VALORANT Reveals Upcoming Competitive Changes and Act II Ranks

• VALORANT to introduce something called 'Act Ranks' to track various player stats.
• At the end of an Act what matters is 9 best rank games and total number of ranked wins.
• Players who have played Act I will require only 3 games to calibrate their rank in Act II.

The tactical first-person shooter VALORANT which released on 2^nd June is nearing the end of Act I called ‘Ignition’, keeping this in mind the developers have announced plans for the upcoming Act II especially for the competitive side of things. Learning a few things from the opening Act the developers have a solid idea of how they want to proceed with competitive matchmaking going further.

The developers stated that the current competitive system is a close representation of a user’s skill and it goes up or down depending on the player’s day-to-day performance. But along with this the developers also want “to build a rank system that promotes growth and engagement over ‘peaking’ at a top rank and getting anxious about losing it.”

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Act II - Competitive Update and Act Ranks

As per the announcement after an Act ends all that matters for a player is as follows,

• The best 9 ranked wins of the act.
• The total number of wins in the act.

Which means that if a player was able to reach a peak of ‘Diamond’ rank in the last Act but later dropped down to ‘Gold’, they will get another chance at pushing for ‘Immortal’ in the nest Act instead of recalibrating.

Act Ranks

The developers will be introducing something called as ‘Act Ranks’ which will be tracking a players ‘Proven Skill’, highest-ranked win, and the total number of competitive wins in the Act. 

• At the end of every Act a players ‘Act Rank’ will be preserved as a badge on their player card.
• The ‘Proven Skill’ of a player is determined by the player’s 9^th best-ranked win of the Act.
• A players ‘Act Rank Border’ is determined by the total number of competitive wins the player achieves in the Act.

The developers have further explained the visual representation of the same on the Rank batches. As the players play more their Act Ranks fill with smaller triangles of different colours highlighting the type of ranked match win like Gold, Immortal, etc.

The Act Rank Badge will represent a player’s Proven Skill made up of their nine best-ranked wins and their final Act Rank. This will not be decided for the current Act and will come into effect starting the next Act, so it will actually be displayed on the player card during Act III.

For the upcoming Act, the developers plan on saving the player’s Act 1 rank and they would be requiring just 3 games for calibrating their new rank instead of the initial 5. The ranks will be accessed quicker and the player’s will awarded a ‘conservative placement’ typically landing a few tiers below where they ended in the prior Act.

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These placement games will not be counting towards the player’s Act Rank which will begin once the initial Act II rank is calibrated. Moving ahead emphasis will be given on improving transparency and clarity, let’s see how the Act II matchmaking experience goes for all the players.