the ranked of Deadlock Return to the center of the conversation for a reason that has nothing to do with the balance of heroes. Different analyzes of the community and the specialized press point to farms of bots: automated accounts that occupy holes in competitive games without really playing them. Valve It has not published any posture or data that allows measuring the scope.
Specific figures do not exist. No one has counted how many accounts operate like this or how many items have been marked. What is documented is the terrain on which the problem moves and the doors that the mode itself leaves open.
Bot Farms: What’s Behind Suspicion
The accusation is concrete. Bot farms would function as a side-business: prepare accounts with access to Ranked and then sell them to those who do not want to go through the process. The buyer skips the filter; Whoever crosses those accounts in queue loads with a partner who does not contribute anything.
On paper, the design of the ranked should make it difficult. Valve introduced the current system on July 30 and demands 60 victories in standard games to qualify. In addition, each hero you want to use in the mode needs at least 15 wins of your own, so you have to have at least three eligible heroes.
That barrier forces you to play, lose and repeat. It also sets the pace at which an account can be ready to compete, a relevant detail when what is put up for sale is precisely access. Bot farms also do not need to play well to be profitable: it is enough for them to reach the threshold without attracting attention.
The format adds another layer, because the Ranked only supports solo or duo games. Less external coordination, more dependence on what the two players who share queue do.
the soul urn and the companions who do not look at the objective
The most visible track came with the changes in the Soul URN. Some players began to meet teammates who ignored or avoided the target, even in full combat for him. The suspicious slots were still active in the game, but their behavior near the urn resembled that of the game’s hard bots.
When comparing those games with sessions against bots, the pattern was repeated: withdraw from combat or not register the target. The hypothesis that circulates is that the URN patch changed the logic of the mission without updating the behavior of the bots, and that exposed some who previously passed through humans.
There is an even more awkward reading, published as an opinion and not as an audit: that the system does not distinguish between a human in a ranked game, someone in the main menu, an automated farming account or a server bot. Without Valve data, the statement remains in the air.
Duo, Boosting and Eternus Rank Magnet
Solo or duo pairing facilitates another known practice. Boosting is supported by two: a high-level player accompanies a weaker account that ends up showing a rank that did not win by itself. With such a closed ladder, entering as a companion is easy.
The incentive is prestigious. The highest rank of each player is permanently saved in their history, and Eternus works as a visible mark. In Eternus I and higher divisions the subrange thresholds are recalculated daily with percentiles, so the upper part of the ladder moves on its own.
The audience context helps understand why it matters. On Twitch, Deadlock averages between 6,000 and 8,000 live viewers spread over 60-80 streams, with nearly 100,000 simultaneous players. It’s a community big enough for farm accounts to find buyers and small enough for an absent partner to notice.
What is known of the new point system
In recent weeks there has been talk of a second season of Ranked that would have replaced the wins by points accumulated with each hero. The available documentation does not support that change: the requirements described so far remain tied to victories, and there is no public detail on how many points would be needed or when it would rule.
The first season is scheduled to end on October 7. That date is the next checkpoint, because a change of season forces you to review access, pairing and detection at the same time. If the dot model exists, there it will have to be explained; If not, the bot farm problem will remain as it is.
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Source: Dualshockers
