The first Deadlock ranked season begins now, and Valve’s latest update is good news for everyone. Whether you’re trying to enjoy the hero-shooter MOBA from a more casual standpoint or sweating your way up the ladder to prove your skills, this matchmaking overhaul is going to prove beneficial. The developer has implemented some baseline restrictions for players, asking you to prove that you have a reasonable understanding of characters in its unranked ‘standard mode’ before taking them into more competitive play.
In order to jump into the ranked Deadlock queue, you’ll need to have established a baseline amount of game time – racking up at least 60 wins in standard play, to be specific. There’s a second important caveat, however: in order to play as a hero in ranked, you’ll need to unlock them by winning at least 15 games with them in standard. You need to have a minimum of three heroes available before you can queue up for ranked mode, so make sure you’re spreading your time across the roster.
Valve is maintaining its structure of queuing up with a specific hero selected to start with, which it considers “an important and popular feature with most players.” This enables the matchmaker to put together games featuring both reasonable team compositions and a fair balance between the players on both sides. It says this design is “even more” valuable in ranked, “where it is critical that everyone has a good understanding of how to pilot their selected hero.” However, it recognizes “that even long term the matchmaker won’t always be able to do a great job at this,” so it’s handing you some flexibility to switch.
Once you’re in the pre-game lobby, you’ll see a breakdown of the ranks of everyone in the game. From here, “you can choose to change your given hero to any other hero that hasn’t been selected, as long as you have that hero unlocked for ranked play.” You may also swap lanes with your teammates at this time. You will be shown the enemy team’s starting lineup, but not any changes they make during this phase: “This is not intended to be primarily a counter-picking feature,” Valve explains, “just a quick way to improve your team’s general hero composition.” Once a match starts, pausing is now disabled for the first two minutes.
Each of the eleven ranks has six numbered subranks within it. Once you’re eligible, you can queue up either solo or as a duo, and if you choose the latter, the two of you can’t be more than one rank apart. If you’re at the top tier, Eternus, the limit is just three subranks apart. Currently, these two queues are the only options available. “We recognize that the party size and rank spread limits might be too restrictive,” Valve notes, “but we wanted to start off this way and then adjust in the future as needed.”
Each season will begin with an eight-game ‘calibration phase,’ during which you can’t be placed any higher than Oracle VI (meaning you’ll always need to climb into the top three ranks as you play). Each subrank requires 1,000 Rank Points to advance, with the final jump to the next full rank needing 2,000. Wins and losses will increase or decrease your total by roughly 250 points, but factors like win streaks and the matchmaker’s expected outcomes can influence this total to vary slightly.
There’s also a ‘rank loss protection’ mechanic. When sitting at the bottom of a subrank, this will keep you from dropping unless you lose two games, while dropping out of a full ranked tier will require you to lose five games in total. Abandons before the five-minute mark will mark the game as void and safe to leave for everyone. Those after this time will give the disadvantaged team the option to leave without punishments, but they can instead choose to see the match out. The opposing team must continue to play as normal (and anyone leaving from that side will also suffer an abandonment penalty).
“We expect the next week or so to be very rocky,” Valve says, pointing out that the ranked pool will likely be “very thin” at first due to most players having not yet met the unlock requirements. “This will have a significant effect on queue times and match quality until things stabilize.” The developer adds that because this update has required a fairly large backend rewrite, “we are expecting that it will take a couple of days to iron out bugs.” Despite its huge popularity, Deadlock is still very much in pre-release testing, after all.
Deadlock’s first ranked season runs from Thursday, July 30 until Wednesday, October 7. When a season ends, your highest rank reached will be permanently saved to your profile.
Valve notes that future ranked seasons “will likely have longer durations with splits in between,” giving some breaks for adjustments to the mode during the downtime. Additionally, it’s considering implementing “recency requirements on the heroes played” to check you’re somewhat up to date on your chosen characters. You won’t be able to just decide to play Lash on a whim if you haven’t used him in the last few months, for example.