Valorant Ranked Play is Now Live With More Regions Opening Tonight
Riot Games has announced that Valorant Ranked Play is now live in-game! The launch will be taking place throughout the night, with other regions around the world getting access to Ranked in the next few hours. The mode is largely the same as it was in the Beta, but with new rank icons, a new top rank, and a few other minor tweaks.
Valorant Ranked Play is Now Available
Last week, Riot announced that Valorant Ranked Play would be going live sometime this week. However, the studio did not announce a specific date. The first warning which players got came just over an hour ago when the official Valorant Twitter account announced that it was now live! The launch has yet to reach the EU, RU, TR, or CIS regions. However, all those regions will be getting access to Ranked later tonight, at 08:00 PM PT.
Valorant Ranked Play, known in-game as ‘Valorant Rated,’ isn’t drastically different from its first incarnation in the game’s Closed Beta. However, Riot has made several changes in the intervening weeks, with more to come post-launch. One change, for instance, is the decision to rename the top ‘VALORANT’ rank to ‘Radiant,’ as the original name was deemed too confusing. The rank iconography has also had a redesign, with greater colour clarity to help players tell them apart.
Perhaps the biggest change in practice, however, is an easing of the restriction which stops players from playing together with people who have very different ranks. During the beta, players were unable to play with other players whose ranks weren’t close to their own. However, so as to make it; “easier to play with your friends,” Riot has eased this restriction somewhat. It still remains in the game, but the allowable gap in ranks is now much wider. Post-launch, the studio is reportedly working on giving players greater visibility over their own stats and rank progress.