As the esports industry continued to be rocked by accusations of sexual assault and sexism, VALORANT devs revealed patch 1.02 -- a small but mighty patch.

Other than some significant buffs to Viper and a whole lot of small map changes, casual VALORANT players won't notice anything too out of the ordinary. On a whole, the patch aims to make securing angles and breaching sightlines in enemy territory "more straight forward" while also reducing the defensive stall capability of smoke abilities.

According to the developers, when a team tried to push through the smoke it was "far too punishing". This needed to change because too powerful smokes were eliminating the calculated risk associated with pushing through the smoke that players sometimes make -- it was simply never a good idea before patch 1.02.

With only minimal balance changes to pour over, the quality of life changes of Patch 1.02 emerges as the most significant. 

Update to Tagging(slowdown effect when hit by enemy fire)

Effect of tagging on movement speed reduced:

• Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Standard) 80% >> 70%
• Tagging Movement Speed Reduction (Wall Penetration) 35% >> 25%
• Increased the time it takes to reach desired slow amount when tagged by 100%

The update to tagging is a small change that might make firefights "feel" different. According to Developers, these changes allow for players to escape fire more frequently while also making being tagged less "jarring". 

On a side note, this is also a slight nerf to shooting at enemies through walls.  

If you can' beat em...forfeit!

VALORANT is often chided as creating new era of toxicity, as its player-base is a mix of LoL, Overwatch, and CS:GO players. One of the most disruptive aspects of toxic players is their tendency to make early declarations that the current match unwinnable while personally forcing that prediction to be correct by playing non-seriously and giving up entirely.

So, it was only a matter of time before a forfeit early button was introduced. While it is surprising that the ability to mute text from players wasn't a feature the game launched with, the early concede option is likely the result of a general complaint about VALORANT game length combined with how often VALORANT games turn into absolute pub stomps. Now, once the match reaches 8 rounds, the option to call for a forfeit will be available by typing /ff. 

Naturally, this change will spur on a whole new method of trash talk and mockery against teams who have no intention of forfeiting despite being behind. Jokes aside, you can read about it below:

An Early Surrender option has been added. You can now opt to surrender out of a match ahead of the match’s completion if you do not want to continue playing. We will also be adding some light polish and functionality in future patches post 1.02.

•  You can call an early surrender vote by typing: “/ff” “forfeit” “concede” or “surrender”
•  An early surrender vote requires all present players on the surrendering team to vote ‘yes’ to pass
•  You can vote via “/yes” or “/no” along with the settings F5 and F6 (defaults)
•  Each team can only call a vote once per half
•   Early surrender votes cannot be called before reaching round 8.
• Once a vote is called the vote option will be queued to vote on for the next round, or if you call the vote early enough in the buy phase you can vote immediately.
• The winning team gets round win credit for every round necessary to bring them up to the victory condition (13 rounds). The surrendering team will get loss credit for every round necessary to bring them up to 13 rounds
• Added a setting that to allow players to permanently mute text from enemy players

For more information about patch 1.02,  visit the official patch notes.