Valorant – Patch 3.01

The main focus for this update is to make slight improvements to certain areas that are still lacking despite the very expansive Episode 3 update (3.0) close to the end of last month. According to the official patch notes for 3.01, the developers took that into consideration. They, therefore, decided that while this update was going to be somewhat minimal, it was going to be very focused on examining the most important aspects of the game and correcting what needs the most immediate attention. In this case, that meant that this update would be mostly about fixing bugs. Indeed, a couple of very annoying bugs were relatively damaging to the player experience but could be easily fixed in just a couple of weeks.

The first set of bugs involved a couple of agents, including Sage, Skye, Sova, and the most recently added KAY/O. The first one they fixed was a bug that allowed Sage to place ‘Barrier Orb’ onto projectiles while they’re in the air. Next, a bug that caused Sova’s ‘Recon Bolt’ to appear deployed was fixed in the air. A bug caused issues with reviving KAY/O when downed while using its ‘NULL/CMD’ ultimate ability, which was fixed. Finally, they fixed a bug that allowed Skye to activate the ‘Guiding Light’ flash while suppressed.

The next set of bugs involved the social aspects of the game. One very important issue that had to be addressed as soon as possible was an unintentional oversight regarding the ability to choose colors for text in the chat that players could easily exploit to impersonate official system messages. They also fixed a UI problem where the invite button overlapped with the Defender Coach UI in custom games and another bug where question marks were appearing above other players rather than an automatically generated generic name when having that setting active.

Finally, the last couple of bugs addressed involved the system for player progression. This included fixing an Account Leveling issue where some players were getting unexpectedly lower levels than what they’re supposed to and fixing visual issues that affected the Account Level at the End of the Game screen.

And that pretty much sums it up. While it was pretty brief in terms of how much changed, it just goes to show how committed the Riot Games team is to the player’s satisfaction and enjoyment. They detected that there were some quick fixes that needed to be made, and they didn’t hesitate to get the patch out as soon as it was ready. The official patch notes also indicate that they are very closely monitoring various aspects of the game to determine if there may be other necessary changes, such as balancing or quality-of-life improvements. We anticipate that there will be another update in the next couple of weeks and are fairly confident that the next update will have a little more meat on it. We’ll be sure to keep you updated!

Developed and published by Riot Games roughly one year ago, Valorant is free-to-play and currently released for Microsoft Windows, with plans being made to develop a mobile version. For being just one year old, the game so far has been very competitive with other FPS esports games on the market, such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Overwatch, Fortnite, and Apex Legends.