Competitive leaderboards and more changes coming to rated matchmaking

When VALORANT launched its closed beta a few months ago, the question that spread among most of the competitive players was the same: what was rated matchmaking going to look like? When they finally had a chance to play this competitive game mode, a lot of feedback came from the highest tier of players.

Once you hit the Radiant rank (previously called Valorant) there was nothing more to achieve, which caused a lot of skilled players to create new accounts with which they could repeat their previous success.

At the end of August, we asked our readers what they think about the current state of the VALORANT ranking system, and gave an example of how things are done in League of Legends.

Today, Riot Games officially revealed the plans and changes they are going to introduce in the competitive matchmaking in the upcoming Act III of VALORANT that will start on** October 27th, 2020**.

One of the biggest changes comes to the range of ranks you can queue with. Instead of 6 possible ranks, now, it will be only 3 tiers. In addition to that, the players that hold Immortal rank and above will be assessed purely on their win and loss ratio, which will determine if they gain or lose rating.

The developers are also putting more focus on the preferred server that a player picks. From now on, it will be possible to mark a preferred location of the servers that might give you better ping, and teammates on similar ping to you. This might extend queue times, and won’t always guarantee you the desired server, but should help the match-making experience.

Another exciting feature is currently in development. The premiere of the Public Regional Leaderboards is planned to be out at the beginning of 2021, with the release of VALORANT Episode 2. There is also a possibility of restriction on the queue sizes at the rank of Immortal and above to solo or duo.

The announcement of the First Strike followed by today’s news, gives us once again a clear message that Riot Games think very seriously about the competitive side of the game and of the great potential of VALORANT esports. In a few months, players will receive a dedicated League of Legends-like leaderboard that will give the highly competitive individuals a chance to grind the game even more.

What do you think about these changes? Do you think VALORANT needs to add some more features in order to make its competitive experience even better? Let us know in the comments!