The developers at Valve are becoming extremely strict this time around to make Dota 2 a fun gaming experience for everyone on board.
As with every other update, it brings a lot of changes to Dota 2. Instead of focusing on improving or buffing heroes the team has focused on matchmaking, solo queue and regional changes to offer a much enjoyable experience. The first and foremost is to stop players from abusing from different accounts.
Phone Number is Mandatory
In their blog post, the developers confirmed that players should add a phone number to their account in order to play Ranked matches. Players always tend to use multiple accounts in order to pull off cheap tricks and they have a huge negative impact on the game. The idea is to encourage everyone to use their primary accounts always and stick to what they do which will improve both ranked and unranked experience. Players get a two week period to register their phone numbers and May 4th is the deadline to register your phone number. A number that is disabled from one account cannot be used in another account for three months.
No More Teams Against Solo Players
When you play with a group of friends in Dota 2, you will obviously have a strategy and it has so much impact on solo players who tend to get frustrated. After all, they can never create a strategy or team up with strangers to take another group down. Solo queue is the solution which will ensure that if you are trying to enter a ranked match as an individual, you will not be paired with any other team. All ten players will be individuals and it is up to them to form a team as they play. A welcome addition for people who play solo all the time.
A balanced party matchmaking is also announced. Players in a team with a higher MMR than their group will be assigned with equally good players. Just because the team MMR is less doesn’t mean they would allow newbies to compete against the particular team. A ranked in between their solo rank and the party MMR will be calculated by the system to assign similar opposite teams to play against. Banning will now vary from four hours to four days based on how abusive or intentional feeder the particular player is. People who are often in low priority for their bad behavior should change their habits or be stuck in LP forever.
Dota 2 ranked servers in India, Dubai and South Africa are temporarily disabled until enough number of players are available to host them again.