With the new year comes new content and healthy changes, at least for Riot’s VALORANT, as they drop episode 6 Tuesday, which comes with the removal of maps, the return of an old map, an addition of a brand new map, and updates to gameplay and ranking systems.

As episode 6 arrives, a map shuffle comes, and the maps Bind and Breeze exit the map pool, as a revamped Split re-enters and a brand new map named Lotus, is added. I’m really looking forward to these changes, as Bind is just a horribly designed map, and Breeze is one of the less strategic maps, so this should be a healthy change up to gameplay. 

Lotus, the new map, will bring more learning as it’ll be the 2nd ever 3-bombsite map, adding more attacking potential and more difficulty to defenders. It also adds new mechanics through revolving doors and a breakable wall which can lead to some interesting moments.

Now for the ranked gameplay, changes come to the rank rating, or RR, that a player gains or loses. Before episode 6, gains/losses depended more on the round difference of the match, but now, it leans more on if the match itself is a win or a loss, which will correspond to a more consistent amount of RR a player gains or loses. 

With the new episode, players will experience a reset to a much lower rank than they’re used to, as they’ll have to re-earn their old rank. Another rework will hit the individual performance of players in a match if they perform well, they’ll earn more towards their climb, and vice versa if they perform badly. This is a pretty exciting change to read about, as a lot of the community has noticed and complained about the disparity when it comes to RR gains compared to RR losses, so hopefully, this turns out to be helpful and satisfies the community.

This new patch offers a lot of updates that improve the quality of life within the game, which feels pretty needed right now with the current state of ranked play. Riot should continue to bring updates like this to keep the game in a good position.