The developers over at Riot Games are known for the attention they pay to the voice of their communities. Since the launch of Valorant in June of 2020, they’ve cracked down on banned players and set up servers in the MENA region. Clearly, they care about the needs of their community. Announced earlier today, Valorant patch 2.04 will help boot AFK players and crack down on players using abusive language in the chat.
On top of AFKs, we’re working hard to improve your experience communicating with other players in-game. For both AFKs and chat offenses, you’ll see new penalties to crack down on disruptive player behavior. pic.twitter.com/LrbUtS4C3G
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) February 15, 2021
While it might seem simple, figuring out who’s AFK in a match is harder than it looks. To combat this, Riot is implementing a system that has “improved detection of AFK-type behavior.” They say on their website that they can’t go into specifics on the system but that it has been “vastly improved.”
Additionally, the team has revamped the penalties for AFK offenses. According to the website:
“Penalties can include the following:
- Warnings
- XP denial for the games in which you were AFK’d (see ya later, AFK farmers!)
- Small deductions from your ranked rating for pre-game dodges
- Deductions from your ranked rating for in-game AFKing (Patch 2.03)
- Increased queue restrictions
- Barred entry from ranked games
- Valorant game bans (but only if you’re really, really persistent)”
The penalties don’t stop there, however. Riot has been devoted to reworking their text moderation software to pick up on abusive messages in 11 different languages. With Valorant patch 2.04 are looking to detect more nuance in the language and stop banning all comms. They’ve also updated their penalty system for such abusive language. According to the website:
“Penalties can include the following:
- Warnings
- Comms bans
- Extended comms bans
- Ranked queue bans
- Game bans
- Extended game bans
(Don’t forget: tentatively aimed for Patch 2.04, players who are comms banned will be barred from Competitive queue.)”
For more Valorant, make sure to stick right here on DualShockers and check out our coverage of Valorant Episode 2, a trailer for the newest agent addition.
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