With Act I of Riot’s competitive shooter VALORANT coming to a conclusion in August, Riot has decided to reveal their plans about the upcoming act through their official blog. The new act will feature a revamped competitive experience for the players of the game with a unique take on the ranking system.
Players in any competitive game often get anxious about losing their ranked games, and Riot aims to fix that problem with their updated competitive game mode which will consequently create a more enjoyable ecosystem in ranked.
“We want you to have an accurate representation of your current skill in matches,” Riot said in their blog. “We also want to build a ranked system that promotes growth and engagement over ‘peaking’ at a top rank, getting anxious about losing it, and stuffing it in the fridge.”
The new ranking system will constitute of “Act ranks” which will only take into account the 9 best wins of a player in ranked mode during the act. After the end of each Act, this Act rank will be preserved as a badge on their player cards and career histories.
Players will also get an “Act rank border” which will evolve based on the number of competitive wins in an Act. The border will change when players hit certain win thresholds: 9,25,50,75 and 100.
Starting from Act II, players will have a “Proven Skill” associated with their Act ranks which will be determined by the 9th best ranked win during that Act.
“Your ‘proven skill’ is your 9th best ranked win of the Act, to demonstrate you can consistently win at that level,” the blog said.
Riot has also explained what will happen at the end of each Act in VALORANT. Here are the key points as summarized in VALORANT’s official website.
- Your prior Act Rank will be saved and locked in your Career tab
Act 1 Competitive data will be saved
You will be put back into abridged placements.
It will take 3 games to display your matchmaking rank instead of the initial 5. - These placements are quicker as we will reference your MMR from the prior Act, so we can quickly assess your skill for the current Act.
- Your rank will be a conservative placement where we are confident you are able to compete at that skill level—or higher.
- Typically, your Match Rank will land a couple of tiers below where you ended the prior Act, but we’ll be increasing how heavily we weigh performance in your early games so you can quickly improve your matchmaking rank if you play well and win.
- Placement games don’t count toward earning your Act Rank.
While no Act rank badge will be awarded to the players at the end of Act I, the new system will fully be implemented starting from Act II of the game which is only a few weeks away.
