Ranked Season 4 kicks off today and will run until January. Use the skills you’ve been honing in the off season, and earn those Ranked rewards to show off to the rest of the community.

These are hardcore 5v5 matches with friendly fire and team collision enabled, so party up with 1 to 4 of your friends and show the community who’s boss. It won’t be easy, but practice, teamwork and a steady hand will go a long way.

GET RANKED

To start your ranked career you must be level 7. When you enter the new Season you’ll be asked to play 10 placement matches to determine your starting Rank.

Your placement will be affected by where you ended Season 3, but if you’re new to Ranked, then this opening salvo of games will give you your starting position.

RANKED POINTS

As you play you’ll earn Ranked Points which you can use to buy exclusive Ranked Season 4 content. This content will only be available during this Ranked Season, so play hard and save up, because they won’t be coming back!

As well as earning these Ranked Points for exclusive content, you’ll also get a 50% credit bonus while playing ranked. So if you’ve got your eyes on a shiny new Merc, Ranked is the place to play.

You can earn Ranked Points by:

1. PLAYING RANKED MATCHES

You will earn points for every match you play. The better your team does, the more points you earn.

Team Result Win Draw Loss Points Earned 50 30 10

2. PLACEMENT

When Ranked Season 4 ends in January, you’ll earn points relative to the highest Rank you achieved in the season.

These range from 100 points for a Bronze Recruit, to 4500 for Elite Operative! All the purchasable content can be found on the ‘Ranked’ tab on the store, and the possible rewards are seen on the ‘Ranked’ tab in your profile.

When the Season ends, you won’t have long to spend any remaining points on the exclusive Ranked Season 4 content. After that, any points you have left will carry over to the next Season.

EXCLUSIVE RANKED SEASON 4 CONTENT

Ranked content is back, and it’s better than ever.

RANKED SEASON 4 CASES

You can score limited edition Loadout Cards by playing in Ranked Season 4.

Each of these rare cases contains one random Loadout Card with an exclusive skin for a Merc and their weapons, available only during this season.

They’re not easy to get, but carry a prestige that will get the rest of the server talking.

Every time a case drops at the end of a Ranked match, there’s a 2% chance that it could be a Ranked Case.

FRAGGER OBSIDIAN

For this season only, you can find two Fragger Obsidian Loadout Cards in the Store.

These reflect the most-played Fragger card in Ranked Season 3 and Casual Play. Pick them up to look the business!

BATTLE HARDENED TRINKET

Need further proof of your Ranked prowess? A new Battle-Hardened Trinket is here for Season 4, a reminder to you and everyone else you frag about your dedication to Dirty Bomb.

RANKED SEASON 4 TRINKET

On top of everything else you’ll also be rewarded with a Ranked Season 4 Trinket reflecting the highest Rank you attained during the Season. Moving down a rank won’t cost you a higher trinket, so don’t be afraid to work your way back up!

WHAT ELSE HAS CHANGED?

We learned a lot during Ranked Season 3, and listening to your feedback has helped us tune Ranked Season 4 to make it the best Season so far.

ADDITIONS

Turtle makes his debut – The Turkish Engineer joins the Ranked fray for the first time

Dome Redux and Vault have also been added to the map selection

We’ve reduced the amount of time it takes to go up in Rank, allowing players to find their “correct” Rank more quickly

If a player has never been Ranked before, we now factor in their Casual Skill Rating during their placement matches to improve balance

Based on last Season’s analysis; large, higher-skilled parties will now be matched against even tougher opponents

At the end of the match we now display the ‘Average Rank’ for each team, which includes the ‘hidden rating’ of Unranked players

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

We’ve made some general Overtime changes, with Overtime now being activated if the match ends while: C4 is being planted – before this only included C4 that was already planted EV is being repaired – before this only included the EV being actively Escorted

To help prevent situations where Attackers can ‘steamroll’ a following Objective without Defenders getting a chance to contest the area, we’ve also added a ‘Fall Back’ grace period when a Primary Objective is completed After a Primary Objective is completed, Defenders have a 5s grace-period where they can respawn instantly



So what are you waiting for? Those shiny new skins won’t be earning themselves – Jump in game and get competitive!

CASUAL MATCHMAKING

We’re adding several more improvements to Casual Matchmaking as we continue to refine the feature, with a focus on getting you into matches faster.

Searching for servers now occurs in the background during the Team Lineup This should reduce the wait-time in every single match by around 15 seconds

Updated the expansion bar to give a more precise estimated waiting time

Players can now join a match in progress during searching if a slot becomes available

Improved feedback when party invites fail while actively searching

Improved UI notifications when a game update is available while actively searching

Fixed a few bugs that sometimes caused the Lobby to fail when a player lost connection

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES:

VAULT

Fixed hitboxes around several archways where players could be shot through the arches

Fixed collision on the gate by the 1st defender spawn point which allowed players to jump on top of the gate

Fixed collision around repairable bridge where players could clip through ceiling instead of being crushed

Fixed bug where players could still be crushed by deliverable container after it has landed

Removed invisible ramp in corridor near the 3rd Objective.

Fixed inaccurate invisible collision on bridge in 1st Objective

Fixed inaccurate invisible collision near one of the gates close to the second Objective Defender spawn point

Fixed bad decal around car crash area

Fixed several small gaps in level geometry where players could see outside the map

Fixed collision on fan prop along Royal Road

Fixed bug where the second slot of the Power Core container would play the wrong animation

Fixed bug where building entrance near the 3rd Objective used interior wallpaper texture

Fixed distance culling that resulted in undesired pop-in of numerous props throughout the level.

GUARDIAN

Reduced the length of Guardian’s Special Taunt 3

Fixed bug where Guardian’s batons used wrong sound effect when hitting walls

Fixed bug where Guardian’s hand appeared in an unnatural pose while crouching

Fixed bug where Guardian had no audio lines for when arming C4, constructing, dying, and several taunts

Fixed bug where Guardian Sky Shield couldn’t be damaged by melee attacks

Fixed bug where Guardian’s Sky Shield could sometimes fail to deploy after being thrown

Fixed bug where Guardian’s Sky Shield could shoot projectiles slightly beyond the extent of its range

Fixed bug where Guardian’s Sky Shield wouldn’t be disabled if thrown in to an active Phantom EMP

Fixed bug where ‘Guardian’ XP could be earnt when incapacitating an enemy without defending a teammate

JAVELIN

Javelin is not yet ready to be added to the Ranked pool, as we continue to get her to a place that’s more fun to play as and against.

Our aim with these changes is to make her ammo-gifting support ability more impactful, while signalling the direction of her Rocket charge-up to encourage the use of Guided mode rather than Standard when trying to get the drop on an enemy. We’ll be monitoring them and will be making further tweaks where necessary.

Javelin’s Rocket Launcher charge-up now has directional loudness, so the charge-up is very audible to a potential target

Smart Ammunition Armor: Increased radius to 3.2m (from 2.8m) Increased Javelin’s ammo giving rate to 1/2 of a Magazine per second (from 1/3) Increased cooldown for giving herself ammunition to 20s (from 12s) Increased Ammo Reach Augment to 25% extra ammo giving radius (from 15%)

Fixed bug where Javelin’s rocket firing effects could only play once for the duration of a round

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS AND FIXES: