Riot Games officially unveiled the content of the latest VALORANT update , which will be marked with the number 3.10. And what will it bring with it? First of all, a new hero that was announced some time ago.
A new character and an end to rank restrictions
Chamber, because we are talking about him here, is a new Guardian, who, like any representative of this class, will be great at defending points on the map. With the new patch rolling out to the public servers, all players will be able to see exactly what a French weapon designer can do. But this character is not enough. Riot also graced us with changes regarding the ranked game. And not just any changes, because the upcoming update will remove all rank restrictions from groups of five! The reason is prosaic – the creators want to fight the phenomenon of smurfing, and according to them, many people smurf just to be able to play with their weaker friends. Now this problem is to disappear, but a new one will appear, i.e. a noticeable extension of waiting for the match.
This is the visual presentation of the changes made:
Full description of the latest VALORANT update:
Agents update
Chamber
- Another Guardian agent steps into action in patch 3.10
- More information on the new agent can be found at this address
Ranked play update
- In an effort to limit smurfing, we remove all rank restrictions from groups of five in the ranked queue. Our data shows that players smurf the most because they want to play with their friends without the current rating restrictions. Removing these restrictions specifically for 5-player groups means you can play with your friends regardless of restrictions for groups with fewer ranked people
- If all group members are in Diamond 2 and below
- You can expect extended waiting times for the game as we will only be selecting teams with a similar average MMR value.
- Rating gains and losses will be lower for groups of five that play outside of our current rating restriction rules. The amount your OR changes by depends on the variation in the rankings within the group
- If at least one member of the group is Diamond 3 or higher
- Queue waiting times can vary greatly and can also increase drastically as you will be waiting indefinitely for another group of five with a similar MMR to be matched
- The OR will be reduced by at least 50% for all groups of 5 that include any of the ranks listed above. The deduction can be as high as 90% if the skill mismatch is very large
- If at least one member of the group is Radiant
- As with the Diamond 3 and above ranks, you will be waiting indefinitely for another group of five with a similar MMR to be matched, which can potentially drastically increase queuing times
- The OR will be reduced by at least 75% for all groups of 5 that include any of the ranks listed above. Playing with any player below Radiant will automatically reduce your potential OR by 90%
- In addition to making changes to the 5-person groups, we are also removing 4-person groups from the ranked queue. These types of groups tend to doom the remaining solo player to a comparatively worse gaming experience, and we believe that removing this option will result in a significant reduction in overall toxicity reports.
Esports Features
- Agent icons in observer mode will no longer overlap the same agent when using a minimal HUD while broadcasting
- Spectators will now see different HUD colors for attackers and defenders
- Attacker skills will show red and defender skills will show turquoise
- The minimap will now show a yellow outline around the player’s icon that is the observer’s active target
Fixed bugs
Game system
- Fixed an aliasing issue where playing over 128fps could cause packet sending rates to drop below the 128fps cap. This could account for up to a few milliseconds of additional delay in processing the player’s commands by the server when playing with a high frame rate
Social
- Fixed issues where it was possible to re-invite already invited players to the lobby
Esports Features
- Fixed an issue where the Minimap Zoom feature would not work for Spectators
- Fixed an issue where Trainers were unable to use hotkeys to observe a player inside a deployed utility item (Cypher’s Spy Camera, Skye’s Wolfblow, or Sova’s Owl Drone)
- Fixed an issue where pressing the Shift key in conjunction with a player’s number would not activate the appropriate cinematic camera for that player if they were actively watched
