Valve has announced in its official Defense of the Ancients 2 (DOTA2) blog that it would start having Ranked Matchmaking for the MOBA. While DOTA2 has always calculated MMR rankings to form matches, now the ratings will be visible.
According to Valve:
* Ranked matchmaking is unlocked after approximately 150 games.
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All players in the party must have unlocked the mode.
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Currently, only All Pick, Captains Mode, and Captains Draft are available.
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You may not participate in ranked matchmaking while in the low priority pool.
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Coaches are not allowed in ranked matchmaking.
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Matches played in normal matchmaking do not impact your ranked matchmaking MMR, and vice versa.
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Your ranked MMR is visible only to you and your friends. The MMR used for normal matchmaking is not visible.
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When you first start using ranked matchmaking, you will enter a calibration phase of 10 games. During this time, your ranked MMR will not be visible.
The software will attempt to matchmake players so that teams are balanced, the discrepancy in skill and experience between the most and least skilled players in the match are minimized, and each team contains about the same number of parties (that is, avoiding having a party of 5 vs. 5 individual players). Of course, having the players speak the same language is paramount, too.
Valve concluded, ”Like most everything else we do, matchmaking is subject to constant reevaluation. Matchmaking will never be perfect, and the technical details in this post refer to the current state of affairs and are likely to change as we find better approaches.”
