Deadlock, Valve's "secretive" new MOBA, is introducing a proper Ranked Mode in its latest update. Previously, you would automatically be assigned a rank as you played regular matches. Now, there will be two ways to play, as the players who want to endure the blood, sweat, and tears of a ranked match can do so without disturbing the people who just want to enjoy their evening with some fun matches.
As noted in a lengthy post on Steam, the Ranked Mode for Deadlock can't just be picked by someone entirely new to the game. Similarly to how you need to have a lot of unranked wins in Dota 2 to be able to play Ranked, Deadlock only allows people who have 60 unranked match wins into the Ranked Mode. Moreover, you need at least 15 wins with a hero to qualify them for Ranked, and need a pool of at least 3 heroes to search for Ranked. That means even people with 60 wins might need more to get into Ranked, as they might not have got 15 wins on three different heroes.
Valve is just allowing solo and duo party search for Ranked right now, with plans to expand the searches later down the line. If you do want to play Ranked with a friend, you cannot be more than 1 rank apart. To get your rank, you'll need to play 8 calibration games, which you're not allowed to be in a party for.
Valve expects this to be a bit of a period of adjustment for a lot of players, saying "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." Queue times and match quality are said to be significantly effected until things stabilise. But, there's hope in time Deadlock can have a thriving and sweaty Ranked scene.
