VALORANT Patch 3.10

Overview

After a brief delay we’re happy to get the newest Agent, Chamber, into your game. Also, 5-stacks for all ranks in the Competitive queue is added with a few conditions in place that impact how much or how little Ranked Rating a group of five will earn. We highly recommend you read those below, along with our Competitive Producers notes.

We also fixed that odd 128fps issue that caused up to a few milliseconds of additional input delay. Read it below.

Chamber

• The next Sentinel Agent deploys with Patch 3.10— Allons-y!

Competitive queue 5-stack for any rank

In an effort to reduce smurfing, we’re removing all ranked restrictions from 5-stack parties in Competitive Queue. Our data has shown that the most common reason that players smurf, is because they want to play with their friends outside the bounds of our current ranked restrictions. Removing these boundaries for 5-stacks specifically, means that you can play with your friends regardless of the restrictions that exist for smaller party sizes in Competitive Queue.

In implementing this change, we’re also adjusting the ruleset for these types of groups in order to mitigate against competitive integrity issues that wide skill disparity groups could cause.

• If everyone in your group is Diamond 2 and below:
• Rank Rating gains and losses will be reduced when playing in a 5 stack outside of our current rank restrictions rules. The amount that your RR is adjusted depends on the rank disparity within the group.
• Let’s walk through a couple example cases:
• In the same group, you have 1 team member leave, and bring in your other friend who is Bronze 1. Now the skill disparity has increased to 4 ranks outside of the standard grouping restrictions. Your team will be given a 75% RR reduction as a result.
• If one or more members of your group are Diamond 3 and above:
• At minimum, a 50% RR reduction will be applied to all 5-stacks including a member from these ranks, and this amount can increase to 90% as the disparity in skill increases.
• Let’s walk through a couple examples of these:
• Your team grinds until your Diamond 2 friend reaches Diamond 3. The whole squad will now have a 50% reduction to RR gains and losses; A penalty that is applied to any 5-stack in Diamond 3 or above.
• If one or more members of your group are Radiant:
• At minimum, a 75% RR reduction will be applied to all 5-stacks including a member from these ranks. Playing with any player below Radiant automatically reduces your potential RR by 90%.

ESPORTS FEATURES

• Observer Agent icons will no longer all get stuck on the same Agent when using the Minimal Broadcast HUD
• Observers now have different HUD colors for attackers and defenders.
• There is now a yellow outline on player icons on the minimap to showcase which player is the active target of an observer

Game System

• Fixed a net/sim-tick aliasing issue where running above 128 frames per second could cause packet send rates to drop below the 128fps cap

Social

• Fixed issues where you were able to re-invite players in lobby that were already invited

Esports Features

• Fixed a bug where the Observer's minimap zoom setting did not function—thanks Melanie_mhs for the report!
• Fixed a bug where coaches could not use the hotkeys to spectate a player inside a deployed piece of utility (Cypher’s Spy Camera, Skye’s Trailblazer, or Sova’s Owl Drone)
• Fixed a bug where pressing shift plus a player number would not go to the proper cinematic camera for that player, if that player was being actively spectated