Valorant – Patch 1.02 Notes: Changes and What’s New

Riot Games’ competitive multiplayer shooter adds the option to surrender, in addition to adjusting agents and offering more additional new features.

The new Riot Games is updated again with one of the most demanded features. As we reported on FreeGameTips, the option to surrender is now available, so players will be able to quit the game when things get too black for their team. Additionally, Valorant update 1.02 adds competitive mode. “The most obvious change we have made is that now the highest rank is called Radiant,” they explain on the official website.

The developers have adjusted the markup (slowdown effect) to increase the chances of surviving should you take cover. As if that were not enough, they have worked on improving the menu UI. They warn that it may be difficult to get used to at first, but they think that the changes are for the better. Some characteristics of the agents and maps are modified. Next, we leave you with the full patch notes.

Valorant

Agent updates

Viper

Toxic Screen now breaks through walls, and grenades that deploy it are placed in any valid location (such as on the ground) along its length. Viper’s Toxic Screen has the potential to become a powerful vision control tool, but rolling it out was a nightmare, so it only ended up being useful in very specific areas of the maps. This change should allow Viper to block vision in a wide variety of areas, both to deceive the enemy and to help take control of an area.
Taking damage from Snake Venom will make the affected player fragile for a short time.
Fragility is a debuff that increases the amount of damage taken by affected targets.
Warning: Total damage does not change (now deals less base damage, but since fragility increases totals, it ends up being the same).
Viper applies Decline with her Smoke Screens, but her area damage ability only dealt a moderate amount of damage making it too easy to ignore and move on. With the help of the brittleness effect, Viper’s team should be on the verge of winning if faced with enemies passing through Snake Venom.
Poisonous Orb Activation Cooldown increased: 0.5 sec >>> 0.6 sec.
We like Viper’s ability to deploy “one-way” smoke screens, but with these changes, trying to move through them would be practically suicidal in some areas. We’re going to increase the cooldown so that the strategy is still possible but a small time slot is available to counter it.

Jett

Blade Storm now resets when used to kill Phoenix during Ashes.

Queen

Soul Orbs now appear when Reyna kills Phoenix during Ashes.

Cypher

Fixed an issue that caused Spy Camera to prevent disabling the Spike.
Fixed a bug that allowed players to place Cyber Prison on a trap wire.
We have added an impediment that will not allow Spy Camera to pass through Bind’s teleporter doors when placed in the frame from outside.

Smoke Screen Settings

The effects of the screen edges when entering and leaving smoke screens have been adjusted.
The value of the decline in blindness has been reduced.
The intensity of limited vision has been reduced.

Weapon upgrades

Bucky (right click)
Accuracy when bending over: 3.45 >> 4.1.
Walking accuracy: 6.4 >> 4.4.
Running accuracy: 3.5 >> 6.4.
We have found that the way we handled motion precision reduction was inconsistent for the Bucky right click. We introduced this discrepancy by mistake during closed beta when we added a small delay in the transition from running to walking to increase accuracy. This made the right click much more accurate when running than we intended. We’ve fixed the issue, and now right-clicking while running will result in much less accurate shooting than walking or standing still. In addition, we have reduced accuracy while advancing while crouched to match the evasion this status provides.

Competitive mode updates

Competitive mode will become available in this version. These are the changes that we have implemented since the closed beta:
The iconography of the ranges has been updated.
The name of the upper rank has been changed and is now called Radiant.
The level difference between members of the same group during competitive positioning games has been increased.

Map updates

Haven

Garage doors
Entrance to C Long on the attackers’ side
The covered area of A Lobby has been restructured to open the space and offer more lines of vision and possible ways to cross it
C Link
A Link
The entrance and the background of A Cloaca

Ascent

Defending team spawn area entrance
Attackers side of A Main (includes option to push forward to see A Main from another angle on the attackers side)
Garden Entrance

Bind

Entrance to A Baños
B teleporter output and B window input

Split

Defending team spawn area
We want to reduce the number of areas that require using skills, checking angles and working as a team in order to advance safely.
The intention is to ensure that the most difficult angles to clear are those found in the areas that serve to maintain control of an already secured territory. With this we want to emphasize the need for skills and teamwork to get control of these areas. A side benefit is that the changes incentivize skill use and fighting in many areas of the map, which may end up reducing the number of times all players spend their skills and final in the same place and at the same time.

We will continue to monitor the performance of the maps and make adjustments as necessary.
Collision and playable terrain effects have been improved.

HUD AND IU

We have implemented a set of changes to the menu UI as part of the plan we have in place to make the customer experience after the closed beta become clearer. This is a small portion of the improvements, but they should serve to steer overall usability in a positive direction. UI and navigation changes can be annoying, and we appreciate your efforts to get used to them. We hope that you also find changes for the better when you have adapted.
As always, thank you very much for sharing your comments with us. We have a long way to go, but we will continue to work on the client UI until we all agree that it is a fantastic experience.
All the main sections now have a back button in the upper left that will return you to the home page (you can also press ESC).
All detailed views (weapons, player cards, game info etc.) have been updated to use the same back button in the upper left corner instead of the current close button on the top right.
Pop-up windows will continue to use the close button in the upper right corner when appropriate.
The settings slider menu that appeared on the logo button in the upper left corner has been removed.
A button with new options has been added in the upper right corner that leads to the menu with settings, assistance, game information, the option to quit the game and the option to exit to the desktop.
The circular progress icons for the battle pass and active contract have been removed from navigation. The quest box is now maintained throughout navigation.
Navigation has been reorganized to accommodate changes.
The process of leaving the desktop now consists only of a button that opens a pop-up window from which you can select whether you only want to exit or also log out.
The Quit Game button will be displayed all the time, but cannot be used when that action is not allowed. Before, the button disappeared completely in these cases and, visually, it seemed more like an error than a restriction.
An option has been added that allows inventory to be displayed at all times in the lower right of the HUD.
A new item has been added to the HUD that indicates when you have not appeared in a round due to inactivity.

Battle pass

A battle pass text button has been added to the navigation to make it easier to find.
A small progress bar has been added under the text that shows the progress made at the current pass level.
Hovering over the battle pass while navigating displays a pop-up window summarizing the upcoming rewards of the pass.
Clicking on either leads to a new section of the pass.
Contracts and agents section
The agents section of the Collection has been removed to make it easier to find the progress of the contract and to place it within the navigation framework.
A small progress bar has been added under the text showing the progress made at the current level of the active contract.
Hovering over the agents in the navigation frame displays a pop-up window summarizing the upcoming contract rewards.
Clicking on an agent takes you to the agents section; clicking on the contract pop-up window leads to the agents section and opens the detailed view of the associated contract.
The second page has been removed from the Collection view because, now that we have moved the agent page, it is no longer needed.

Quality improvements

Added option to surrender before the game ends. Now you can decide to give up on a game before it ends if you don’t want to continue playing. We plan to polish and improve this feature in versions after 1.02.
To start voting, write “/ ff” “/ forfeit”, “/ grant” or “/ surrender”.
To surrender, all members of the team that started the vote must vote “yes”.
To vote, write “/ yes” or “/ no” or use the default keys, F5 and F6.
Each team may only hold one vote in each half of the game.
Voting cannot start before round 8.
Once a vote is requested, it will begin in the next round unless you do so at the beginning of the current round, during the purchase phase. In that case, you can vote immediately.
For the winning team, it will count as if they have won the rounds necessary to clinch victory (i.e. thirteen). For the team that surrenders, it will count as if they have lost the remaining rounds for the enemy team to reach thirteen victories.
A tweak has been added that allows players to permanently mute text from enemy players.
Marking update (effect that slows down if you are hit by enemy fire).
The slowdown of the dial effect has been reduced:
Movement speed reduction when dialing standard: 80% >> 70%.
Movement speed reduction when marking through a wall: 35% >> 25%.
The time it takes to reach the dial slowdown level has been increased by 100%.
The marking should benefit the player who is best positioned and reward the first player who manages to hit a shot. Now, when marking a player, his movement speed will be reduced more gradually. Also, the speed reduction is slightly less severe. If you are near an item that provides cover, you will now have a better chance of escaping during the marking period than before. Also, this will make marking less frustrating, especially for high ping players.
The marking power through the wall is further reduced to make it easier to escape in these circumstances.

Game mode updates

Spike fever
New Orb Type – Tracking Orb
An upgrade for all gear that doubles wall penetration and reveals enemies for 0.75s when shot.
Duration: the whole round.
Speed increase has been replaced by Combat Stimulant.
Movement speed and duration do not change.
Reload time reduced by 30%.
The time it takes to draw the weapon is reduced by 30%.
Dispersion reduction time is reduced by 30%.
Firing speed increased by 30%.
The power of the jumps is increased by 25%.
The Plague Orb now shares odds with the Paranoia Orb.
One of the two will be selected for each game.
There can only be one plague orb per round.
Life reduction lowered from 90 to 50.
The Deception Orb now shares odds with the Plague Orb.
One of the two will be selected for each game.
There can only be one deception orb per round.
Duration decreased from 10 to 8 seconds (now matches Plague Orb)
Limited vision is reduced by 20% (which means you will see more terrain).
Practice mode
Reyna: Slaying practice bots now spawns Soul Orbs.
Jett: Killing practice bots now properly restarts Blade Storm.

Performance updates

The team has focused mostly on stabilizing FPS in certain scenarios. Devices with medium and high level specifications will benefit the most.
The most extreme cases of low performance that occurred when several players advanced in a group, close to each other, have been optimized.
Multiple kill emblems have been optimized.
Player life bars have been optimized.
The alert creation process has been optimized (the Z alert, the alert wheel, the death of an ally, etc.).
The appearance barrier sound, which was causing periodic ups and downs in FPS, has been optimized.
[Implementado en la 1.01] Fixed an issue that caused low memory and slow hard drives to have more problems than the rest.

Error correction

Levels 2-7 of the Ghost Sovereign design have been fixed and are now unlockable.
As we have already explained, we do not want the designs to affect the gaming experience for better or for worse. In this case, the Ghost Sovereign of levels 2 to 7 was reproducing shooting sounds without a silencer in the third person, so using it was practically paying to lose. We didn’t want any of you to have to go through that. Now that we have fixed it, we encourage you to upgrade your weapon and enjoy the custom effects, finish, assassination emblem, and variants.
We have fixed the option to activate and deactivate walking, which can now be used again.
We have fixed the message that is displayed when a player returns after being inactive. Now it only shows the name of the last player who did it.
Fixed an issue that duplicated the Spike’s deactivation bar.
Various localization and text overlap issues have been fixed.
Fixed various issues causing closures.
Fixed a bug that caused the Spike to automatically plant if you entered a bomb area with the Spike in inventory.
Fixed an issue that caused the Spike to float in midair if it had been planted on a Sage wall.
Fixed an issue that caused a dropped Spike’s model to be invisible to defenders while on the ground.
Fixed a bug that caused Weapon Amulets to be squashed on the Arsenal page.
Fixed an issue where trying to open the Agent Selection UI from the large map on the shooting range would cause the game to crash.
The graphic performance of most menus has been improved.
Fixed an issue that caused some players to get stuck before starting the game and never access it.
Fixed an issue that caused the Bucky’s Alternate Shooting Mode dispersion to be greater when walking than running or standing still.
Fixed an issue that caused dead players to appear standing up when reconnecting to a game.
Fixed an issue that caused some players to get stuck when picking up Orbs.
Fixed an issue that caused enemy players to spawn on the minimap when all friendly equipment had been killed and the Spike’s camera was active.

Known bugs

The extensions of the competitive games in this version will be resolved with sudden death, which we know is unfair. We are working to replace this with a fairer solution.

We have discovered problems with our network software that have caused some Swedish players to mistakenly play on Istanbul servers. They are also likely to cause some players from other parties to play on the wrong servers. We have already implemented a solution to the Stockholm network system and will launch it internationally this week.