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Hello everyone and welcome to the future of Stratus Ranked!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working very hard to deliver the best ranked experience we can offer and we’re finally at the point where we’re ready to fully release it. There’s quite a bit that’s changed and even more things for us to go over so let’s get right into it!

What is Ranked?

Ranked is our competitive 5v5 matchmaking system, where you and your teammates take on another team in one of our PVP gamemodes. Using Discord to communicate, these matches rely heavily on teamwork and require coordination in order to succeed. Winning will net you points which allows you to increase your rank and move up the leaderboards. The points that you gain or lose depend on your current rank so climbing the ladder will get more difficult the higher up you go! At the end of the season, the top players face off in an “All-Stars” match where the winning team is crowned the champions for that season.

Each gamemode has a different objective which can change up the playstyle required in order to compete. Capture the Flag (CTF) has teams working their way to the enemy team’s side to grab their flag. The flag holder must then run back to their own side to capture the flag without dying. The team that has the most flags when the timer runs out wins. In King of the Hill (KotH), teams must fight for control of multiple “hills” which when controlled, provides the team with points. The first team to hit the designated point limit will take the match. Lastly, 5 Capture Point (5CP) is similar to KotH where the objective is to capture hills. The key difference is that teams must take control of hills in a specified order and will win once all hills are captured (or meet the secondary win condition of reaching a certain amount of points).

Automation

With our automated system, playing Ranked has never been easier! All you need to do is register your Discord account on our website, join our Ranked Discord, and hop in the “Queue” channel. Once in the queue, everything else happens in game. After 10 players are in the channel and on our server (/ranked), the match will begin.

Captains are chosen at random and are used for picking teams. You can vote for a captain reroll and if the vote succeeds, new random captains will be picked (note, captain votes are worth 3 normal votes). The amount of votes needed for a reroll will increase after each successful vote though. When picking teams, captains will select players using an ABABABBA method in order to assure fairness.

After teams are selected, a map is chosen at random and teams will have 2 minutes to strategize before the match starts (or can do /ready which will start the match in 5 seconds if both team captains run the command). At the end of the match, points will be calculated and the players points and ranks will be updated both in game and in Discord. Players will then be dragged into the Waiting Room where they can queue up again!

Note: Players are able to rejoin the private Discord channels at any time during their matches if they disconnect accidentally.
Note: Leaving the game for longer than 2 minutes after the match has started will mean you have “abandoned” the match, which will count as a double loss for the player(s) that left. If a player has abandoned a match, the team with the abandoned player will not lose any points.

Prize Pool

With the start of this season, we are happy to announce our first Ranked prize pool! At the end of the season, the player at the top of the leaderboard will receive a $30 cash prize.

How to play

Step 1: Register your account at stratus.network/reg

Step 2: Join our Ranked Discord

Step 3: Hop into the “Queue” channel

If you’re having trouble, here is a quick video on how to register.

We hope everyone is excited as we are for this new ranked season and we wish you luck on your climb to the top of the leaderboards!