Riot Games announced that Valorant ranked system is now live in the United States area. And, if things go well, Riot Games will activate the ranked system in Europe as well. Valorant is still in closed beta and turning on the ranked system indicates that the game reached its final testing phases before the full release this summer.
How To Unlock Competitive Valorant Ranked Mode
To unlock Valorant’s ranked mode, which is officially called Competitive mode, you have to complete 20 Unrated (Unranked) matches.
How Many Competitive Ranks Does Valorant Have?
There are a total of eight rank levels in Valorant. Each Rank has three tiers except for Valorant which is the highest rank in the game. That makes for a total of 22 Rank levels and unique badges. Riot has provided a useful graphic showing off its tiered ranking system, which you can see below. The ranks and their corresponding skill level badges are as mentioned here:
- Iron 1
- Iron 2
- Iron 3
- Bronze 1
- Bronze 2
- Bronze 3
- Silver 1
- Silver 2
- Silver 3
- Gold 1
- Gold 2
- Gold 3
- Platinum 1
- Platinum 2
- Platinum 3
- Diamond 1
- Diamond 2
- Diamond 3
- Immortal 1
- Immortal 2
- Immortal 3
- Valorant
How Does Valorant Ranked mode work?
According to Riot Games:
VALORANT’s Competitive mode uses the same in-game rules and format as the Unrated mode, but with a focus on higher-stakes competition. VALORANT’s competitive system is still in its early stages, and we plan to evolve it over time, but we have a core experience we wanted to share with you all in closed beta so that we can build and evolve the mode together. While we plan to keep Unrated mode always available, Competitive matchmaking may be disabled for short periods throughout the closed beta as we work to refine the model and incorporate your feedback.
Our system aims to solve some of the common pain points we’ve seen players experience with competitive modes and ranked systems. We’re taking your personal skill into account so we can recognize when you’re crushing it, combat smurfing, reduce players with ‘boosted’ ranks, and ensure that for most of your matches, you and your teammates are placed into a fair fight.
Your personal performance will have a greater impact on the early evaluation of your skill but will decrease in importance when compared to wins, as we hone in on your skill over time. The competitive mode also measures how decisively you win or lose. We figure, if there is a benefit to your rank that comes from playing your best for the entire match, it will incentivize you to stay in the fight and not throw games.
For those at the VALORANT rank level, winning and how decisive games are won or lost will be the only factor we measure, because at the highest levels of competitive play, we trust you and your teammates have earned your way there.
Competitive integrity
Our rank and the competitive matchmaking systems are meant to deliver a balanced fight and keep the disruption to a minimum.
Factoring in your total performance also helps us better detect smurfs, prevent rank boosting, and get to an accurate display of your skill (rank) much quicker. This way you’ll have more trust that you’re playing in balanced matches with players that have actually earned their ranks.
Planting the Spike can be more fun with friends, so you can queue into competitive matchmaking with a party of up to 5 people. We want players to feel supported when playing in a team of up to 5 because we see it as a key part of competitive play in VALORANT. But whoever you party with must be within 2 ranks (6 tiers) from you. This requirement is to help ensure that there isn’t a huge skill disparity in games where one player is clearly above or below the average skill of other players in the match.
We’ve also taken steps to ensure that you’re on a level playing field regardless of your queue size. Our competitive matchmaking takes into account your pre-made party size and automatically optimizes your match to favor similar premade sizes on the opposing team.
Rank inactivity will also be tracked. If you haven’t played a competitive match in 14 days, then your account will be considered “inactive” and your rank will be hidden. Don’t worry, your rank will be displayed again after your first match back. We want to be confident that when others see your rank, it’s an accurate reflection of your skill. After 14 inactive days, we don’t have as high of confidence in displaying your rank. However, we won’t decay your rank artificially in the background, so don’t sweat it if you’re one of those players that is always on top of their game.
Source: Riot Games Valorant Blog