The closed beta for VALORANT has so far been a positive experience for players, but since the first few days of its launch, the need for a ranked mode has been clear. Now players have little time left to wait, as the addition of ranks and competitive matchmaking is right around the corner and is expected to launch any day now.
Speaking about ranked mode was Ian “Brighteyz” Fielding, the Senior Producer at Riot Games for VALORANT. Fielding states that competitive mode will be arriving with patch 0.49 in the EU and NA. At first this might seem far off since patch 0.48 has not been released, but in a recent tweet it was clarified that there is no such patch, and 0.49 is indeed the next one coming as soon as Riot Games believes that the patch is stable for implementation.
Fielding goes on to describe the finer points of what players can expect. Along with a strong commitment to rooting out cheaters with its robust (or invasive) Riot Vanguard anti-cheat software, the developer will be taking personal skill into account that will both recognize when one is doing exceptionally, to combat smurfing, and reduce the number of players with boosted ranks. Overall, the goal is to provide an even playing field with similar skill across all participants.
Once the patch is live, players need only have completed 20 unrated matches to unlock Competitive mode, and from there can begin earning points towards the 8 ranks, each with three tiers, except for the top rank, known only as VALORANT.
Players can queue up solo or in a team of up to five, but all players must be within two ranks of each other, and the system will attempt to place similar premade groups against others of the same size so as to avoid a 5-person party crushing five solo queue players who may not be communicating in the same manner.
From there, players need to participate in a ranked game at least once every 14 days to be able to display their rank. It will disappear otherwise, but not decay, and return as soon as a player takes on another competitive match.
No rewards have been listed yet for what a player might receive if reaching the top rank, but we hope it is some manner of skin variation, perhaps changing with each season of ranked play once live. A key point to note however is that rank will not be carrying over to the launch of the game following this closed beta.
Source: beta.playvalorant.com