Earlier Riot Games talked about the future of Valorant esports and changes in the competitive format in 2023. They mentioned a new ecosystem that will include an in-game competitive mode that will connect Valorant with VCT.
Today we get a glimpse of what that competitive mode will look like and how millions of players will be able to experience Valorant as if they were a VCT pro team.
Valorant Premier Alpha Test
Next week Valorant’s competitive team will deliver an Alpha test of that said competitive mode called Premier. This test will be available only to the initial group of players in the Brazil region.
From the words of Jon Walker, designer on the VALORANT Competitive team: “In its current state, Premier is about 60% of all the planned features and functionally, but there are whole features that are absent in the current Alpha”.
The players will test the following features:
- Team creation (with team logos and colors)
- Server load
- Tournament play (including a map pick-and-ban system)
- Premier Score (and qualifying for the end-of-season tournament)
- Matchmaking and queue health throughout the Alpha
What is Valorant Premier?
Valorant Premier has quite a few features that will make you feel like a pro player competing in VCT from the comfort of your home. And here’s all we know about this mode so far.
Building Teams
You can build your own team of 5 players of a similar skill level (no information on how similar). You will be able to create a team name, logo, colors, and a tag to stand out from the crowd.
Then your team will be placed in a division where you’ll play across a season of pre-scheduled weekly matches and tournaments.
It is yet unclear whether you can replace players throughout the season in case one of your friends is away. But we can imagine that Riot will add a substitute mechanic of some sort.
Tournament Season
Each season will last a few weeks. Your performance throughout the season will be tracked using the Premier Score point system.
And at the end of each season, teams may qualify for the end-of-season tournament to battle for the title of Division Champion.
Valorant Map Pick-and-Ban System
It seems that in Premier we will finally see the arrival of the map pick-and-ban system to Valorant. This feature was demanded by players for a long time. But it seems it will be limited to the Premier for the time being.
The Map Pick-and-Ban system will likely work the same way it works in the VCT. Riot Games already mentioned that there will always be only 7 active maps in the Competitive and Unranked map pool so the teams will take turns banning maps until the required amount of maps are left.
How to Play Valorant Premier
As we mentioned, the current Alpha is only limited to the selected pool of players. So if you are a part of the Alpha, you’d probably know that already.
As for when the rest of us, there is no set date for the Premier mode release as of now. However, considering Riot’s plans for Valorant esports in 2023 we are likely to see Premier along with the new Valorant Episode.
Based on the previous timeline of Acts and Episodes, we can expect to see Episode 6 roll out in early January 2023.
