matchmaking

Ability draft is one of Dota's alternate game modes. At the start of an Ability Draft game, players are assigned a Hero and take turns selecting three regular abilities and one Ultimate from a pool of randomly selected abilities. For...

There are always going to heroes that are difficult to play against. Who are those heroes? It will often depend on your particular play style: you might be a skilled melee player, but have a hard time going up...

When Seasonal Ranked Matchmaking hit Dota 2 last week, there was some initial confusion about how the game's new MMR system worked. Evil Geniuses superstar SumaiL was previously mid-8k MMR, and somehow fell to 6.7k in the new system....

As of November 22nd, Dota 2 has officially introduced Seasonal Ranked Matchmaking. This new system will force every Dota 2 player to recalibrate their matchmaking rank at the beginning of every six-month season. According to Valve, these "nitial calibration games will...

With the advent of matchmaking seasons, bought accounts will be reset at the end of each season, making them slightly less valuable. But this 5K account just sold for $60USD on eBay, and there will likely always be a...

Dota 2 is free to play, but would you pay money for a better pub experience? FACEIT has revamped itself. Where it used to be an in-house league for mostly pros and high MMR aspiring pros, it's now offering a...

This review of Destiny 2 is focused exclusively on the game's PvP modes. I had originally planned to do a full game review, but when I looked around, every one of the reviews I found concentrated exclusively on PvE....

Being aggressive when you're playing as a Counter-Terrorist in CS:GO is difficult--if you don't time your aggression correctly, it's likely to backfire. There are specific times (and situations) when you need to be aggressive to win a round. There...

A few weeks ago, we took a look at FACEIT, one of CS:GO's third-party matchmaking services. This week we'll be paying CEVO a visit and taking a look at what they have to offer. At a macro level, CEVO is...

CS:GO will forever hold a special place in my heart. Now don't get me wrong, it is by no means a perfect game. I believe Valve needs to be more in touch with the community and focus more on...

Out of all the third party matchmaking services for CS:GO, few seem to be as universally disliked as FACEIT. From laggy servers to the lackluster anti-cheat, it's a wonder that FACEIT is still being used. With that in mind, what is the...

While many of the inner workings behind Dota 2's matchmaking system remain shrouded in secrecy, no feature is speculated about as much as the so-called "shadow pool," Valve's system for sorting players that's designed to match the dregs of the...