For the first time in history, Dota 2 allows players to surrender in pubs

Dota 2's latest update, released on Wednesday (6 July), features several changes to public matchmaking.

Before you get too excited, developer Valve Software has expressed that these changes are experimental, and thus may not be permanent.

The new changes are focused on improving matchmaking for full five-man parties, allowing full stacks to play games against teams not featuring full parties and allowing teams to forfeit matches.

Players can find the entire changelog on the Steam website, though the changelog itself is relatively short and comprised of three total changes.

In the past, the Dota 2 matchmaker only allowed full parties of five players to play against other parties of five.

This sometimes caused unreasonable long queue times for five-man parties, as well as unbalanced games in some situations when there weren't many full parties available to play against.

Valve has changed the rules to allow five-man parties to queue into any valid opposing team. This means five-man teams can play against a party made up of two and three-man parties.

This change encourages players to queue with as many friends as possible, although it also means that a party of two players will play matches against parties of five, which seems a little unfair.

The second change to matchmaking is ambiguous, with Valve simply stating that matchmaking for full parties will be faster. This likely means that the MMR limits when parties search for matches have been relaxed, although we can't be sure. Hopefully, Valve will clarify what it means in the future.

When can players forfeit?

The last change to matchmaking is to allow full parties to surrender in public matches, something that only private lobbies were allowed to do in the past.

Only a party of five players can choose to surrender and they are only allowed to do so after 30 minutes in the game have passed by.

Teams that choose to surrender have 10 seconds to change their mind, the same time afforded to private lobbies and professional matches.

Unlike other MOBA titles like League of Legends, Dota 2 never had a surrender option for normal matchmaking games, with the feature previously only available in private lobbies and professional games.

While a reason for this was never officially given, it is widely understood by the community that the lack of a surrender option is meant to encourage players to fight to the end.

While this can drag games out longer, it also gives losing teams the chance to make comebacks.

Also, unlike League of Legends, snowballing in Dota 2 is not a guarantee of victory.

Dota 2 has multiple comeback mechanics built into the game, which gives losing teams a chance to make a revival while forcing the winning teams to play on their toes in order to prevent one.

While the choice to let parties surrender is an understandable one, hopefully, Valve keeps those restrictions in the future. Dota 2 is a dynamic game and pub games are full of amazing comebacks and heartbreaking throws.

Let's pray that Valve avoids allowing random pub players the ability to surrender in the future, as that would deprive players of the opportunity to mount comebacks and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Otomo is a long-time gaming enthusiast and caster. He has been playing games since he was 10 and is the biggest Dota 2 fan.

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