Valorant developer Riot Games will take a harder stance on disruptive gameplay behaviors like verbal abuse and abandoning matches, Riot announced Monday in a dev post.
Player penalties for those who go AFK in games will include harsher punishments than before, such as warnings, increased rating loss, queue restrictions and bans, according to Riot. Verbally abusive players will face in-game communication bans, competitive bans, game bans and even permanent bans for repeated offenses.
“We want to acknowledge the obvious: we still have a lot of work ahead of us,” the developers said in a statement. “These changes are just the start, but they set the stage for the work we’ll continue to deliver in the months and years ahead.”
On the AFK side, developers pointed to experience point farmers and others who join in and don’t participate in matches as targets of updates coming in Patch 2.04. In the post, the devs state, “our old system had a few loopholes, and it sucked to see some players slipping through the cracks. Those loopholes will be patched, and in the future, we’ll broaden this detection to encompass other types of disruptive behavior and non-participatory play.”
In addition to harsher player punishments for AFKing, players who queue dodge in competitive Valorant matches will also get harsher punishments. Right now, queue dodging results in a three-minute queue ban. New punishments will include rating decreases for dodging games.
Sometimes it’s not enough to know the rules exist. You want to see the long arms of the VALORANT law grab someone, shake them, and say, “Stop ruining my game.”
We’ll also be rolling out feedback on your reports so you’re notified when your reports have been addressed. pic.twitter.com/YNMS0hH62P
— VALORANT (@VALORANT) February 15, 2021
Patch 2.04 will also bring about tougher punishments for verbally abusive players. “Chat-based offenses,” as the developers called them, will now be addressed with stacking punishments, from a warning to comms bans, ranked bans and eventual game bans. One of the new queue restrictions, targeted for Patch 2.04, will make it so players with active comms bans can’t queue up for competitive games.
Finally, Riot will alert players when their reports result in a punishment. This will work the same as in League of Legends, where players get notifications about punishment, but they don’t get information on who was punished.
Published: Feb 15, 2021 02:11 pm