Since undergoing a full launch in June, Riot Games’ Valorant has topped the charts when it comes to first-person shooters. Over these few months, the game has witnessed quite a few changes, from exciting additions to balance updates.

Act 2 of Valorant is rapidly approaching its conclusion after a recent announcement confirmed October 13 as the day it comes to a close. Although the current season has been nothing short of successful, there is always room for improvement in the existing systems.

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With Act 3 right around the corner, Valorant developers Joe Ziegler and David Cole have detailed some of the upcoming changes for the game’s competitive mode. Riot has been listening to player feedback and have responded by improving the overall ranked system and the competitive experience in Act 3.

Changes to Competitive mode for Act 3

Systems design lead David Cole explained a major goal was to embrace social play. It allowed players with wide skill disparities to play together. However, after listening to the feedback, the team is aware of the discontent about the skill disparity in ranked matchmaking.

“For us, while the former values of social play are important, they should never come at the cost of your rank accomplishments.”

The devs understand that ranked play is about the competition more than anything else. Therefore, in Act 3, they are bringing more competitive integrity into the queue, letting players primarily focus on winning.

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Since a team with a wide difference in rank makes winning harder, Riot is going to tighten the restrictions of rank disparities for competitive queues. Act 3 will reduce the rank difference for players to queue up with others from 6 to 3. This means that the lowest rank that a Platinum 3 player can queue up with is Gold 3, while the highest is a Diamond 3.

Moreover, the rank progression for Immortal and beyond will be purely impacted by wins or losses and the outcome of a match. Besides that, players will also have the feature to select a preferred server in competitive mode. Although the devs cannot guarantee preferred servers at all times, this feature will increase a player’s chances to land one.

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Some other changes for Valorant Episode 2 and beyond

Next on Valorant’s priority list is to improve the experience of high ranked players while climbing competitive ranks. David Cole revealed that the team is already working on some features for that purpose. A few of those features include creating a public, region-based leaderboard and a potential restriction on queue sizes to only 1 or 2 players at Immortal and beyond.

Finally, the team also has plans to appease a certain group of players who like to queue for competitive matches with friends of a broader skill range. They intend to deliver these features early next year with the launch of Episode 2. A lot more changes will come across Episode 2 next year. For now, the focus is on the improvements coming with Act 3, which is just around the corner.