Valorant Act III competitive changes announced: stricter queuing coming

(Image credit: Riot Games)

First person shooter Valorant’s Act II is about to come to an end soon, and the developers are on cue with announcements of the future. In a new video the team has announced changes that are coming to competitive mode with the upcoming Act III. 

Besides these the new Act is expected to bring a new Agent as well as another map to the game. But Riot Games has not mentioned any of those in the new update notes. This communication specifically deals with the changes to the competitive mode in the game. 

Competitive mode changes

The blog mentions that Valorant’s Act III Competitive matchmaking begins on October 13. The video features Game Director Joe Ziegler and Systems Design Lead David Cole who talk about the changes in Competitive mode and also give us a brief glimpse of Episode 2 which comes next year. 

The new update is focused on ensuring more competitive integrity to the queuing in the game. Ranked queuing is about to become tighter and players will only be able to play with friends who are within three ranks above or below them. The spread previously allowed players six ranks above or below them to queue together.

Besides this, players will now be able to select their preferred servers, though they are not always guaranteed that they will get it. Immortal ranks and above will now have ranks up or down fully dependent on wins and loss and the decisiveness of the final score.

And for Episode 2 Valorant devs will take note of how well the Immortal-plus ranked experiment works to apply the pure w/l measurement across all ranks. And with the end of another Act, players will be able to get a permanent Act Rank Badge that will be displayed on their profile. Further, there is a region-based leaderboard that is on its way to the game in the future.

Bodhisatwa Ray

Hardcore gamer, gadget enthusiast & cinema buff | Gaming, tech correspondent & reviewer at TechRadar