Riot’s new shooter Valorant has only been out for a few months, but it’s already gone through quite a few major changes, including new characters, weapon rebalancing, and a panoply of bug fixes. As the game approaches its third season–which Riot calls “Acts”–the developers have put together a new video that reveals the major shifts coming to the game’s competitive mode in the coming days.
As the above video shows, Riot acknowledges that many players have voiced frustration about the skill disparity in ranked matchmaking. Starting in Act 3, you will only be able to queue up with players who are within 3 ranks of you, rather than the current 6. This means that a Diamond 3 will only be able to queue up with players who are ranked at least Platinum 3, but not higher than Immortal 3. So, if you’re a lot better at the game than your friends, you’re out of luck, at least when it comes to ranked play.
“When we were first setting up ranked for launch, one big goal we had was to embrace social play, to let players from wider skill disparities play together,” says David Cole, a designer on Valorant. “…But while the former values of social play are important, they should never come at the expense of your ranked accomplishments.”
Cole also revealed that the development team is working on several changes aimed at improving the competitive climb of high-ranking players, including a public region leaderboards and possibly restricting queue sizes at Immortal-plus play to only 1 or 2 players. Cole also said that players who like to queue for competitive matches with friends of a wide skill-range are also a priority for the team, and there will likely be features unveiled early next year aimed at making that group happy.
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