great to have public game lobbies, where game modes like the Halloween and Christmas game modes are playable. (without receiving items of course) Also, a map editor would be great.

* The language barrier is a huge problem in EU and probably other places.
- My suggestion is to create a few servers dedicated for different languages only. Like in MMO's, for example: having an English only server in EU. If you don't speak English, you can be reported and you will be unable to queue on that server for a week or so.

* Nobody knows how the matchmaking works
- This is a problem that comes along with the censored rating. People say that if the rating is revealed, people will game the system. People are already gaming the system by playing in 5-player stacks. It doesn't seem to matter if you play in stacks or not because your rating will improve anyhow. If the rating system isn't based on wins and losses only; it is really easy to manipulate the statistics. With wins and losses it becomes way harder to manipulate your rating because winning is the ultimate goal of the game and since both teams try to win, it's only natural that it's hard to "game the system" in dota. The current MM system is more than fine for new players. But keep in mind that most people that play dota are players that are familiar with the game already and want to have a more challenging matchmaking with visible ratings which brings me back to my suggestion to add another matchmaking.

* Overall the matchmaking seems to favor one team in every match
- At least tell us which team is favored, like in starcraft 2. Also, try to improve it. The goal for the older players which make the largest part of the dota community don't play this game to learn how to play. They want good and balanced matches even if it's a pub game. After playing thousands of games it becomes boring to either stomp or getting stomped. Those people want ratings and want to have a improved matchmaking which is more suited for experienced players.



Lastly, I will quote dotabuff's statement about rating and stats:

Players are missing context for where they stand in the community, and how their hard work is paying off. Being able to see your personal Dotabuff Rating will let players finally have a way to track their improvement and we’re really excited to show everyone what their personal rating is. We’re confident that seeing your personal rating will absolutely improve what you will get out of this game and our website.

In addition to that I would like to add that the only possible reason I could think that Valve doesn't want any visible rating is because it causes more flame.
The problem with flame is that it causes new players to dislike the game, naturally. But is there really much less flame in dota2 compared to the other games?
Isn't there some other way to make the game enjoyable for both new and old players? Older and more experienced players are what makes the dota community this competitive. If this game is focusing on only casual and top-elite players, the largest part of the community will dislike the game.


* are the dislikes
- are the improvement suggestions for the dislikes

[MarcosMcc]

LIKES
- I like being able to choose any region.
- I like the low priority punishment.

DISLIKES
- I'm not sure it works like this, I'm just assuming cause it feels like it works: Players are given a rating and then those are summed up. The system doesn't care too much if there is a huge gap in ratings. This brings us to the second point.
- I dislike not having an option to wait more for a balanced match.
It could be a check box that slows down the range bar. I guess that would satisfy noobs and pros. The ones not concerned or in a hurry won't check it.

[c0ldpr0xy]

Like
Getting back in High Priority if someone fails or declines the ready-status.

Dislikes
Not a single kind of filter that helps us eliminate language barrier.
I have already suggested to do something about this that does NOT involve any IP or region-locking.
Link: http://dev.dota2.com/showthread.php?t=67385

[dangler]

Likes:
-finding a match is pretty fast
-good server

Dislikes:
-mm is too random (It doesn't care about my preferences it just starts the game asap.I would like to be able to personalize my search range.)
-no info on how things work exactly(Mm,reports,commends.I would like to know who commends me and for which game,also a commendation is commendation,you are allowed to make a note,this makes the 4 different things to pick from useless.About reports i want to know who is the guy that is banned and for which game,not just a random message once in a blue moon saying thank you.Probably it would be good to be able to also appeal "punishment" in the future.)
-stacking with friends is total mess(Play with 4 good players you would rarely lose(which i guess is the point but still pretty unfair),but play with 1 good 1 average 1 new and add 1 random and it becomes totally unbalanced and random)

So reading now what i just typed all my problems seem to be with the matchmaking otherwise game is fine.With the addition of some decent leagues i think this will be pretty much fixed.In conclusion fix the commend/report system and i don't know support leagues with rewards like items for season winners or something.

[Shabutaro]

Likes:
-0-3 min searching for a match
-Servers stable (but recently the EU West is down pretty often, at least me and friends stuck at "finding server" often)
-Low Priority/Abandon

Dislikes:
-Low Priority in combination with 2-weekly free keys. I met hundreds of guys who have 1 main account and about 3-6 sub accounts especially for trolling and making others waste time.
-solution- Don't give away MASSES of Keys

-No Ratings/Ladder which are a must in a game like DotA 2 and can split the ones who play seriously and the ones who play casually. So i would like a MM Casual and MM Ranked where MM-C does not affect rating but MM-R does.
-solution- Add a ranked ladder which is optional to play in. You can also only play casual matches and won't have any increase or decrease in your ranking which you only get if you at least played 1 MM-R match.

-Language Barrier. As good as it may sound, it is terrible to play with goons who can not talk in any other language than their native language but still play on servers where that language is NOT spoken. Chat-Wheel is some kind of help, but it won't help much as you still can't tell them what exactly they should do. This was addressed so many times but no one ever listened, just closed everything that had to do with it.
-solution- At least give us a Blacklist where we can put people in and won't MM with them until we remove them. Or make it a reportable option to report players from a different country the Server is around in but refuse/can't talk in an acceptable language. So i as a European who plays on EU West could report a Russian/Asian whatever player who plays on EU West but only speaks Russia/Chinese etc. as Russia/Chinese is NOT a spoken language in EU West.

-MatchMaking is a complete mystery. We need to know how it actually works so we won't flame it all the time
-solution- Tell us how MM works exactly, not some wishy washy thing which basically says nothing on how it actually works.

-MatchMaking is unplayable as Solo-Queuer. If you happen to play with 4 more randoms vs a 5-stack they will have a major advantage. It was addressed many times before, too.
-solution- Add an option to not queue vs a 5-stack.

Also a question:

Originally Posted by EricTams
We have two stages to create a game from Matchmaking

1) Try to find 10 players that all match well to each other

2) Try to split these 10 players into two groups of 5 that will create a balanced game

How does this work with Stacks? I mean i had enough games as 5 randoms vs 5 stack and other way around. To me it sounds like MM won't consider a Stack as a Stack but 5 people it can split which would follow into even teams if MM could break the Stack apart which it can't.

If i am totally wrong please tell me how MM handles Stacks as even if it finds 5 randoms with equal skill to the 5 stack, the 5 stack has way better cooperation which leads to an advantage. Especially if a language barrier is involved.

[bboyza]

LIKE:

Playing with players of similar skill is vital to playing enjoyable games.

-theoretical ideas for improvements- I have a number of interesting suggestions and discussion on Reddit about creative ways to close the gap between player skills in a given game. It is based on the assumption that to some degree, playing your best or worst heroes would have an effect on the outcome, or at the very least have people judge each other due to varying levels of competencies with heroes even though they have been matched.

Comprehensiveness discussion with images here: http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/commen...eaks_down_and/

[carlito]

I hope we can get some dev feedback on some of the ideas so we know what Valve's opinion is / that our ideas are not just being overlooked and so it doesn't feel like Valve doesn't care.

LIKE:

• fast queue times
• having to accept a game before starting it
• high amount of server & mode options
• extra bot matchmaking for newer players so they get the feel of playing with people but can face bots
• no region locking, I can play with anyone all over the world

DISLIKE:

• different view from players about the game. ranges from "meh i dont care ill just play whatever" to "let's make a proper team composition and give our bests"
  which leads to -> skills don't match at all. usually it's stomp or get stomped. this is no fun for either party involved
• languages barriers for obvious reasons (honestly this sucks for both english and non-english speakers equally)
• no way to tell if you improve or not
• no way to get proper solo queues. i hate being solo and then running into a proper team just stomping. (no fun for either side)
• adding the individual ratings is not a good way to measure a stack's rating and "stack" matches are therefore imbalanced most of the time
• hard to get recognized by other people when you're really good but unknown
• too little punishment for griefers / leavers

SUGGESTIONS/SOLUTIONS:

The General idea is to have 3 different matchmaking queues.

1. Ranked Team Matchmaking
2. Ranked Matchmaking
3. Unranked Matchmaking

This would avoid a lot of problems the current matchmaking has by seperating the 3 big parties in this issue. Casual Players, Competitive Players and (Competitive) Teams. This would also help the upcoming teams and general player engagement with the game (the more involved you are and have something to strive for, the more you play and the more money you spend on the game) as the current matchmaking is no real solution for a half-way decent team to improve and get to higher levels. It's also no fun either because the individual matchmaking ratings are no good way to measure a team's strength currently.


EXPLANATION


1. Ranked Team Matchmaking (community feedback: http://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/commen...w_do_you_feel/)

This solves the following problems:

• no way to get proper solo queues. i hate being solo and then running into a proper team just stomping. (no fun for either side)
• adding up the individual ratings is not a good way to measure a stack's rating and "stack" matches are therefore imbalanced most of the time
• hard to get recognized by other people when you're really good but unknown

Dota 2 is the most fun with friends, but right now there's hardly any fun involved when stacking with friends or playing with your team in the normal matchmaking system as the individual rating is a bad way to measure a team's strength and thus creating highly imbalanced matchups. Basically as the name says there should be a seperate queue for teams. Everyone should start from scratch (maybe taking in the rating from the Ranked Solo Queue at the start only) and then should be ranked with the team only. The team ranking should be public as the name says as when you play Dota 2 in a five stack and chose this queue you generally want to improve, get recognition if you're good and compare yourself to others.

There could be automated tournaments as well instead of just grinding the ladder endlessly. You could give prizes, an easier to promotion to the next division, a medal on the players' profiles and stuff like that to the top finishers.. It would also help upcoming teams a lot since they could be able to practice against more or less equally skilled teams and eventually hitting the rating to be able to scrim vs pro teams, who would benefit as well from getting to scrim vs other teams that are very good but might not be that known yet and they wouldn't have had the chance otherwise. Valve could also have the top 16 teams in the highest division compete for a (qualifier) spot in the upcoming The International or other tournaments. What better way would there be to keep the ladder active?

The big thing about this is that the current queue is no fun for teams and stacks. The visible rating would give teams something to compare their skill by and would give them more of a reason to play and improve. If you don't want to be ranked and just wanna play for fun with your friends and screw around you just don't play it and keep queueing in your Unranked Matchmaking. There is no way a new player could get flamed because of this which is, I assume, Valve's major concern currently with the (public) ratings. There should be general divisions for example: Grand-Master (better than 99%), Master (better than 95%), Platinum (better than 85%), Gold (better than 60%), Silver (better than 40%), Bronze (rest) and the actual rank. For example: Team XY is 200th Rank in Platinum Division


2. Ranked Matchmaking

This solves the following problems:

• different view from players about the game. ranges from "meh i dont care ill just play whatever" to "let's make a proper team composition and give our bests"
  which leads to -> skills don't match at all. usually it's stomp or get stomped. this is no fun for either party involved
• no way to tell if you improve or not

Players would go in this matchmaking queue to compete, to improve and compare similar to the Ranked Team Matchmaking. Everyone would give their best as they play to win (and there's rating on the lane) and would make for a lot better games. I don't think the current rating is really flawed, but there's a difference in attitude which cannot be measured. This is a way for Valve to address this and appeal to both sides. Guys that wanna try get matched with similar minded people and players that just wanna hop in a game and screw around don't get annoyed by overly trying people flaming them for not doing well or trying.

The rating (division and W/L % only) should be publicly visible. Other stats like wards placed, last hits, denies, gpm, xpm) should be private to prevent the abuse of other players. (e.g. people with low K/D Ratio (support for example) facing issues when they wanna play a different role) People that actually mind being ranked and just wanna go for a quick game of Dota 2 have the choice to stay out of it. There should be general divisions (as mentioned before, similar to the Team Matchmaking) for example: Grand-Master (better than 99%), Master (better than 95%), Platinum (better than 85%), Gold (better than 60%), Silver (better than 40%), Bronze (rest) and the actual rank. For example: Player XY is 200th Rank in Platinum Division so you could see your improvement really easy and have something to strive for.



3. Unranked Matchmaking

This should be the default queue and is (mostly) the current matchmaking minus the people that actually are competitive and cause a lot of problems to newer people and therefore most of the negative points about it. This would benefit both sides immensely. New and casual players get turned off by all the (competitive) guys expecting them to try and know everything since there's no way to differentiate those people currently and they all play in the same pool. People play it because they just enjoy screwing around, testing new heroes / playstyles and get a feel for the game. Stats (except WIN/LOSS) should not be visible either publicly or privately to keep the casual and fun attitude in this Matchmaking Queue.






if this format is not accepted pls do not delete the post and let me edit it. i thought it would be more clear this way

[IWantToHelpAsMuchAsIcan]

LIKES:

- MatchMaking is pretty fast
- lot's of regions with pretty good ping
- I like that Valve doesn't give any official stats for heroes and items % win ratio. Im not against player rating itself, but these other stats have imo very bad influence on players mindset. From my experience players tend to flame much more if their teammates pick heroes that have low % win ratio on some rating site, or use item build which is not the most popular. Im very happy that there's no stats and I hope it will stay this way.

DISLIKES:

- that we Lack of real solo queue. I dont like to be forced to play with or against stacks when I sign to play alone. I wish there was an option to avoid game with / against stacks. I dont mind waiting longer for such game. From my experience games with / against stacks have a lot more early ganks and map control, but only on one side which lead to very snowbally and boring game.
- that we Lack of ranked real solo queue and team queue. I'd like to have an option to play with players who like to have some kind of rating visible. Also it should not mix real solo players with stacks.
- that we Lack of personal player blacklist. I realize that this may lead to abuse, but im asking only for limited blacklist. I want to have an option to block up to 3 players from being matched with me in the same team. I believe that such option would help a lot, because it's very fast and you can get rid of very serious griefers and trolls who destroy your items etc before reports will kick in. This doesn't happen very often that's why I ask only for very small list to prevent potential abuse.
- I dislike the fact that players who dc have only 5min to comeback in pub game. This have very nagative impact on my mood and I wish it would get changed to 10min in pub games (in ranked it can stay 5min, because obviously such games are more important)
- that we lack MM mode where every player can ban one hero and then pick from the rest of the pool.

[eragon1111]

likes

- nothing coz its not competitive game with matchmaking

dislikes

- huge amount of noobs and leavers from other moba - forced to make 2 accounts 1 for cm with team and other for LPQ
- people i get are not my skill bracket, they are way too low (checked on dotabuff some had public accounts)
- cant ban ppl i dont wanna queue with, no blacklist
- 1/20 games are balanced and ppl dont act like total kids/jerks
- cant see on which factor this mm is based on
- even if i dont flame ingame i still get reports more often then recommends.
- when solo queuing its like 40% chance to get paired with stack or vs stack - causes total disbalance
- most of games are finished in 15 min, thus dota was supposed to has slower progress then LoL (caused by disbalance from mm)

solution

- team should be paired from smaller bracket of players. Bring more factors to mm rating system. Tell ppl what are the factor, so ppl like me can focus on them to progress and play bigger quality games.

[EarlMorax]

Like:

-I like that it is fast


Dislike:

-I do not like that it is not a fair matchmaking.

Let me guide you on one instance, my brother and I queued together and met....(tada!) a 4-man team. What is this? The Matchmaking system should be improved in a way that a 4-man stack team will only be matched against a 4-man stacked team. The logic behind this is that a stacked team know each other and sometimes play together in one house/internet shop giving them the advantage of teamwork then you will further their advantage to win by vying them against people who don't know each other. And most of the time when I solo queue (emphasis on MOST OF THE TIME) I am matched against a team of 3-4 and sometimes 5. Some people would say that maybe it's because your team also has a stack. I do check my allies dotabuff and the recent match I had against a 4-man stack I had two, yes just two, team mates who knew each other. It's like: Okay, let's take this 2-man team and three random people who do not know each other and matched them against this 4-man team and a random person and let see who will win. Seriously? It's like your matching a group of people you picked on the streets against an NBA team. This is the only reason I find Dota 2 sucks. And this is rather getting annoying because my recent games are up against teams and the sole reason why I registered on this site. I thank you.

[JegueWar]

likes

- You can choose what server to play.

dislikes

- It doesn't protect you from playing against people from another region...
- You have 1000 games played and you can play with players who just started to play.
- It doesn't matter how much games you have, if you lose some, you're going to play with guys who is just starting, it's boring.


solution

- If you select just one region to play, you're going to play with people who made same choice... if a player selected two regions, you can't enter in same games.
- Make the machmaking choose players who have same amount of games played, or at least same level, it's much better play with a player who has 500 wins and 1000 losts than a player who has 1 win and 2 losts, it's obvious. Less chance for quiters since players with more games like to play dota and players with just one game are just knowing dota... if a player wanna get out of players who are low level, just play and rise your level.
- A Ban list would be great too. No, it isnt abuse, just learn to play better... It's much more fun to lose a game with everyone playing ok than enter in a game when you play 5x3 and have one with 0 / 12 / 0 on your side.

[Scherou]

Like:
-Fast match finding
-You do feel as though winning games gives you better teammates and you do feel like you are advancing up a ladder

Dislike:
-Being matched against premade/stacked teams
-Russian problem: communication is horrendous with these players on your team

The BIGGEST problem for me and many others in this community is that of unbalanced team matchmaking.

Quite often a group of 5 solo queueing players or a single group of 2 friends will get matched against a 5 stack. Completely unfair. Also a 3 stack + a 2 stack does not equal the skill of a 5 stack. Same as a 4 stack vs a 5 stack where the players in the 5 stack have less wins. It still doesn't really balance out because communication advantage rises exponentially with the number of players who you are friends with.

PLEASE FIX THIS

Solution:
-Add an option for solo players to only get matched vs other solo players, only match 5 man stacks with other 5 man stacks. League of legends has a matchmaking system slightly similar to this with the 5 stack matching and the complaints you get in dota, do not happen in that game.
-Encourage russian players to play on russian-speaking servers