Riot Games has finally released update 1.02, bringing the long-awaited Ranked Mode to Valorant. What’s in the patch notes?
Update with Ranked Mode and more: The update 1.02 is currently being rolled out and is expected to go live everywhere throughout the day.
Even before the release of the current update, it was announced that the new Ranked Mode would differ from the version in the beta. Among other things:
- The rank icons in competitive mode have been redesigned
- The top rank is no longer “Valorant”, but “Radiant”
- Teams can now mostly be formed freely. Only extreme discrepancies between ranks prevent players from forming teams together.
Update: Unfortunately, a serious bug shortly after update 1.02 caused players to suddenly appear in the enemy spawn zone and be killed immediately. This led the developers to take the Ranked Mode offline again.
What else is in the patch notes for update 1.02?
What comes in addition to the Ranked Mode: With update 1.02, a feature is introduced that allows you to forfeit essentially lost matches. This allows hopeless matches, which in the worst case can take quite a long time, to be ended prematurely.
To forfeit, players need to simply type “/ff”, “forfeit”, “concede”, or “surrender”. For the request to go through, all team members must agree to throw in the towel. This option for early forfeiting is already known from Riot’s MOBA League of Legends.
In addition to these two options, several updates were made to various agent abilities, and they have been rebalanced. For example, Viper’s ability Toxin Screen is now stronger and can also be dangerous through walls.
Additionally, updates were made to maps, and UI & menus were revamped. A lot of bug fixes are also part of the patch, aiming to prevent many crashes. You can find the complete overview in the patch notes for the new update (via Play Valorant).
With the new update, Riot is likely to have fulfilled an important player wish. Recently, there was also discussion about the current Battle Pass. The developers explained why the pass does not include Valorant Points.
