Valve continues to delight us with regular and major updates for their latest game, Deadlock. As usual, there's a huge changelog filled with various balance changes, but the key feature we’ll focus on is the overhaul of matchmaking in the latest update.

In the most recent patch, Valve has made a major change to the matchmaking system. It seems that the developers were unsatisfied with the quality of matches created by two separate queues, so they decided to merge the ranked and regular matchmaking into one unified system. From now on, all matches will count toward the player's rank and will impact it.

However, Valve has introduced two separate metrics: one, Core MMR, will represent the player's skill across all heroes, while the other, Hero MMR, will track performance with specific heroes. The Hero MMR will be considered when searching for matches, meaning that if you're playing a hero you’re less skilled with, you'll be matched with opponents of a similar skill level.

As a result of this change, Valve has also done away with the weekly medal updates. Instead, the medals will now continuously update and change depending on the outcome of each match. The developers clarified that they reserve the right to make adjustments to the rating distribution on a monthly basis if needed.

Notably, matches with poor quality matchmaking (as determined by the system) will now have less impact on a player's rating. Similarly, matches with large skill differences within a party will have a reduced effect on the rating. Top players will now be able to play in teams of three (previously, it was limited to two), while other players will not face such restrictions.

Valve has also introduced a leaderboard for each region, displaying the top 1,000 players (separate tables for Core MMR and each Hero MMR). To qualify for a spot on the leaderboard, players will need to complete 50 games in 30 days (for Hero MMR, 20 games with a single hero).

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