Riot may not be planning VALORANT esports events similar to League of Legends, but the developer has already prepared another one of Valorant players highly sought after event: competitive mode. According to an official blog post from Valorant Senior Producer Ian Fielding, players of the 5v5 character-based tactical shooter will see the game’s competitive matchmaking mode soon after the release of patch 0.49. However, the new mode will be released in EU and North America first before becoming available in other regions.
“VALORANT’s competitive system is still in its early stages, and we plan to evolve it over time, but we have a core experience we wanted to share with you all in closed beta so that we can build and evolve the mode together. Our system aims to solve some of the common pain points we’ve seen players experience with competitive modes and ranked systems. We’re taking your personal skill into account so we can recognize when you’re crushing it, combat smurfing, reduce players with ‘boosted’ ranks, and ensure that for most of your matches, you and your teammates are placed into a fair fight,” Fielding explained.
Riot also released information about the competitive mode rankings, confirming the legitimacy of previous leaks. According to the post, there are eight (8) rank levels divided into three tiers – Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Immortal, and VALORANT (highest) – and both winning matches and performing well are key factors in ranking up. Players who become inactive for 14 days or more will have their ranks hidden when they start playing again, but Riot assures that ranks will not decay artificially due to inactivity. Riot will share more information about the competitive mode and rank progression closer to the launch date.
