VALORANT Launch Ranks & Competitive

Hey VALORANT competitors, ahead of our global launch of Competitive Matchmaking during patch 1.02, we wanted to give you an update on what to expect when you queue up.

A huge thank you to all of you for the feedback during VALORANT Closed Beta, your input helped inform our next steps. So, based on that feedback, we targeted a few areas to level up for Competitive launch.

On that note, it’s worth saying that this ranked system is a living work in progress, so don’t stop your comments. Expect us to continue to make improvements based on your feedback.

Changes for launch:

• Updated rank iconography and top rank name
• Easier to play with your friends

Soon after patch 1.02:

• Rank Progression

RANK ICONOGRAPHY

We knew going into Closed Beta we wanted to take another pass at rank iconography and taking your feedback into account we’ve made the following changes:

• Clarity pass for rank colors so it's easier to distinguish between each rank
• Visual polish pass for each Match Rating

Additionally, although we still really like having our top rank be something unique to our game and aligned with our IP, we’ve decided to remove VALORANT as the name of our top rank to help reduce potential confusion of the game vs the rank. 

The new name for our top rank will represent Agents infused with powers, known as Radiant.

PLACEMENT MATCHES & PREMADES

We really believe in VALORANT teamplay, playing and competing with your friends. So we’ve made it easier to play with teammates in placements, and will continue to work to further optimize for balanced matches, regardless of your premade size. This is an ongoing commitment from us.

You can now matchmake with your friends during placements even if they have a fairly large skill discrepancy—to a certain extent. For example, if you’re an elite player, and your friend is still learning the ropes, our Competitive Matchmaking will still prevent you from being able to queue in order to protect the competitive integrity and experience for the other players in that match.

We also are continuing to optimize our matchmaking to ensure that, regardless of your premade size, you are put into fair and balanced matches. By the end of closed beta, we were narrowing in on matches being about 50/50 fairness for the vast majority of skill groups (outside of our most elite players in our top two ranks).

For Immortal and Radiant players, we’ve made some improvements to our matchmaking, but we know that for this specific tier of play, there is still a slight advantage to being in a 5-stack vs playing solo in these top ranks. We are looking into tactics to help address this problem, and plan to share more later this year.

RANK PROGRESSION

In every VALORANT Act—which spans about two months—you’ll have the opportunity to track your rank progress throughout the Act. We will start tracking your rank progress as soon as we launch Competitive with patch 1.02 behind the scenes, and soon after we will be providing you visible info in your Match History, and eventually in other locations in the client, around your overall performance for the Act. Rank progress we are looking at tracking are stats such as how you’ve climbed in rank over the Act, your number of wins, along with your wins at your highest achieved rank.

THE BEYOND

We’ve seen a ton of demand for competitive-related features that support teams, in-client tournaments, fairer overtime handling, and more granular top rank comparisons - such as leaderboards. For now, we are primarily focused on getting Competitive Matchmaking globally launched. However, we do want to eventually address these needs.

Our vision for the future highlights teamplay as a critical part of the VALORANT Competitive Ecosystem. We want to create the opportunity for all players to come together and compete at high stakes as a team, with the hope these team-oriented competitive matches will be memorable and rewarding events.

Expect to hear more on this topic later in 2020.