Valorant 4.01 patch notes reveal new social and weapon updates

Deep diving today’s Valorant 4.01 patch reveals some interesting new ideas Riot Games are trying out in January.

At the top of the new Valorant patch notes shared today by the team is an expansion of the Muted Words List currently available in the game.

The good news is that this isn’t a giant sweeping ban on thousands of word variations but will be a tool gamers can use at their discretion.

According to the patch notes, Muted Word List is a new section you will find in your settings where you can type in variations of words/phrases that you, personally, would not like to see appear in-game.

This provides a new level of control for those bothered by the current toxicity they are encountering in Valorant, with Riot Games confirming:

“We admit that some players are often smarter than our automated bad word detection system and continually find creative ways to type things we don’t want to in chat. This is why we need your help to make our detections better! Help us, help you.

“For example: Let’s say “Riot” is a bad word (scary, I know). Our detection may catch the word “Riot” as one that should be blocked and penalized, but there’s a variety of different ways to spell Riot that we may not be catching: R!ot, R!0t, Ri0t, etc. And no, you won’t get “League of Legends” banned from chat.

“We’re hoping that we can leverage the lists that you and others create to make the chat less toxic by comparing them across regions, and using the data we collect to improve our own detections of bad words. Thanks in advance for all that are willing to lend a hand. Let’s make VALORANT a better place for everyone.”

Riot Games has also chosen to dial back some of the stronger weapons in the game, with the newly buffed Ares getting slapped down.

The development team suggest that the changes made has made the gun more popular but for the wrong reasons, with Riot adding in the patch notes:

“The Patch 4.0 changes to the Ares made the weapon noticeably stronger, and we were happy to see it show up more in-game. However, it’s overall tuning made it too easy to control and the lack of spin up removed some of what made the weapon unique.

“We love the benefits that the adjusted fire rate provided in terms of how the Ares felt to use, so we want to keep that. However, the adjustments below should make the weapon more difficult to control and bring back some of the weapon’s character by including a more prominent inverse accuracy.”

Further details can be found in today’s 4.01 Valorant patch notes, listed below:

ARES

• Price increased from 1550 >>> 1600

• Pitch recoil increased

• Spread changed from .8 >>> .7 after 10 bullets to 1.0 >>> .7 after 13 bullets

• Crouch benefits spread and recoil reduced from 40% >>> 25%

MELEE (but for real this time)

The melee’s been too tricky to aim with, making it tough to rely on. So we’ve updated both left and right click melee attacks for more reliable Agent-whacking action.

• Right click hitboxes are now 1.5x larger. Left click hitboxes are now larger than a right click and have a slightly longer range too.

• Targets closer to the center of your knife attacks will get hit first, so you still have precision if you need it.

• Bonus: Knifing walls now have instant feedback when slicing up walls (predicted on the client side)

BUGS

WEAPONS

ESPORTS FEATURES

PERFORMANCE