TL;DR: Vanguard continues to go brr, Map Rating is here, Performance Score has been updated, Corrode got some sweet new updates, Ascent and Split are out, Corrode and Bind are in, and we fixed some bugs.

Sup, gamers?!

Kenny here, back with another patch and some nifty little updates to kick off V26 Act 6. Read below for the full details.

GL HF GGs!

ALL PLATFORMS

GENERAL UPDATES

In a new effort to provide more transparency about the actions we’ve taken against problematic players in our community, we want to start sharing our penalty numbers more often. The numbers on the graph above reflect accounts who were fully banned from playing VALORANT for 3 days or longer in Act 5.

In Act 5’s detection period (August 18 to October 1), we banned:

• 171,000+ cheaters
• 54,000+ botters
• 76,000+ for rank manipulation (boosters, boostees, hitchhikers, wintraders & others, numbers listed below)
• 74,000+ for toxicity or comms abuse
• 288,000+ for repeated AFK/gameplay abuse
• 14,000+ for using streamsniping and/or instalocking tools

And we know we still have a lot of work to do, and we’ll keep you updated as we do it. 

More importantly, your reports help us improve our tooling and detection methods, so please continue to report in-game. Thank you!

AGENTS UPDATES

• Killjoy Alarmbot projectile destruction VFX and audio feedback will now trigger when projectile is destroyed by moving doorways

CLIENT UPDATES

• New Queue and Mode Select interface for matchmade and custom game types
• We’ve added a navigation bar to Career to make it easier to navigate to feature pages, like Rank Legacy, Accolades, and Map Rating.

COMPETITIVE UPDATES 

• Map Rating: Time to see if your favorite map is your best map.
  • Map Rating evaluates how your proficiency on a given map changes over time with a 0 to 500 rating and C to S letter grade. 
  • Your rating is based on four primary stats: Overall Win Rate, Attacker Win Rate, Defender Win Rate, and Performance Score. 
    • Recent matches contribute more to your rating and stats than older matches. 
    • Improving any of these stats can increase your rating.
  • You can see your rating, stats, and other features, like your Top Agents in Agent Select, End of Game, and Career.
    • Other players are not able to see information about your Map Rating.
  • Map Rating is available for Competitive and Premier.
  • Everyone starts fresh with the Map Rating launch - historical match data will not count.
• Performance Score Updates
  • Performance Score has been doing a great job at better valuing the contributions of different agents and roles, while still recognizing the value of fragging. At launch, Performance Score and ACS aligned on Match MVP ~70% of the time, which was in-line with our expectations given the additional factors measured in Performance Score. However, we noticed some edge cases where it felt like we overswung our measurement of those additional factors. To reduce these edge cases we made some adjustments that went live during 13.06.
    • Increased the score impact of Damage, Adjusted Kills, and Adjusted Deaths. These adjusted metrics include both First Bloods and First Deaths.
    • Made Chamber specific adjustments that better reflect his utility use.

MAP UPDATES

• CORRODE MAP UPDATE
  • Happy belated birthday, Corrode! After more than a year of watching games and gathering data, we’ve identified a few areas we’d like to improve.
  • A Site and B Site — Defender Paths
    • Rotations have been taking too long. While rotation times vary across maps, Corrode’s have been making it especially difficult for defenders to get back into the action for a retake. So we've adjusted Defender spawn pathing towards site to help Defenders safely rotate a bit faster.
      • Adjusted Defender paths into the back of A Site and B Site to shorten rotations and help with retakes.

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

• Mid
  • Mid has felt like a bit of a brawl, and we want fights here to be more predictable for both sides. Attackers currently funnel through a single choke into Lower Mid, where defenders can slow their progress by spamming the half wall. We’re adjusting the wall and nearby cover to give attackers more room to work with and better options to move toward A Link.
    • Changed the Mid half wall to metal and moved it out 1 meter to reduce wall spam and allow attackers to sneak into A Link without being seen from Top Mid.
    • Moved the boxes at the back of Lower Mid toward B and added a jump-up.
    • Raised the wall in Lower Mid to prevent players from peeking over it from the relocated boxes.

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

Before (Left) -> After (Right)

• A Site — Plant Zone
  • Adjusted the A Site plant zone to make playing post-plant from A Link less effective.

• MAP POOL UPDATES
  • BIND and CORRODE are IN the COMPETITIVE and DEATHMATCH queues.
  • ASCENT and SPLIT are OUT of the COMPETITIVE and DEATHMATCH queues.

BUG FIXES

• Competitive
  • Fixed an issue where the threshold shown for the Masterful accolade was incorrect. 
• Gameplay Systems
  • Fixed an issue where alternate footstep sounds would sometimes not play while a character was in Fog of War
  • Fixed an issue where bodyfall audio events would fail to play at proper location when agents died while in Fog of War
  • Fixed an issue where gun bounce audio events would sometimes not trigger as expected
• Weapons
  • Fix for Warden scope reticle misalignment during full auto fire

KNOWN ISSUES

• Competitive
  • We’re aware of a visual bug where Team MVP doesn’t correctly show in Match History. We’re currently working on a fix.
• Range in Queue
  • We're aware of an issue that was putting some players into a bugged queue state while using the Practice Range, which led to us disabling the feature. We're currently testing a fix and hope to have it to you all ASAP.