Ranked play is coming soon to Infinite Crisis!

We expect the first iteration of draft and ranked to appear in the December update, along with other important changes we recently talked about. Here's what you need to know:

Draft mode is coming to custom games. When putting together a custom match for either Gotham Heights or Coast City, draft mode can be selected instead of blind pick. This is especially useful for teams who want to practice scrimming in the vein of ranked games, which will also use draft mode.

Players need to own at least twelve champions to be able to enter draft mode matches.

If you're unfamiliar with draft mode versus blind pick (the current method of picking champions before a match), draft allows both teams to see which champions are picked by each side.

Each team initially gets to ban one champion, meaning that neither team can pick that champion, before the players on each team alternate in picking their champion — so that player one on the blue team could pick a champion, before player one on the red team does, and so forth.

Pick order is on par with other MOBA titles with a 1-2-2-2-2-1 order after the initial ban from each team.

Champions picked by a player on either team can not be also picked by the other team, so both teams could not have a Flash or Batman. Players are sorted by their personal rating, with the highest rating on each team being the first to pick, and so forth.

Ranked solo queue is coming. Ranked queues will be purely for Coast City, and will use the draft mode rules listed above. Ranked matches will require a minimum player level 10 on top of the twelve plus champions being unlocked; this level limit will be raised for open beta or release and is only level 10 to help test these early iterations of ranked play.

Ranked solo queue will be purely solo. Unlike some other games, you will not be able to duo queue (making a group of two players) and join solo queue. Solo queue ratings will not be able to be exploited or gamed by duo queues.

Ranked queues will use a visible Elo system to rate players. Everyone will start at a base rating of 1200 Elo, which will rise or fall based on winning and losing ranked games respectively. Dodging a ranked game will count as a loss and will drop your Elo rating. There will not be any leagues or tiers for players yet, just an Elo rating.

The level cap of 30 for protectors is being removed. Currently players can only reach level 30 on their account, but this is being removed up to a theoretical cap of level 999. After level 50, the experience requirement to level up further is dramatically increased.

The intention is to reward long term players who reach various level goals, with ideas currently being bounced around including crisis coins, icons and costumes for reaching certain levels or completing particular achievements.

A new chat UI is in the works, but no ETA on it yet. This will let you open separate chat tabs in the client (outside of matches), as well as a General Chat tab, similar to other clients like in League of Legends. No more using the ''Report a Problem'' box or creating a group, just to be able to talk to your friends.