Ranked was a huge addition to Deadlock in its alpha, but the mode has suddenly disappeared from the main menu. What gives?
Valve’s shooter MOBA hybrid Deadlock has made headlines for both its innovative gameplay and unusual testing phase. Anyone can play with an invite, and the game gets constant updates to both its matchmaker and gameplay. Ranked was a common request, and Valve delivered it only to retract it a month later.
However, the competitive mode is still in the game, and here’s how to access it.
Ranked matchmaking is gone from Deadlock, and now normal matchmaking contributes to a player’s rank.
Valve chose to combine both unranked and ranked into one in an update on November 21, 2024. Now, all games contribute to a player’s rank. In the same update, Deadlock changed its rank system to change players’ ranks constantly rather than refreshing once a week. Valve also reworked rank distribution to make a much more even bell curve.
The developer probably did this to make the matchmaking player pool much larger. While Deadlock is surprisingly popular for an unreleased title, splitting the user base into two different pools made it harder to create balanced matches. This resulted in lots of complaints about matchmaking. Founded or otherwise, the game responded by putting everyone in a single queue.
Deadlock matchmaking uses hero MMR to help find balanced games.
Since Deadlock’s roster is quite diverse, learning new heroes can be difficult in higher levels of matchmaking. Swapping from someone like Haze, who focuses exclusively on gun damage, to someone like Kelvin, who is very reliant on his abilities, can be challenging. The hero MMR system hopes to give Deadlock players an easier time learning new characters.
Valve introduced hero MMR at the same time it combined both matchmaking pools. This move also appears to be a response to matchmaking complaints. Valve’s other competitive MOBA Dota 2 features role MMR where carry players can get easier games when they play as support. This indicates that Valve will continue to refine the hero MMR system before Deadlock’s official release.
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