Valorant Patch 1.03 Includes Big Changes for the Surrender Mechanic
Riot Games recently rolled out Valorant Patch 1.03; the first game patch since the launch of Valorant Rated, the game’s competitive ranked mode. Alongside some new changes for the Guardian weapon and Spike Rush, the patch includes several quality-of-life changes. Most of these focus on the Surrender mechanic which was added in Patch 1.02.
Valorant Patch 1.03 – Surrender Changes
Valorant’s Surrender mechanic, which allows a team to surrender a match early under specific conditions, has gotten a lot of attention in Patch 1.03. The first big change is that, in the Unrated Mode only, the surrender vote requirements have been changed from 100% to 80%. Moreover, AFK players who aren’t spawning in will no longer be counted for votes. Plus, players can now call surrender votes from round 5, rather than round 8 (in both Rated and Unrated). Riot has even added a new button in the game menu to make it easier to call a surrender vote.
“We know it can be at times challenging to get a surrender vote to pass given it has historically required a unanimous vote,” writes Riot; “For Unrated Mode, which is meant to be lower stakes than Competitive […], we have made adjustments so if the vast majority of the team wants to surrender (80%) they can now opt out of the match and find a fairer fight sooner.”
In addition, Rated now has a new version of Sudden Death. Instead of playing a single round of sudden death, teams will instead take turns playing rounds on attack and defence. The match will end when one team manages to get a 2-round lead over their opponents. Each of these rounds will completely reset players to 5,000 credits, with everybody set 4 points short of their Ultimate. However, after every 2 rounds, an automatic vote will take place to determine whether the match will end in a draw or continue. For the first vote, 6 players must vote to end the match. For the second, only 3 must vote to end it for the match to end. From the third vote onwards, a single vote to end the match in a draw will end the match.