Valorant's ranked mode is "likely" to shoot out next week
It's nearly time to care about numbers
Valorant is great, but it's sorely lacking a mode where you get to make a number go up. Riot's guns 'n' wizards FPS launched two weeks ago, but the developers have held off on adding a ranked mode until non-beta players had a chance to find their feet. Not for much longer, though - Valorant game director Joe Ziegler has announced that ranked mode will "likely be out some time next week".
Here's his tweet.
Thus ends the news.
Valorant's beta did include a ranked mode, but I hardly played it. That's partly because I've drifted away from caring about climbing ladders, but mainly because I lost interest in playing Valorant by myself. I go to (and through) great pains to describe why in my Valorant review, but the TLDR is that people on the internet are horrible. I faced enough harassment without going into a mode where people are even more likely to be abusive because they can blame you for their number going down.
I do get why it matters to people. It may have been a while since I properly cared about my MMR, but it was a pretty big deal in my Dota days. Just not necessarily a healthy deal.
I'm not anti-number. Part of the reason I like competitive games is that I enjoy getting better at them, and it's neat to have a way of measuring that. I'm looking forward to ranked palorant, and treating this as a nice background thing rather than something to fixate on.
That's my intention, anyway. In the meantime I'll be in this corner, going over Ollie's Valorant characters guide again.
Riot recently suspended one of their executives for his abhorrent comments about the killing of George Floyd. He's now "no longer employed at Riot Games".