Valve’s worst-kept secret, Deadlock, is slowly progressing toward its eventual full release (and announcement; don’t forget about that one, lol). It’s gotten major overhauls over the years, a bunch of new heroes, and so much more, and stands to get overhauled quite a few times by the time it comes out. Probably.
But that never meant we couldn’t get the full release experience in the meantime anyway. With a new major patch yesterday, Valve finally added a proper ranked mode into Deadlock, divisions and all.
Players who have at least 60 wins in the Standard mode will be able to partake in this new system, climbing the ladder and sweating their life out against a bunch of overskilled uber-talented Russians that’ve cracked every single mechanic the game has to offer and then some.
Deadlock did feature an MMR system for the sake of fair(er) matchmaking, but it never materialized as a separate, ranked queue. Now, though, there’s a bunch of ranks that’ll be reflective of your skill in the game. These are Initiate, Seeker, Acolyte, Sentinel, Mystic, Ritualist, Emissary, Oracle, Phantom, Ascendant, and, for the best of the best, Eternus.
Outside of the last three, each rank is referred to by its underlying color, like the ones in League of Legends and other ranked systems. So, if you don’t wanna remember all these cool monikers for the divisions, you can just call them Brick, Stone, Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond.
Of course, if you are not a fan of ranked whatsoever or just starting your ladder-climbing journey, you’ll be known as Obscurus.
Each division has six subranks, as Valve calls them, with higher apparently being better. The year will be broken up into seasons, with the first, inaugural season starting yesterday and lasting until Oct. 7. There’s an eight-game calibration for everyone who’s fresh off normals, and the max rank you can achieve through calibration is Oracle 6.
Unfortunately, you still have to queue with three heroes at least, so Valve isn’t yet ready to commit to allowing players to choose one character to play at all times (which is probably going to come on the same day as role queues, i.e., soon™).
To curb leavers and abusers, Valve is also going to implement a much stricter penalty system for ranked games.
Time to go in and play until I’ve lost my mind and probably forgotten to write all the articles I was supposed to and then see that red dot on Slack staring me down when it’s already too late.
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