VALORANT ranked mode changes and release date revealed

VALORANT Game Director Joe “Ziggs” Ziegler promised earlier last week that ranked mode is coming soon, and Riot Games is fulfilling their promise. The studio’s latest blog post goes into detail on when to expect the tactical shooter’s ranked mode, as well as the new changes implemented based on the closed beta’s feedback.

VALORANT’s ranked mode will come shortly after patch 1.02, which is expected to go live in the next few days. Once all the changes the patch brings have proven to be stable and everything is working normally, everyone can finally hop on to play the game competitively. The blog post went into more detail on the changes made by Riot Games’ development team to the rank icons.

As previously announced, VALORANT is no longer the highest competitive rank; from now on this prestigious rank will be called Radiant. The studio also introduced a visual update of the icons to make sure to further polish each rank’s color for easier identification.

“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,” reveals Senior Producer, Ian “Brighteyz” Fielding.

There is a small change happening to your placement matches as well. Players will now be able to queue up with their friends, regardless of their skill gap. However, if the skill discrepancy is too wide, it won’t allow you. This will happen in cases where someone has a significant number of hours put into the game queueing up in their ranked placements with their friend who just installed the game.

“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 can read in the official announcement.

Riot Games also indicate the importance of the VALORANT esports and competitive ecosystem. With that in mind, the developers promise more announcements to come regarding these topics later in 2020. And for now, let us know your thoughts on the changes introduced in the comments below!