I just played a game where there were only 6 players. For some reason matchmaking decided to make our game a 3v3. Every lane is a solo lane, a triple kill is a rampage, and fighting with a teammate dead is 33% of your team gone. It also allows you to have a bigger influence on the game. When you are 33% of your team, you innately have a much bigger impact than previously.

The Valve game Left4Dead2 has a game-mode called “mutations”. Quite simply, every month there is a new ‘mutation’ which is just a slightly altered game-mode that only lasts for about a month. One game mode players can basically only get chainsaws as weapons, another has only one survivor. So at the start you help each other out to get to the end, but as the game progresses you start to attempt to hinder you team-mates, and not help them out. They’re just a slight twist on something already existing, that allow you to have fun in a new strategic environment.

Your MMR should not be altered by the outcome of the game, but the game should use your current (unranked) MMR to find games. No major changes happen, but just a few changes for each mutation. Some of My Mutation Ideas are as follows:

3 v 3

You can deny ally heroes if they’ve been damaged by an enemy in the last 10 seconds, and are under 25% HP. Can disable help to stop trolls from denying you.

Trees, Runes and Rosh don’t respawn. Aegis doesn’t expire.

Hero kills are worth twice as much gold and XP

You can choose your primary stat at the start of the game

The most popular 30 heroes in the game are removed from the pool.

It’s basically a short wacky vacation from the general Dota, which allows you to create new strategy and meta on the fly. Suddenly you have Ursa with Strength as a primary attribute, you have team fights where everyone is doing MLG plays by denying each other. It’s simply about playing Dota with a twist, for people who really like playing Dota.

I think Mutations will be something to improve Dota 2 as a game, by adding a core regular rotating game-mode for all to play. Instead of having everyone split over the 10 mutations at once, you have everyone focused on the same one for the month or two it’s up. Slightly different and quite bizarre, but still tactical and enjoyable.

I gave a few suggestions for Mutations, anyone else got some?