Valorant and the Smurf Danger: Riot Games calms your fears
Valorant and the Smurf Danger
For a few hours, on Reddit, a small controversy has been going on about Valorant and smurfing practices. A post on the popular social network accused Riot Games of not wanting to press against measures to stem the phenomenon, all to sell more skins and increase the number of active players. A post that obviously did not go unnoticed, with one of the developers of the US developer who decided to respond in depth to the accusations.Let's start from the beginning: what is smurf ? This is a widely used practice in online games. A particularly good user decides to create a new account to play from scratch. In this way, the user in question is matched, at least initially, to the lowest ranks of a certain title and can easily win several games. Valorant is obviously not excluded from this practice either, but some players have stated that there are far too many people who would resort to using this practice. EvrMoar, who in Riot Games holds the role of senior competitive designer, took care of these accusations.| ); }
Riot Games has never denied the existence of the phenomenon, but apparently the entire smurf account policy it would really just be a paranoia of the players. And do you agree with the developer's words or not? Let us know your opinion by leaving a comment on this news.
Valorant ranks in order, distribution, and ranking system explained
Want to know about Valorant ranks and how the ranking system works? Like all competitive FPS games, Riot’s Valorant has an ascending ladder of titles to sort the player base by ability. Whether you’re starting out as a lowly Iron or maintaining your dominance as a mighty Immortal, if you play Valorant competitively your life is governed by the ranking system.
Valorant has a couple of different ways it measures ranking progress and the overall rating of players against each other. Each player has an overall Valorant rank, but there’s also a dedicated ‘Act rank’ for each act. On top of that, there’s also a concept called ‘rank rating’, which is connected to MMR. Here is everything you need to know about Valorant ranks, the current rank distribution, and competitive play.
Here is a complete list of Valorant ranks:
While your rank is an overall (and accurate) reflection of your skills and abilities, you also earn a separate Act rank as you play through each individual act. Your Act rank is officially the highest ranked win, which Riot likes to call your “proven skill”.
There’s a hollow triangular badge you fill in during the course of an act, with miniature coloured triangles being slotted in as you play. Regardless of how many different rank colours the badge gets filled up by, only the top most triangle – your highest ranked win – will define your Act rank.
This is also what governs the reward you’ll receive at the end of the Act – even if you’ve spent the majority of your time in Gold, if you have a win in Diamond 1, you’ll receive the Diamond rewards. Your Act rank resets between ranks, but your previous MMR is taken into account as you play your placement matches for subsequent acts.
Rank distribution is important in any competitive shooter, and Valorant is no exception. Riot itself has shared information on this as far back as Episode 3 Act 1, where the studio said it was concerned there were too many people in the lower ranks and not enough making it through to the higher tiers. Fast forward to today, and the picture looks a lot better, although generally stats from esportstales.com suggests that nearly 50% of the player population is in bronze and silver.
Here is the Valorant rank distribution as of July 2022:
Since Episode 4 Act 1, in order to earn ranks in Valorant’s competitive mode you need to have an account level of at least 20. Once you’ve hit that threshold, you can engage in ranked play. At the start of every episode, you need to play five placement matches, but for every Act 2 and 3 within an episode, you only need to play one placement match – your rank resets at the start of every Act.
Valorant is a game that tries to promote competitive play between teams, although Riot has also tried to be generous with allowing friends to play with each other, even if there is a rank disparity. When it comes to playing with friends, there are some rules to keep in mind:
In terms of rank disparity, there are only restrictions for groups of two or three players. If the lowest person in the team is Iron or Bronze, then the highest can be no higher than Silver (any tier). If the lowest is Silver, then the highest can be no higher than Gold (any tier). If Gold is lowest, then Platinum is highest – again, any tier.
If the lowest rank in the team is Platinum, Ascendant, Immortal, or Radiant, then the highest player can be no more than one level higher – so if the lowest is Platinum 2, then highest can only be Diamond 2. Five-stack parties ignore disparity restrictions, although depending on how big the disparity might be, there may be significant rank rating penalties. You can go to the official Valorant competitive FAQ for more details on this.
That’s everything you need to know about Valorant ranks. For more Valorant guides, check out our Valorant tier list for the best characters, our Valorant crosshair codes guide to kit out your sites like your favourite pro, and then our guide to the Valorant Night Market for those discounted skins.
