Riot tightening restrictions on rank disparity for “more competitive integrity” in VALORANT’s Act III

Boosting your friends is about to become a little bit harder.

VALORANT design lead David “Milkcow” Cole addressed future changes coming to Competitive mode in today’s Dev Diaries. Starting in Act III, players will only be able to queue with friends who are within three ranks instead of six.

“We want to bring back more competitive integrity to [ranked] queue and get you focused on what matters most: winning,” Milkcow said. “We’re going to tighten the restrictions on ranked disparity for competitive queue, reducing them from a six to a three-rank difference.”

This means that the lowest rank a Diamond three player can queue with is Platinum three, while the highest is an Immortal three. This is vastly different from the six-rank window currently in the game, allowing a Diamond three to queue with a Gold three. The wide rank disparity has caused many to question VALORANT‘s competitive integrity since there are often players in matches that they don’t belong in.

Milkcow also explained that players in Immortal rank and above will be only impacted by wins and losses, not performance. And players will be able to choose their preferred server, which won’t always be a guarantee.

The Act III competitive changes, which should debut next week, should create more balanced matchmaking in ranked queues.