In a surprising update, Valve decided to introduce very interesting Immortal Draft changes. From now on, players above 8500 MMR will have a very different experience than the rest and need to follow specific rules.
Immortal Draft Changes
In the most recent update, Valve changed a lot of things about the Immortal Draft rules. Starting with the MMR, the new regulations will only apply to players whose MMR is above 8500 (previously, it was over 6500). Having more than 8500 MMR means that these players are in the top 0.5% of all active Dota 2 players.
Once a given player has over that MMR, the Immortal Draft games will not appear in the match history. What’s more, only participants will have access to the replay, and the games will not be listed in any web APIs.
Those above 8500 wishing to play the Immortal Draft games have to register an official name that they will use to queue with. Interestingly, the name can’t be changed, and the others can see it in the pre-draft phase. According to Valve, almost half of the players have already done that.
Those who are guaranteed to play Immortal Draft games will not have access to ranked party games. Fortunately, they will still be able to play unranked matches because there are no changes there.
Lastly, Valve also introduced changes to the way the MMR gain/loss works in the Immortal Draft games. The idea behind this is to better take into account the possible outcomes that will be based on the player’s draft choices.
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see whether these changes will make the games more interesting for the best Dota 2 players. We at Blix.gg expect to hear a statement from some of the game’s top stars soon.
