SMITE 2 24/7 Alpha Starts Tomorrow, But Ranked Play Will Work Quite A Bit Different In The Sequel

Did you buy a Founder's Pack for SMITE 2? If you did, the MOBA's 24/7 alpha testing starts tomorrow for you. We've already covered how the game will introduce a new matchmaking system that has reportedly been in development for 10 years, but that piece stopped short of talking about Ranked Mode since the team wasn't ready to reveal those details yet.

Yes, 24/7 alpha will include Ranked mode and, in a new video, the Titan Forge team talks about a substantial list of changes coming to the mode to make it A) more approachable to new players and B) more competitive on the high-end of the talent scale.

First, the skill rating has no cap but does have a base at 0. Rather than just count your wins, the new system will compare your wins to the number of games you've played. If you win 100 games out of the 200 you played, the old system just looked at you having 100 wins. This time around, the system will look closer at your 50% win rate, instead. With no cap on skill rating, the leaderboards should be a bit more competitive in the top 100.

On the queue side, yes, you can queue into Ranked in a party. In fact, you can queue solo or in groups of 2,3, or 5. You will not be able to queue into Ranked with a group of 4 because SMITE 2's system will keep solo players and partied players in separate queues and if you queued as a group of 4, it would mean a solo player would be forced into the party queue. The team doesn't want this to happen.

Finally, the draft lobby has seen an overhaul with the UI making it clearer who has the current pick and what the upcoming ban will be.

Get a look at all the changes in the Dev Talk video below.