Deadlock's ranked play has improved quite a bit since its arrival, but a small quirk has left only 75 people down at the bottom rank to battle it out
When Valve first introduced ranked play to Deadlock the player distribution was a little funky. Seeing that Deadlock was and is still in closed beta, this was to be expected, but still, instead of the normal bell curve, players were spread out across all the ranks. It was a little chaotic to begin with, but over time, things have seemed to settle down, at least for most of us.
If you look on TrackLock, there's now a more distinct bell curve that follows the more usual distribution of skill levels seen in competitive games. Although instead of being kind of bottom-heavy, with the majority of players slotted into the lower ranks and then tapering off into the higher-skill tiers, Deadlock seems to be middle-heavy.
This could be because the players who spend the time to establish their rank in Deadlock are more dedicated to it than players of other games or that Deadlock doesn't have the same kind of rank deterioration that older competitive games exhibit. Whatever the case is, this distribution means that there's a tiny percentage of players left at the very bottom rank.
Out of the 70,000 competitive Deadlock players there's just 75, or 0.1%, in Initiate, the bottom rank. And within the six subranks, there are just seven at the very lowest, Initiate I. There's nothing wrong with being at the bottom. To be honest, if I decided to give ranked play a go again, then the number of Initiates would probably go up to 76, but even so, other Deadlock players are wondering why there's so few of them.
"Okay but only 75 players?! They should have some company down there," one player says. Someone else suggests that instead of just having a watch live tab for Eternus players (the top rank), there should also be an option to sit in and watch Initiate games.
It's a little odd, but having such few numbers at the bottom isn't a massive issue. Yes, Initiate players will largely play among themselves, but they'll also go up against Seeker players when they're vying to rank up. There'll also likely be more players joining the lower ranks when Deadlock officially releases, and a swell of newbies join the game.
Deadlock and its ranked mode have improved incredibly quickly since its launch, thanks to the constant updates the devs have been putting out. There's been changes to account for players strengths and weaknesses with specific heroes and even an extra competitive option for those who want to take ranked matches really seriously. And even though these new features may not be coming as quickly in the future as Valve has decided to slow down updates and take a more methodical approach to changes, I can only see Deadlock's ranked play going from strength to strength.