Dota 2 Immortal Draft changes pose new challenges for the community

Dota 2 professional players have finally got the update they were waiting for, but the rest of the game community has been impacted in various ways.

Valve has just released an update to the Immortal Draft system about two years after its implementation. Immortal Draft was released in April 2023 in the New Frontiers gameplay update, and for a short while it seemed to be the perfect place for the professional players. However, things got from bad to worse to nearly unplayable quite rapidly. The initial threshold for a player to enter the Immortal Draft was 6,500 MMR, which, once the Double Down tokens were introduced, became easier to achieve.

Since Crownfall, meaning for about a year, the Immortal Draft ranks got flooded with win traders and bot games that made an extremely frustrating experience for the high rated players and for the professional players alike.

In today’s update Valve is aiming at fixing all that.

Immortal Draft changes

• Immortal Draft rules will now be used if any player is above 8,500 MMR (roughly the top 0.5% of players).
• Immortal Draft games do not show up in public match history. Replay access is restricted to game participants, and these games are not listed in Web APIs.
• Players who are above 8500 MMR (the top 0.5% of players) are now required to register an official name to queue for ranked. This name cannot be changed and will be displayed during the pre-game player draft phase of Immortal Draft games.
• Players above 8500 MMR who are guaranteed to play an Immortal Draft game may not queue for ranked as a party. Unranked is unchanged.
• Changed the way MMR gain/loss works in Immortal Draft games to better take into consideration the possible outcomes based on player draft choices.

What are the implications for the wider Dota 2 community?

With the public matchmaking data becoming private for the 8,500+ MMR player pool (the top 0.5% of players), this means that the rest of the 99.5% of active players can’t access the pros’ match history. Meaning, meta trends for the professional scene, item builds, and any other data are no longer available. Match replays from the 8,500+ MMR bracket are also off limits for the wide public.

More so, all the websites that gather data from public matchmaking are no longer able to track the pro players, which hits the analysts and the guide creators, who lost their main tools.

The time to get creative is now

For the rest of the 99.5% active player base, the disappearance of pro players’ data tracking options, and possibly the in-game guides, means that everyone has to rely on their own knowledge and understanding of the particular situation of each game when buying their items or selecting talents.

The new update will for sure make the tournaments less predictable and more interesting to watch as they become the main resource for learning about the pro Dota 2 meta.