"Welcome to Dota, you suck" is classic Dota 2 advice, but how much do you suck? That'll be revealed when Ranked Matchmaking comes to the free-to-play Dote 'em up, as Valve announced on Friday. The developer's also shared heaps of details on how exactly Dota 2's matchmaking works, which is fascinating reading for anyone who's ever find themself in an unlikely match.

Dota 2 already measures and tracks players' skill, of course, but doesn't display this matchmaking ranking (MMR) so it can be difficult to rate yourself objectively. The new Ranked Matchmaking mode will track all games you play in it, and happily show that MMR to you and your pals, though not those awful strangers on the Internet who'll use it to talk trash to you.

Matches played in Ranked Matchmaking won't affect the MMR used in other modes, and vice versa, so you can still goof about with friends in matchmaking without worrying about your ranking.

As for all these rankings, Valve also explained in the blog post more than it ever has about how they're calculated, and quite how they're used.

Seven criteria go into finding your game of Dota 2, from player skill and experience to language choices and wait times. Each is assigned a certain number of points, so for each potential found match Valve totes up the scores until it finds one that's "good enough." Valve says it's still tuning matchmaking, crunching numbers and metrics, but the post has plenty for the curious on the ideas behind it.

Ranked Matchmaking is due to arrive in the next "major" update, whenever that comes.