This update includes a revamp to how the matchmaking system works, as well as the introduction of a new matchmaking mode. You can now choose to play in Standard Mode (unranked), or the new Ranked Mode introduced in this update.
STANDARD MODE
Standard mode provides a lower-stakes way to play Deadlock with friends, without worrying about adjustments your Rank. There are no restrictions on party size or skill spread. You can also play in this mode to practice heroes you are less familiar with, as the matchmaker will adjust the game it puts you in to account for your experience with that hero.
RANKED MODE
Ranked mode gives players a way to queue up for more competitive games against similarly-skilled players with higher stakes. Each season you'll be able to climb the Ranks and see how far you can go.
UPDATED RANKS & BADGES:
Each Rank has 6 Subranks within (I - VI).
Obscurus (uncalibrated)
-
Initiate
Seeker
Acolyte
Sentinel
Mystic
Ritualist
Emissary
Oracle
-
Phantom
Ascendant
Eternus
ELIGIBILITY AND SEASONS:
To be eligible to queue for Ranked Mode, you must have at least 60 wins in the Standard Mode. To ensure higher quality games, Ranked Mode expects that you have a solid understanding of the heroes you play in it, so the mode only allows you to pick heroes that you have won at least 15 games with in Standard Mode. You must have at least 3 heroes unlocked for Ranked to be able to have a valid sized roster to queue with.
Ranked Mode has seasons, with the first season starting today and ending on October 7th, after which the following season will begin. At the conclusion of a season, the highest Rank you achieved will be permanently saved in your Rank history page. Future Rank seasons will likely have longer durations with splits in between (breaks within the season where Rank adjustments are made) as well as recency requirements on the heroes played.
As the season starts, everyone will enter a calibration phase for 8 games. All players will have a soft reset of their prior Rank, maintaining some history of your previous performance relative to other players to help seed you initially into the calibration games. Players can only exit calibration at a max Rank of Oracle VI. You cannot be in a party during calibration matches.
Ranked Mode will currently only allow for solo or duo parties. If you are in a duo party, both players must be at most 1 Rank away from each other (i.e. Mystic and Ritualist). However, Eternus players can only queue with another Eternus player as long as they are within 3 Subranks of each other. We recognize that the party size and rank spread limits might be too restrictive, but we wanted to start off this way and then adjust in the future as needed.
A new Ranked Hub in the hideout includes all the information about the current and past Ranked seasons going forward, and allows you to access global leaderboards and your Rank history. You'll have an item in the hideout to commemorate your seasons highest rank achievement when the season is over.
RANK POINTS:
When you win or lose a game, you will see your Rank Points update with a visible progress bar after each match. Each win/loss will grant you +/- 250 points on average, though these numbers could vary slightly depending on the expectations the matchmaker had from that game or while on win streaks. To progress to the next Subrank, you need to collect 1000 Rank Points for each promotion. However, the final Subrank before moving to a new Rank (ie. Mystic VI ->Ritualist I) requires 2000 points. Once you reach Eternus I, there will no longer be a fixed amount of points needed to progress from one Subrank to the other as the thresholds will be dynamically updated daily to segment the Subranks on a percentile basis.
There is also Rank loss protection when playing in Ranked. You have 5 games of loss protection when on the boundary of a full Rank (So if you are at Mystic I with 0 Rank points, you will maintain the Mystic badge until you lose 5 games before dropping to Sentinel). Similarly, when you are on a Subrank boundary, you have 2 games of loss protection (i.e. Mystic III with 0 Rank points will have 2 games of loss protection before dropping to Mystic II)
ENTERING A MATCH AND HERO SELECTION:
We think the ability to queue with a very specific hero in mind is an important and popular feature with most players. Even more so in Ranked, where it is critical that everyone has a good understanding of how to pilot their selected hero. By having hero selections done in advance of the game formation, we are able to utilize the matchmaker on the backend to mix and match players from the larger queue to meet everyone's preferences such that players are able to get the hero they want, while also allowing us the ability to create a reasonable team composition. As part of this update we've done some improvements on the matchmaker's ability to create solid team compositions. This is also something we expect to improve over time. As the player pool grows and as more heroes are released, the matchmaker will have more opportunities to create balanced matches with good team compositions while also increasing the chance you get the hero in your highest priority.
However, we also recognize that even long term the matchmaker won't always be able to do a great job at this depending on who is in the queue at the specific time, especially at Ranks or regions where the queue is much thinner. As such, with this Ranked update we are introducing the ability to change your hero in the new pre-game phase.
Once you enter a new Ranked Match, you will see a breakdown of the Ranks of all players in the game, you will then enter a pre-game waiting area where you can control your hero. During this time, 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. The primary purpose of this is to allow players a quick way to adjust their team's hero composition to make any improvements they see fit. This is not intended to be primarily a counter-picking feature, as much as just a quick way to improve your team's general hero composition, while still making it easy for players to have their preferred and most comfortable heroes in Ranked by default. As such, there isn't a live update of what heroes the enemy team is changing into (you will only see their initial hero composition). If you end up swapping into a hero that the enemy team happened to also swap into before you, you'll get an error and then be able to select a different hero. Otherwise you will be given that hero. Each player can only swap into a new hero once.
You can also use the new pre-game waiting area to adjust your starting lanes. You won't be able to zipline swap after this. Pause will be disabled until 2 minutes after the game fully starts, so make sure to do any adjustments you want to either your roster or lanes during the new pre-game waiting area.
Additionally in Ranked Mode, the total number of heroes banned in a given game is increased from 2 to 3 and the algorithm used has been improved.
ABANDONS & PENALTIES
You cannot queue for Ranked if you have any active sanctions on your account (low priority, comms bans, etc.).
If a player abandons a game before 5 minutes, the game will be marked as safe to leave and voided for all players except the leaver and their party. The game will count as a loss for the leaver and their party, and the abandoning player will receive leaver penalties.
If a player abandons a game after 5 minutes, that player will receive leaver penalties and their party will have the game count as a loss. Other players on the abandoning player's team will have their game voided and are safe to leave without punishments, however if they stay and win the game will be counted as a win. If all players on the abandoning team leave, the game will automatically end and be counted as a win for the opposing team.
If you are on the opposing non-abandoning team, you will play the game out as normal. However, if a player on that team then abandons as well they will be penalized just like the first abandoning player/party, and the above rules kick in for the opposing team now as well. In this case, none of the remaining players on either team will have the game count as a loss, and you will only get a win if your team finishes and wins the game.
Leaver penalties start with queue timeouts and escalate to increasing amounts of low priority games.
LEADERBOARD
This update includes a few changes to the requirements to appear on the leaderboards. For the global leaderboard, the game count requirement in the last 30 days has increased from 50 to 75. For the hero specific leaderboards, the game count requirement on that hero in the last 30 days has increased from 20 to 30. There is also a new requirement for hero specific leaderboards where you must have at least 100 lifetime wins on that hero to be considered.
ROLLOUT
This new system is live right now. However we expect the next week or so to be very rocky, as the Ranked matchmaking pool will start off very thin with most players not having the unlock requirements done yet. This will have a significant effect on queue times and match quality until things stabilize. It will also take some time for players to calibrate and move into the appropriate spots. We will be closely monitoring the matchmaker during this time, but we want players to be aware that both queue times, match quality and team composition quality will need some time to ramp up. Given the large rewrite involved with this update, we are also expecting that it will take a couple of days to iron out bugs.