Valorant Act II Gets New Ranking System

Valorant released details on the new ranking system and new agent leaks

Ranking has been the root cause of much tilt and anger among all Valorant players. Understandably, deranking stresses everyone out and tough games against hackers and smurfs doesn’t help any. Riot has released details on their latest overhauled ranking system which introduces a ton of interesting features and mechanics.

Big changes:

  • They will display Act Ranks which are essentially a summary of your games for the season
  • You will have a badge that acts like a heat map that shows your best wins of the season at the highest level you have reached
  • A new “proven skill” concept will be shown which is the 9th best game you had of the season
  • Games at higher ranks will push out your lower ranked games
  • Act I may not get this new badge according to Riot’s post
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Your act rank will be a compilation of your wins at the highest levels you played at

This new concept should help curve the smurfing problem as people will be motivated to keep playing on their mains since losses will be scrubbed out as you win more games at higher ranks. Many people are achieving a rank that they are happy with and preserving their accounts while creating new ones to stomp on lower ranked players. At the end of it all, only your highest ranked and best game wins will matter and be displayed.

BONUS for you guys, the new agent has leaked – Killjoy. More details to follow soon. Stay tuned.

Valorant is Deranking Everyone??

Riot claims there is a bug that is deranking people faster than it should.

Many people have been complaining that climbing ranks has been extremely difficult and/or they are losing ranks far faster for losses. Even Ninja has chimed in on twitter stating that he was deranked after only 1 loss against higher ranked players. He even flamed the Riot ranking system in the same tweet, saying it was so toxic.

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I have experienced the same difficulties with my rank, having to win 8+ games before seeing a rank up and losing ranks with only 2-3 losses. Although not as extreme as Ninja’s case. Riot released a statement saying there is a bug in the system and that your “hidden” rating will be retained. Winning a game will supposedly restore the correct visible rank… We’ll see how this gets resolved. So maybe you don’t suck as much as you think you do.

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Another issue Riot has yet to acknowledge let alone tackle is…smurfing. Smurfing has become a huge issue in Counter Strike and Valorant is very closely following in its path. Even in the lowest rank possible in CSGO, players were still godlike at aiming, so either they were mega smurfs or hacking…a new player in the lowest tier should not be able to headshot and ace the other team every round.

The same is beginning to happen in Valorant as the barrier to entry to ranked is extremely low. You only need 20 games on a brand new account to begin ranking again. Anyone could pump out a new smurf everyday if they wanted to. If you observe the high ranked streamers, you can see them all playing on multiple accounts. I’ve even seen people log into new accounts mid stream going from immortal to gold. I’m sure many have noticed that one gold game is a pub stomp, then suddenly the next gold game is a blowout loss. Ever seen a random silver player wipe a gold/plat game?

Hopefully Riot acknowledges this and provides some kind of balancing to combat smurfs. Although, it would be to their benefit to have players keep making new accounts and padding their player count.