Riot discuss concerns over Valorant’s ranked mode

In a recent developer update blog post, Ian Fielding, product manager of the Valorant competitive team, offered some valuable insight into the company’s thoughts on rated mode.

The first topic that Fielding addressed was the fact that any size of premade party can queue together for ranked. Some players have stated that they are often matched with teams comprising of larger premade squads, putting themselves at an instant disadvantage.

With Valorant being a game so focused on teamplay, there are no plans to change this. Instead the developers are looking to improve the ways in which they combat this issue. The matchmaking system is already designed to favor placing players against similar premade team sizes, this will naturally become more effective once the game officially launches and more players are queuing.

On top of this, outside of the highest rank, individual performance has a small impact on how your rank is adjusted following a match. This means that you don’t have to rely solely on the competence of your team mates to rank up. Fielding did however clarify that winning or losing a game is still the primary factor, so making bad plays purely to boost your KDA is not a smart move.

He also confirmed that they are currently trying to find a way to make it easier for friends to queue together during placement matches without compromising the integrity of the matchmaking system. This follows complaints that players could no longer queue with friends after their first placement game due to a skill disparity.

In terms of the next steps, the Valorant team want to continue this dialogue with the community and work together to build the best competitive mode possible. Fielding explained that they are “actively looking into some changes for our full launch of competitive mode this summer”.

Although this post provided more of an explanation than an immediate fix, the communication is still greatly appreciated. It’s always good to understand the reasoning behind certain decisions and it’s clear that they want to make ranked mode a success.