How's everyone finding the new match making system? I'm level 6, and I feel like it's totally destroyed my match making experience.

First, they've pulled out the interesting match making modes, meaning that I have to return to Limited Heroes (which is never good), All Pick (which I don't really enjoy that much) and Random Draft, putting the rest behind a level 13 wall.

Also, maybe it's because people are playing the holiday event, but it seems like I'm only getting bad players in my games. Or all the good players are playing ranked matches. Or maybe they're playing the other modes (i highly doubt anybody over 13 is slumming it in Limited Heroes). Something has upset the balance of the game, because I feel like I used to be surrounded by semi-capable peers, and now I'm babysitting people who don't know how to buy items from the store and abandon within a few minutes of the game starting.

It's a long way to 13, I hope I don't have to grind it all the way just to get back to some decent mid-level play.

I'd say in the population of Dota, people under lv13 are not a big group. Most people are probably now playing either Ranked or WN, the only people who might not be playing either are new players, so I'm not suprised my match quality has dipped noticeably since they introduced the two.

As a concession though my avg time to find a match has been about 1-2min which is pretty good.