DotA2 Team Vs, Solo Matchmaking

Queuing with Friends

I have friends who like to play DotA2. These friends, like me, played the Warcraft 3 map long before DotA2 was in development. We have all played DotA, Heroes of Newerth and League of Legends. Now we all play DotA2. The problem? The huge skill gap.

One of my friends is outright better than I am. He has played longer and more often and generally is s decent player. On top of his play time, he also watched competitive games and follows the patch notes. I do genuinely feel that doing something as simple as watching competitive play helps you learn and improve as a player.
The second thinks he is better, but his play style is selfish, greedy and sloppy. Unforced errors are in an abundance, from item choices to initiation and positioning decisions. He doesn't listen to advice, doesn't watch competitive games, doesn't really follow patch notes, steals farm as support and will farm for the entire game without making an appearance if he can.
A third is new to DotA2, and you can tell. He likes to pick carry roles but can't last hit properly. Picks support and doesn't stack/pull or ward effectively and builds damage items on support roles to try get kills. Courier? Mekanism? Pipe of Insight? No. Essentially what ever lane he is on is a lost lane (unfortunately he tends to want to lane with me, frustrating). The strange part is that he does watch tutorial videos, but he doesn't practise what he learns. Instead he jumps straight into matchmaking and wonders why we lose.
My fourth friend used to play a bit. He learnt to play Ursa. He'd only pick Ursa. He was probably the mist timid Ursa I've ever seen. But the more he played, the better he got. But he'd never learn to play anything else.

I am 'average'. I can play all roles, but when I pick carry, I usually don't have a decent support. So I'm then fighting for farm, without ward vision or team fight survivability. If I don't snowball then it's a lost game. So I tend to shy away from carry roles, there is an abundance of people willing to play that role in my place.
I watch competitive DotA2 games quite often. It's like watching sport for me. DotA Cinema has an awesome VOD section to catch up on missed games, and Stream DotA2 is a great website which lists the majority of live streams. In watching, you can see how they position, the situational items they pick up, how the supports stack and roam and even how and where you can find farm.
I also practise. I will queue into bot games and practise last hitting, practise heroes with tricky ability combos like Puck and practise new ideas. On 'medium' setting, bot games are actually quite relaxing. Crank it up to 'unfair' and you're competing with a team who is ruthless at last hitting, denying and reaction times in team fights. Quite a lot of my friends would benefit in doing this, but for some reason, they feel it's a waste of time unless you're playing against real opponents.
I also watch the more educational videos like 'Purge Plays' and 'Merlini DotA' to try get a better grasp for individual heroes. I'm also not embarrassed in using the in game hero guides. More often than not they pick items that I'd go for, but it's a lot easier to find them if they are in the suggested tab of the shop. The skill build feature is fantastic for heroes you may not often play.

Recent Team Matchmaking Experience

We lose. A lot.

Friend one listed earlier is a good player. But he gets angry easily. Understandably when we lose the game for reasons out of our control. I would guess that if it's just us two playing, we have a decent win percentage.

Friend two. He just doesn't listen. He will pick Bloodseeker and Nightstalker and get some early kills and feel invincible only to throw the game later on. Otherwise he will pick Doom and farm jungle for 40 minutes. He won't TP to help out, is seldom in team fights, will chase enemies to his own demise, tell you to initiate when he is too far away to help, and just not listen. We currently have a 60^ win ratio on DOTABuff, but we lose a lot when we play together.

My third friend, we just lose. He will always want to lane with me, and we lose the lane. We do better when I support and he tries to carry, because I will harass, stack/pull, ward and buy the proper support items. But he struggles last hitting, so its always an uphill battle. When he 'supports' me, he will stand around the lane, occasionally try to last hit my creeps, and throw a stun out if they try to initiate on me. This essentially saps my exp and gold and just hurts me as a carry later on. Additionally he wont ward, so we are always susceptible to ganks, and because he doesn't help deny or attack allied creeps less than 50% health, the wave just pushes and leaves us vulnerable all the time. I've hinted that he should practise last hitting, but he doesn't. I've shown him videos on stack pulling and creep momentum, but he just doesn't do it.
He does love playing the game too, he is always playing the game. I with he'd put more effort into learning to play.

My fourth friend stopped playing video games in general recently. Real life got in the way. But he had a similar drawback in that he wouldn't practise either.

So when we played, we would queue up. Get put in a game. Friend two would always random and usually not know how to play the hero, but be too proud to ask for advice or re pick. Friend one and I would typically try to win the game, friend two would try to carry it (usually fail). Friend three would do his own thing. There would be a huge lack of communication, not for lack of me trying, but mostly people not listening. It boils down to a group of people getting frustrated with one another for at least 40minutes, often losing.

Solo Matchmaking

8th May 2013 was the date when solo matchmaking was released. I suppose it was released to even the playing field for those who don't queue as a stack or with friends. Having people all together on voice comms and actually putting effort into working together should be rights defeat opponents who don't. When you don't have anyone available to queue with in the standard matchmaking queue, you would still be placed in games with people who have queued together. Sometimes you would be the 5th player in a 4man stack, or sometimes you'd be with two sets of friends, just making up the numbers.

What happens in my experience is that the friends playing together will feel more justified to be abusive, as they have friends to back them up. A sense of false entitlement usually follows. Arguably this can work towards the success of the team; if some of your team members have great synergy with one another and are on voice comms, then that's great! Right?

Unfortunately this is where we see the double edged sword. For every group of partied members on your team, there is one on the opponents team too (i.e. 2+2+1 vs 2+2+1), therefore any advantage you may have had, your opponent has too.

In my experience, this then leads to one side greatly dominating the other. Fingers get pointed, people get angry and low priority follows.

Solo matchmaking however pits 5 individuals against 5 individuals. There is no pre-determined advantage due to synergy beforehand, both teams have to meld once the game starts. So how does this effect the game?

Players tend to be more vocal. Not abusive, but just communicate more. I would venture a guess that when friends play together on Skype, they are more reluctant to talk in game to strangers. But when everyone is a stranger, what have you got to lose?
People call missing, inform you that they are close to finishing a big item (so don't force a team fight), call out runes, ping enemy heroes who just came into vision on the mini map and even TP to help each other out.

It's not revolutionary. But in a 5 vs 5 competitive team game, it makes all the difference.

Another point is that the skill level is more balanced between the two teams. In standard matchmaking, if you are in a party, an algorithm is applied to try to calculate your skill level as a party. It's not quite the average, if I recall they put it slightly higher if the skill gap between players is large. In solo matchmaking however, you don't have to account for these kind of algorithms skewing the skill level, which should result in more even and balanced games.

In my experience, solo matchmaking is awesome. I usually get vocal on the mic and try to call out what is going on. Once I start doing it, others tend to join in. I don't rage, and I'll call out praises on nice plays. Generally this works great. There are occasions where the team just doesn't click, or the lineup is terrible and we are at a huge set back, but the majority of the time I get great games.