Long rant incoming.
I find it pretty interesting that they're deciding to roll this out now versus like 10 years ago when all of these concerns were brought up.
I don't think having a merged team and solo MMR is the way to go, I'd rather they just completely eliminate MMR and provide some type of semi-pro league where you need to play and qualify to get into, and you can be kicked out of, but at the same time people tend to value you more with a higher solo MMR because of the perception that you 'earned it yourself' and I agree that this mentality is what probably led to the death of team queue, and playing dota for fun with friends like back in the WC3 pubbing days.
The best way I can describe it is, they have a lot of data on who is playing the game, you can build player profiles and cluster them into groups, and have separate leagues based on player profiles to match people with others whom they are the most likely to enjoy playing with. They might be doing that already and just not saying it though, because I can see how a lot of people would get upset about being stuck in some bracket they don't approve of, which is why valve even allows you to buy a MMR reset lmfao.
MMR is just a number and when you take that into account and understand people like to see higher numbers associated with their accounts because they view it as a type of validation, and providing a fabricated or dishonest number based on a system that caters to someone who is paying to play your game has no real consequences, I'm suprised they did not decide to implement this sooner.
But saying that solo and team MMR doesn't have a gap is like saying water isn't wet with a straight face, I don't believe that's the real reason they're doing this.
The way I've always thought about this is that if you have a true 8k MMR player paired with a true 2k MMR player who are friends and they're playing together paired against another 8k/2k pair, I think over time you're going to find the gap decreasing, so maybe the 2k becomes a 3-4k and the 8k becomes a 7-6k.
Even in the situation that the 8k player's MMR rises up from winning such 8k/2k paired games, his number is going up, but his actual skill level is not.
I mean, is that not a reasonable way to look at it?
If we want to look at player rankings, MMR seems like a stupid way to look at it.
Let's think from the perspective of what MMR is trying to do, it's trying take all of the data about player performance and summarize it into a number so if your number is higher than another person's, you should in theory be better than that person, right?
We know that isn't the case in dota, it might be more the case in a game like chess, so what's a better system?
I look at other areas outside of esports to figure that out. How about regular sports for example? How does everyone determine that in the NBA Lebron James is one of the best current player in the league? Is it his height? Points scored? Blocks made? Steals? Rebounds? Assists?
The answer is all of it, and more, not only are his stats incredible, but there are things even stats can't capture like the guy's reads on the game, his opponents, his technical abilities, reaction times (Which I guess could indirectly produce better stats), and such.
I'm not suggesting we move from MMR to a system like that because it's a lot more complicated than just looking at a single number, and more importantly it has the potential to complete kill the fun in the game for most people.
When I used to still play dota, I'd have major OCD about my MMR and trying to grind/practice and figure out strategies and times that queueing would increase my chances to win and climb further up. I can only imagine how much unfun grinding a person like myself would go through of practicing last hitting for hours on end if I saw that my overall stats were 2-3 tiers higher than my current rank, but my last hitting/farming skills were 2 ranks lower.
I'd feel like that one stat is holding me back from moving forward, I'd try to move that number up, and then it would feel like an exhausting job that would suck my life away.
There are so many differences between regular sports and esports, from how both organizations make their money (player marketing/team branding vs cosmetics/battle passes), to how the sport is strictly entertainment for most people.
Like I'm pretty sure % of people who both watch and play a game like dota is much higher than the % of people for a game like football or soccer.
I think once games like dota are able to unpair themselves from this relationship of mainly catering and focusing on the people who play the game rather than watch will be when the game becomes more of a sport in my eyes, and one example is this stupid MMR system.
Maybe they already know this and have known this but had no clue how to make the move without upsetting and risking the loss of a large number of loyal players so they kind of sat on their hands all these years, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they're going to implement these changes over time.
The main point I'm making is that MMR or whatever ranking system you create should be focused on being something that makes the players in the game enjoy the game more and have more fun out of it so that they want to keep playing, and then the secondary channel for players who want to play more seriously or become semi-pro+ should be considered after the fun aspect has been fulfilled.
I forgot why exactly I quit dota last year, but I know that MMR was a big source of dissatisfaction for me, I remember wanting to hit 5k MMR and bouncing between 4.6-4.4 for months, I tried and spent a lot of time to figure out what I could do to improve myself, and it just felt like outside of dedicating way more time than I was already putting in, I'd never hit my goal, and then one day I was like god damn, I'm wasting too much time on this trash and not even getting better so I'm done.
It was these games where match making relegated me into specific roles I didn't want to play or heroes I never practiced that made me realize how dumb of a number MMR is, like if I practiced my pos 2/3/4 pool for the last 2 weeks and nobody wanted to play a pos 5, I'd be playing my subpar pos 5 versus fighting another person for my 2/3/4 position which I studied and practiced in the time I did have in the hopes of having it improve my chances of winning, but I didn't know ward/deward spots, like other people who practice the roles do. This is like practicing speed chess for 3 months then being forced to play normal chess, sure it's the same game but it's also completely different in terms of strategy and what you need to be focused on and doing.
I think the fact that you can't reliably relegate yourself to particlar roles and pools already makes the entire MMR system really chaotic considering that finding games quickly is valued more highly than finding a fair match, so if we're all already in agreement of that, then why do we even care about this stupid number for people who are less than the top 97-95%? I wish they'd have the balls to get rid of it and replace it with something that made the game fun again instead of ruining it for the other 90% of players who aren't ever going to be or want to be pros or streamers on twitch.
