The long-awaited VALORANT patch 2.02 rolled out earlier today. Riot has made further changes to the ranking system and also hinted at the upcoming changes for Episode 2 ACT II.
With the recent changes made to the VALORANT ranking system, players experienced a drastic change in their ranks coming from the previous Act. Players have reportedly experienced an entire tier rank drop from their previous ranks, which is quite alarming. This was due to the soft reset applied with the ranking system overhaul. It has been confirmed that this will change in the next act, and such extreme changes will not be seen.
Furthermore, there have been hints of upcoming changes restricting players from immediately getting Radiant rank at the start of the season. It is expected that a specific number of games have to be completed first in order to get the rank of Radiant.
Also, there might be options to hide your rank coming in the future as it puts a certain pressure on higher-ranked players and lower-ranked players getting looked down upon. In addition, there will be more forgiving rank restrictions in the upcoming Act for the lower ranks.
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Episode 2 ACT II Plans
Here’s the official plans from Riot Games:
- Act-to-act resets will be less punishing, making it easier for players to maintain rank from Act to Act, unlike Episode-soft resets.
We’ve heard the feedback and agree! It can get exhausting to have your rank constantly reset, hidden from you, or feel like you’ve dropped a few sub-ranks and are forced to prove yourself again.
Not only can you lose faith if you feel like you’re fighting the system, it can create a perception of matchmaking chaos during the first few weeks of a soft reset. While we believe soft resets are healthy—they help clear out high ranks of stagnant accounts or boosted players—we only want to do them once per Episode.
We need to make sure we do some housekeeping for ranks Episode to Episode, but we expect Act resets to be much less impactful to your rank. We plan on asking you to play only one placement match if you earned rank in the previous Act and won’t touch your current MMR or rank. However, that placement game will impact your initial rank placement, so it may shift slightly.
While Iron through Diamond will be less affected by Act resets, we do want to make sure we are maintaining leaderboards to keep them as up-to-date as possible, highlighting the current top players in VALORANT. Leaderboard players will see their RR reduced to 10% of their current value. This will maintain the order of the leaderboard while also bringing everyone closer together to start, giving everyone a fair shot at getting to the top.
- Protecting the prestige of earning Radiant Rank.
We agree before letting anyone earn Radiant at the start of the season; we should allow time to let all of you get some games in, making sure the folks who climb the leaderboard and get Radiant have really earned the rank. We’ll have more specifics on this ahead of the start of Episode 2: Act 2
- Targeted hiding of your rank (Pre-game and in-game.)
We’ve heard from many of you that you’d prefer rank not to be shown during pre-game and in-game because it can lead to an increased amount of unhealthy pressure from other players. For example, if you’re the top-ranked player, others might expect you to play a certain way that may not align with your style (or mood). Then you can have an off-game and feel particularly bad about your performance.
We plan to keep your rank along with other players on the end-of-game screen, so post-match, you can still see how you stacked up against others, but we hope this change allows you to focus more on picking the Agent you want and playing in the way you think helps the team.
- Relaxed group restrictions at low ranks.
We understand that many of you really want to group and play ranked with your friends despite their rank. While we are busy working on some team competitive ideas, we want to loosen some of the restrictions we’ve placed on grouping up in lower ranks. The data says we have enough players in lower ranks to allow them to group up at wider rank disparities while also maintaining fair matchmaking. More information about the exact rules for queueing as a group will come at a later date!
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