Riot Games is reworking the Ranked Mode for VALORANT later this week, but Senior Producer Ian "Brighteyez" Fielding revealed what players could expect upon queueing up in a blog post on the official VALORANT website. 

The first noticeable change to VALORANT's Ranked Mode is that the top rank has been changed from 'VALORANT' to 'Radiant' to avoid confusion between the top rank of the game and the game's title itself. Players will also be able to enter matchmaking during placements with one another despite a skill discrepancy 'within reason' which was previously not possible. All ranked icons for the various competitive levels players can achieve have been given a cosmetic update as well.

Brighteyez also commented on what the outlook is for matchmaking optimization in VALORANT based on lessons learned from the Closed Beta period that took place before the game's launch on June 2, 2020.

"We also are continuing to optimize our matchmaking to ensure that, regardless of your premade size, you are put into fair and balanced matches," said Brighteyez. "By the end of closed beta, we were narrowing in on matches being about 50/50 fairness for the vast majority of skill groups (outside of our most elite players in our top two ranks)."

It was also acknowledged by Brighteyez that despite improvements to the matchmaking at the highly competitive levels of Immortal and Radiant, there is still an advantage to queuing with a coordinated 5-man squad. The VALORANT development team is currently looking at ways to address this and will be proving updates in the future.

Once competitive matchmaking is launched in all of its reworked glory, the VALORANT team will focus on how to empower and encourage team play both within the game and out to help bolster the growing competitive VALORANT scene. 

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