Riot Games has announced a surprise update for VALORANT players that is supposed to slightly change how matchmaking in competitive queues works.
There are no specific patch notes to go along with this announcement. Riot only confirmed that some form of changes had been implemented.
“Surprise Competitive update,” Riot said. “We just rolled out some tweaks to Ranked queue that should tighten matchmaking skill. Fair warning that you may see a slight increase to queue times.”
The update, which is going live now, is set to change the ranked matchmaking system in an attempt to get players more matches with players that are around their own skill level. The increased wait times will be the tradeoff, since the game will likely be digging through more data to try and more accurately create skill-based lobbies.
Additional competitive updates will continue to roll out as Riot makes changes and tries to improve the matchmaking experience. The next big change will likely be included in a larger patch rather than as a hotfix the developers are testing.
