The first season of Premier, known as Launch Stage, has officially wrapped up, but Riot isn’t waiting long to introduce a slew of new changes to VALORANT‘s competitive seasonal tournament. Starting next season, three major quality-of-life improvements will be added, to the delight of all Premier players.
The next Premier stage, which begins with the launch of Episode Seven, Act Three, will feature a practice queue that teams can participate in during select non-match days, the addition of a single tactical timeout for each team, and the introduction of playoff seeding that rewards the best-performing teams in a division with more favorable matchups.
In-game practice capabilities and timeouts have been asked for by the Premier community since the beta for the mode first launched. Practice has been a long-asked-for feature that would allow teams to work on cohesion and teamwork before the important weekly matches with Premier Score on the line take place. While the practice queue will not be open all the time, having some practice is better than none.
Tactical timeouts have been something asked for by virtually all VALORANT players since long before Premier was even announced. Hopefully, the feature will also make its way to the normal competitive queue in the near future.
In addition to these major additions to Premier, the seasonal tournament mode is also receiving a few other changes, including a new one-and-a-half day enrollment period, a 15-minute seeding period for better matchmaking, and the addition of the previously announced Premier Crests. Players will be able to win and earn Crests at the end of the season that reflect their team’s performance.
VALORANT Episode Seven, Act Three is set to release on Oct. 31, 2023.
