After the shenanigans surrounding Patch 1.11 and its required rollback, it appears Riot is taking it easy this week. Patch 1.12 is a lot of small house cleaning changes and behind the scenes tweaks that, while not possessing any major gameplay tuning, carries momentum ever forward.
For the full list of patch changes, be sure to visit the official
Valorant notes, also available on the game’s home screen.
COMPETITIVE UPDATES
Act Rank Badges are disabled in-game while we investigate a potential issue where they may be causing performance hitches in-game. Your Act Rank Badge will still display in Competitive lobbies, map load in, and on the end-of-game screen.
The ghosts of 1.11 continue to haunt Valorant, as Riot cleans up recurring messes and disables some display features that keep popping up. According the liner notes, Riot is continuing to look for a “holistic fix” for this issue in a future patch, which may not be until December.
GAME SYSTEMS UPDATES
Observer
The Observer settings continue to receive fine-tuning, even as Riot says that they plan on bringing the feature back in a future update with the addition of custom team colors. The Observer tools are an important part of the game’s presentation--especially if you’re on the esports side--and it's good to see the team taking its time with its main method of in-game presentation.
SOCIAL UPDATE
- We have redesigned the Open/Close Party toggle to make it easier for players to understand whether they are in an open or closed party
- Observers will now appear as “in game” in the social panel
- Observers can now view and type in /all chat in custom games
QUALITY OF LIFE
BUG FIXES
Expect to see more patch notes like this when the team returns in December, as Riot continues to clean up various systems and squash more bugs that have popped up in-between the rapid-fire amount of patch updates we’ve seen the last few months.
Update Complete
I know, this patch lacked anything fun or exciting. No map changes. Zero gun tweaks. Riot didn’t even add in a harpoon gun. And while all of that is a travesty, patches like 1.12 are the nature of the beast and an absolute requirement in even a normal year, let alone one where the dev team is working apart in a global pandemic. We anticipate a few more fireworks when the next patch in December arrives.
Clean up your room. Patch 1.12 is now available.