Valorant Weekly: Upcoming patches, Combat Score and Repetitive Maps

It’s been smooth sailing for Valorant over the past few months. The only worries have been minor tweaks and bug fixes and developing the Valorant esports scene. Over the month of August however, enough problems have stacked up to cause Riot a bit of worry. They now plan to tackle every current game issue in quick succession. We are talking mainly about Update 1.09, combat score counting and the repetitive map selection.

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Valorant Combat Score

The combat score is not just based on kills and assist, but they are a very important factor in it. If you help a teammate to eliminate an enemy, it is taken into account, as well as the utility that caused the damage. First blood is one of big factor that helps increase your combat score.

This is however problematic for support and control Agents that provide great utility in offense and defense without inflicting damage to enemies. We are mainly talking about Sage, but any Agent that has some non-damage dealing ability falls into this group. For these Agents, the combat score does not really reflect their impact on the map. Sage walls and slows or Sova/Omen reveals are not rewarding players higher score since the metric is not calculated into their combat score regardless of how impactful their casts were.

Riot addressed the issue in their latest Ask Valorant blog post , as they are working to incorporate non-damaging assists into their combat score. The earliest we can expect these changes to take shape is patch 1.09 or during it. The change will heavily impact players climbing ranked as support and control mains.

Repetitive Maps Problem

There is a recurring problem in Valorant matchmaking when playing competitive and normal games. Since before the official launch, there was a lot of talk about teams getting the same map over and over again and the blame usually went on Riot favoring one map over another. As soon as Ascent came into the map rotation, players started complaining that all they get to play is Ascent over and over again for days on end.

Finally, Riot director Ziegler posted on Twitter on the subject of repetitive maps.

The inability to choose maps can be good for competitive play. However, a sequence of three or more identical map matches in a row can be tiresome. Until a fix arrives, players can try recreating their lobby before queuing again. Re-creating your lobby has worked thus far in getting at least some of the repeating map picks out of the way.

Update v1.09

As mentioned above, Valorant is currently in update v1.07. We expect 1.08 to be a minor tweaks patch with a bulkier patch coming in October.

One of the biggest issues 1.09 is likely going to tackle is related to Valorant’s cosmetic system. Currently, players can not specifically unlock a the weapon variants they want. They have to unlock all the previous variants before they unlock the tier they are looking for in the skin set. A tweak to Radianite prices and overall prices might come in v1.09 and a full change to the system a patch later. Players will finally be able to choose which variant they want, protecting their precious Radianite Points in the process.

One of Riot’s strategists, Miles “Usury” Metzger informed fans the following excerpt:

“Yes! Starting with Patch 1.10 players will be able to select any variant they want. Weapon skins will still need to be fully evolved to unlock variants, but after doing so, you’ll be able to pick whichever one is most appealing to you.”

Cosmetics, weapon skins and VFX receiving a slight dip in pricing might encourage more players to invest in those hefty skin sets.

Riot Games and Prime Gaming

Finally, Valorant players and Amazon Prime subscribers are in the money this month. Riot just closed another partnership with Prime Gaming that will deliver free in-game items to players who subscribe to Prime Gaming.

The initial theme of the rewards will be Agent Killjoy. In two days (September 16), the new partnership rewards will be available to players. These include exclusive one-off sprays and potentially a whole set of weapon skins. To receive the reward set, players must have signed up for Amazon Prime and linked their Riot account.

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