Just yesterday we saw Spencer “Hiko” Martin from 100 Thieves’ Valorant team call the game’s ranking system garbage. Today, Valorant got a surprise competitive update that brought some changes. Coincidence?

If you’ve been following Valorant since the beginning, or even recently, you’ll often hear other players complain about the game’s ranking system. Cheaters and boosters are some of the main issues plaguing the community, much like any other multiplayer title. Yesterday, Spencer “Hiko” Martin expressed his dissatisfaction with Valorant’s ranking system, calling it garbage and then explaining to his viewers what’s wrong with it. Today, Riot released a surprising competition update.

What has the surprising competitive update changed?

We just got a Valorant patch a few days ago, and another one wasn’t expected for another week at the earliest. We didn’t know that Riot had a surprise update for the game’s matchmaking system that will tighten the skill level between players.

According to Riot, there may be longer wait times, but that should be perfectly fine for most players as long as the competitive experience is more fun. This update is just too much of a good thing after Hiko’s last statement. An analyst from Valorant joined the discussion on Reddit and gave the company’s opinion on the matchmaking system.

RiotSouthKorea has addressed queue times and smurfing/boosting:

Queue times are also one of the metrics we are constantly tracking to ensure the game is in a healthy state; it seems like we have currently invested too much in lowering queue times and still have some room to improve the quality of matches. We will continue to monitor how our telemetry looks after the change, in addition to tracking community sentiment regarding these changes.

Smurfing is a complicated problem, Riot will certainly need some time to address it.

One point I think Hiko (and others) raise is that match quality/one-sidedness is heavily influenced by the presence of smurfing and/or boosted accounts in the game. And that’s true – in both cases, the underlying problem is that players are in a rank/MMR that doesn’t really represent their skill (yet). Over several games this will work itself out (smurfers will move up, boosted accounts will move down), but the players who get these “misplaced” accounts in their games during this adjustment process could have a crappy time.

Whether the recent Valorant update will really improve the overall competitive experience remains to be seen. What is your opinion on this topic? How should Riot Games handle smurfing and boosters in Valorant? Tell us on Facebook or Twitter!

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What is Valorant?

Valorant initially appears to be a cross between CS:Go and Overwatch . A competitive shooter where two small teams compete against each other.

Your team is either ready to attack or defend, with the attackers placing a “stinger” (essentially a bomb) that the other team must then defuse or preferably prevent you from placing at all.

The attacking team can win by either eliminating the defenders or placing the stinger and then protecting it from defusing until the timer runs out. The defenders can similarly win by destroying the attackers before they have a chance to plant their stinger, or disarming the stinger after it has been planted.

Each team of five can play as both attackers and defenders during a game. Each game has a total of 25 rounds, with the first team to win 13 rounds declared the winner

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