Starting with the 7.06 update, Ascendant, Immortal, and Radiants won’t be able to queue with lower-than-Platinum-ranked players.
Riot Games always pushes small to major balancing updates to preserve the competitive integrity of VALORANT. To do that, VALORANT makes continuous upgrades to the “VALORANT Systems Health Series.”
One of the main concerns of the Health Series has been the exploitation of bots. Although it is hard to eliminate the use of bots in VALORANT, Riot Games is always trying to improve the system so that it stops the use of bots in competitive matches.
Similarly, according to Riot Games, “there has been a wave of competitive rank boosting with bots and real players.” Because of that, Riot Games has decided to restrict Ascendant or above players from queueing with below Platinum players.
Read More: VALORANT 7.06 Patch Notes: Boosting Prevent, Bug Fixes and More
Ascendant+ Players Can’t Queue with Below Platinum Players from 7.06 Update
Although there have always been restrictions on parties of two to three people, there has never been a rank limit on 5-stack lobbies. This means that as long as it was a 5-stack party, any ranked player could play with any other ranked player.
However, Riot Games recently discovered that high-ranked players in VALORANT were abusing this feature by queuing alongside bots and very low-ranked players. Naturally, these low-ranked bots/players didn’t have to do anything to win because Ascendant and above-ranked players would run through the lobby and destroy their opponents.
Even if the team with the most significant skill disparity received a 25% lower Rank Rating, it would not be enough to prevent queueing in these situations. As a result, Riot Games decided to make the latest revision.
As with the 7.06 patch, Ascendant, Immortal, and Radiant players will be unable to queue alongside players ranked lower than Platinum, even in a 5-stack lobby. The party restrictions for two and three players remain unchanged. Hopefully, with the new change, Riot Games will finally be able to stop rank exploitation.
