Riot has just revealed new changes and added features to its competitive matchmaking and ranking system, going into Valorant’s Act II for next week.
Act Ranks will now encapsulate each player’s competitive matchmaking performances, listing down their nine best ranked wins and total number of wins at the end of each Act. Players will also be given badges for their play cards that will preserve their Act performances.
According to Riot, each player’s “proven skill” is their ninth best ranked win, which shows that players can consistently achieve those personal best performances. Aside from Riot’s reasoning, the “proven skill” feature will also prevent players who were carried by others from inaccurate ranking evaluations.
Riot has also provided new visual aids to help players track their progression throughout Acts. In the overview, players will be able to track Acts, Episodes, total wins, individual wins, border levels, and how much time is remaining for the current Episode.
Each small triangle also represents a ranked match win earned from a player’s respective rank. Wins at higher ranks visually replace the lowest wins, so that only the best performances will be retained. The main triangle aims to show players how far they’ve come, since they started playing Valorant.
Border levels will also change every time players hit certain win thresholds — 9, 25, 50, 75, and 100.
Riot has, likewise, added Act Rank Badges which feature each player’s top nine ranked wins. Although, Act 1 will not have an Act Rank Badge because “we figure you want to know what you’re getting into before commemorating it with a badge,” said Valorant Senior Producer Ian ‘Brighteyz’ Fielding.
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The Act Rank Badges will be implemented for Act II, and other players will be able to view them. It will be a “good indication of how you’ve been playing in the past two months.”
At the end of each Act, everyone’s Act Rank will be saved and locked in their Career Tab. At the start of new Acts, players will be put back into abridged placements, but instead of playing five placement games, they will only need to play three. These placement matches will reference previous matchmaking rankings from the prior Act.
Riot mentioned that they would eventually implement more changes to evolve Valorant’s competitive experience. Currently, they’re looking into “improving transparency and clarity into your matchmaking ranking changes.”
It is important to note that professional Valorant players have had issues with the ranking system Riot has in place right now. Matchmaking for Radiant and Immortal players takes a significant amount of time to queue, which is why a lot of them end up creating new accounts to be able to play.
TSM’s Matthew “Wardell” Yu already has five Radiant ranked accounts to his name. On top of that, with no proper leaderboard, players lack incentive to stick with their main account to claim a top spot.
Valorant fans can expect these issues to be addressed at the start of Act II, which is scheduled on August 4.
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