A new patch is out in Valorant, which means dataminers have plenty of new material to decipher. It looks like this patch adds some small changes to rating gains and losses.
Here’s what the leaks suggest, and what we can take from them.
Valorant leak reveals new strings of code
In the past, players have gained and lost rating mainly due to the final score of the match. If a team beats another team 13-2, for example, that team will gain a lot of rating, and the losing team will lose a lot. If the game finishes 13-11, the gains and losses will be smaller.
A new string of code suggests that players will gain more rating for performing well and lose more for going AFK. Here’s what the code looks like:
- “RankedRatingPerformanceBonus”: 0
- “AFKPenalty”: 0
This implies the player didn’t perform well enough (or lost) to get a bonus and did not take a penalty for going AFK during the match.
You can now lose points for being AFK, and earn bonus points based on performance in ranked. | #VALORANT pic.twitter.com/zA6rTQRdES
— Mike – Valorant Leaks & Info (@ValorLeaks) January 21, 2021
How will this impact competitive play?
Having more punishments for players who go AFK is always a good thing. This behavior is all too common in Valorant and should be discouraged. Since rating is ultimately what players care the most about, losing more for leaving games should help discourage this behavior at least a little bit.
Gaining more for performing well is also a step in the right direction. It seems unfair that a player who went 4-17-2 would get the same rating game as a player who went 24-8-3 in the same match. The second player clearly performed much better and put the other player on their back. This will also encourage players to try harder to get more rating.
If this Valorant leak is legitimate and these changes are in the game or come to the game in the future, it seems good for the health of the game. Overall, these are positive changes that should help the state of competitive play.
