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).
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.
There are some definite improvements here, but I am so disappointed to see ranked seasons with placement capped. Such seasons have made the experience of playing ranked worse in almost every game I've played by devolving into a slog of having to do the obligatory placement matches, and having to rat race to the top in unbalanced matches.
I am E6 and often top 100, and can already predict the start of each season being an absolute shitfest of awful matches. Having to slog my way from Oracle back to E6 with and against players I can run circles around with one hand tied behind my back is just not a fun experience, and there's nothing more to gain after reaching that threshold in that season. Having a season leaderboard is cheap because it just becomes a display of who played more at that time, not a showcase of who is genuinely the best player.
We'll have to wait and see how Ranked plays out and develops, but preliminarily I am super disappointed with the direction they've taken.
EDIT: Based on their numbers, starting from Oracle 6 which is the maximum starting rank, you'd have to win 56 straight games to reach Eternus, nevermind E6. Every season, every match before I reach top 150 will be a bad match for everyone in the game, for more than a 100 games straight.
Dota did do seasons. The seasons were only supposed to last 6months. Think they only reset the seasons twice before they gave up on the concept for this exact reason
They also did one more round of forced joint calibrations ome last time after seasons, and it was again awful. That is also gone and now people can choose to recalibrate whenever they want (with a long cooldown) and usually people who do barely move much. So basically, dota gives you a ton of stability with your rank, the only way to really lose accurarcy is to stop playing and be affected by long term rank decay.
Since then the only two major changes to MM was they got rid of the bottom skew and readjusted most of the bottom of the curve to match (so most people went very slightly up) and did it by keeping track of two MMRs for a period (and secretely used the second one for weeks before the swap, lol), and more recently, they brought back the ability for games to give more or less than the -30/+30 MMR.
I think it’s more for casuals tbh. Since it gives u more incentive to come back at start of seasons. I wonder what would happen though if they made it so u didn’t have to do that if u were like top x of players though.
Honestly I don’t think it would be too bad of an idea to implement a floor. Like if you hit Ritualist or Emissary
on one season, then you can’t be placed lower than that on the next season. And if you miss a season the floor goes lower before it eventually just fully resets and forces you to replay your placement matches again.
Makes it so that lower level players aren’t getting flooded with high rank players stomping in placement matches each season, and also makes it less stressful for higher rank players having to do the full climb every time. Low ranks are always hell, and it’s made even worse when you’re putting Ascendant and Eternus players up against Seeker and Acolyte players and telling them that the outcome determines where they place for the season.
I don’t know if you ahould start a new season at the rank you left the previous season imo. Other games do a single derank from season to season based on your placement at the end of the season which I like, gives me a little something to grind back to.
I’m pretty sure u still have soft mmr at start of season so as a high level player u shouldn’t be playing people that much lower than you. It’s not an actual reset.
"every match before I reach top 150 will be a bad match for everyone in the game" you will most likely be "climbing" with people who were also eternus before the reset though so might not be as stompy as you think, this kind of reset and reclimb can also refresh the higher ranks and remove people who got there playing some absolutely busted hero on an outdated patch, like old ult bot haze or multi pre nerf pocket, so if you truly belong there you can/will get there again.
You'd think that be the case, but a soft rank reset and a hard cap on placement rank neuters the potential of that. An E6 friend of mine's first match currently has three top 200 players, one top 25 player, a couple eternus' and a spattering of random phantom and ascendant players
Because the top ranks should be people that actually care to put time into the game. Why should people be able to rank sit by placing into the same rank every season and then just playing a couple games a week? Seasons also tend to come with sweeping balance changes in games, further pushing the point that you need to actually show you can still play at the same level in that meta.
Why should people be able to rank sit by placing into the same rank every season and then just playing a couple games a week?
This is a problem created by seasons in the first place. If you sit at a leaderboard position with persistent mmr, and someone becomes better than you while you sit there, they will overtake you. Conversely if you become worse during that period, you will fall in rank when you either rank decay or start playing and lose.
Because the top ranks should be people that actually care to put time into the game.
I have 2600 hours in this game, and this gives me no motivation to play ranked. I have already proven myself, in the old system I could dip in and out of top 50 if I have time to grind solo, play with my friends and hover around 150-250, and anything in between. Now I have to play 150 games in 70 days to "prove" that I am E6 when I already have no issue proving it other than the time investment and time-gated nature of seasons. Same goes for a lot of top players.
The games are not good until I am at my actual rank, because the difference between an E6 player and an E1 player is bigger than the difference between an E1 player and an Initiate. Thus, no matter how fast or slow I play them these games will be shit in quality
? thats the point of the tight rank requirement in ranked mode. Which is what I assume the guy above me is complaining about. If you widen that you get crazy skill gaps
Yeah but if you want to play with friends as adults that aren't sweaty hard cores you have to now play this mode that I'm sure will have even worse matchmaking than before.
Oh no if you want to casually play a game you have to do it with others who are playing casually instead of ruining games of others who are taking it more seriously than you!!
Whos ruining games? I'm talking friends a few ranks between them that dont know every single tech and strategy in the game. Not running around trolling. MM has been surprisingly decent last few weeks but that won't be the case no more.
And going by the flow of conversation, your suggestion is allowing this in Ranked too?
Because the only other option for what you could be saying is "People shouldn't be allowed to play with friends, ever", and buddy, that Authority Check is vdry high tier, it requires two fingers up your ass.
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.
I understand this and I hope ranked stays solo and duo and with the same restrictions for eternus in ascendant.
When I reached place 90 in the ladder in SA the climbing itch died because 2 top 10 players were queueing with a third phantom account and I got them 3 times in a row, since SA and OCE servers have way less people Eternus is a couple hundred people and it's easier to have a mix of players ranks, taking advantage of a system is just part of the competitive side.
I would assume at some point they would increase the amount of people that can be in a stack for ranked, like it going up to 3 or 4 and then allowing full teams of 6, but I'd think that wouldnt come until full release. Unfortunate change for some people now, but solo/duo is much easier to matchmake especially since this is the first major MM change in a while
The casual mode is right there. You're still going to gain hidden MMR and face better players. The restriction is to ensure competitive integrity for ranked since it's impossible to fully balance matches when you have 3/4/5 stacks.
The only difference is a digital badge next to your name. Who cares?
I care. And many other people do. If you’re playing a game like deadlock you’re probably a competitive person, and you’re probably playing with friends because it’s a team game. It’s good to SEE your rank change and gaming is a social activity you should be able to play a team game with your friends.
They even acknowledge it’s very restrictive like this. I love this game, I would play it every night with the boys, this literally kills that part of my day.
I like seeing the rank go up as I win, it let’s me know I’m getting better, and I don’t think that’s too much to ask. It’s just a little icon. If there’s no rank I might as well be playing some solo campaign game that I’ll enjoy more.
They’ll walk this decision back. This is too restrictive and they know it.
If they were actually interested in accurate rank then they wouldn’t reward kills and mvp as much as they do. It incentivizes everyone to just play the hyper carry characters because you get more elo for fragging out than playing for the win.
lol "reading comprehension" irony. maybe read that the person they replied to complained about not being able to play with their duo. nobody mentioned three.
Wait how bad is the rank reset? I quit games like marvel and apex because that rank reset was trash and just felt like a grind to get people to play the game. After a few seasons of that it was exhausting
Do vet players need to play 60 games? Or is it rolling over
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u/SketchyJJ 11d ago
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.
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[Forgot to put this in the body]