19-year-old Dota 2 pro breaches 15k MMR barrier, but fans are divided by his accomplishments

Talon Esports Offlaner Ws became the world’s first-ever Dota 2 player to reach the 15K MMR milestone. What could be a feat of serious awe and appreciation is somewhat tainted though, as fans have started to question its legitimacy in light of recent MMR inflation thanks to Double Down Tokens.

The 19-year-old Malaysian player posted a screenshot of his Dota 2 profile on Facebook earlier today. 15,007 MMR—yes, the Southeast Asian Offlaner has reached a landmark that was unthinkable a while back. However, the Reddit thread announcing the same brought into question Ws’s feat, and more broadly, the game’s current MMR inflation in light of the easy availability of Double Down Tokens and lack of MMR resets.

“Didn’t we just get the first 14K MMR 2-3 months ago? This is insane,” says the top comment of the thread, alluding to Team Falcon Offlaner ATF reaching the prior milestone recently. Another player added, “Ws himself was less than 12k 90-something days ago. It just shows how inflated MMR has gotten with all these double downs.”

However, the community isn’t short-handed in appreciating Ws’ incredible feat. Their criticism is mostly directed toward Valve, and thankfully, not toward Ws individually. 

Double Down Tokens are problematic for the MMR structure, especially in higher ranks, because of a few factors: There is already a large fluctuation in MMR gain-loss depending on the ranks of players in an Immortal Draft lobby since the introduction of the Glicko system. The spread goes from 10 to 40. The immortal pool is also small, so players mostly know other players in the lobbies. And that means, even before drafting starts, it’s much easier to gauge whether you are more likely to win the match.

This leads to scenarios where players would use Double Down Tokens in an opportune manner to win 80 MMR from a single match, and doing it consistently results in absurd MMR gains in a small time window.

While Ws should be congratulated for his incredible feat, this is a good moment to demand a better ranking system that works for the top end of the Dota 2 player base.