Season 18 Ranked Matches - Draft Pick Release
On February 27, season 18 ranked matches will begin—this time utilizing draft pick!
Based on player requests, and in service of battles moving toward a more competitive landscape, we’ve decided to bring draft pick to ranked matches as an experiment for season 18. We’ll also be changing the way that draft pick works in both tournament mode and ranked matches, so before that happens, we’d like to share the following information.
For the entirety of season 18, draft pick will be active in ranked matches if every player in the match has a Master rank rating of at least 1,400. Once all players have entered the game, instead of being brought to the regular character selection screen, they’ll be brought to the draft pick screen.
Here, the last two players on each team will each select a Pokémon to ban from the match, preventing all other players from selecting it, until a total of four Pokémon have been banned. Players will then take turns selecting Pokémon to play as that have not been banned, alternating back-and-forth between teams. This allows for a layer of strategy that free pick doesn’t allow, as players make informed decisions about their team composition based on everyone else’s selections.
Finally, we’ll be running a survey about draft pick in season 18 from March 12, 2024, at 7:00 to March 25, 2024, at 23:59 UTC. We hope that draft pick proves to be exciting and fun for players, and we look forward to hearing what you think about its implementation!