Both Sentinels and Riot are preparing for the 2023 Valorant Champions Tour.
After much uncertainty, Sentinels have managed to resign the face of Valorant and their biggest brand contributor, Tyson “TenZ” Ngo. In the meantime, Riot are previewing changes coming to Valorant’s interface.
TeNz resigns with Sentinels for 2023 season
After a long and tumultuous offseason filled with speculations and rumors, Sentinels have finally managed to bring back TeNz. The pairing between Valorant’s biggest esports brands continues after the organization failed to significantly improve its roster at the start of the free agency period. Reports were coming out that Sentinels were rebuilding from scratch, with Michael “dapr” Gulino being the only one staying if he accepted the substitute role.
Sentinels have offered me a role as a sub but have given me the ability to look for a new team as an unrestricted free agent
— mike (@dapr) October 8, 2022
But currently, in competitive Valorant, the head coach is the most important cog in the system. And Sentinels spent way too much time without roster moves until they signed coach SykoNN. Pairing TeNz on the sniper role with SykkoNT’s entry fragger from the XSET days, Zachary “zekken” Patrone, sounds promising. The young prodigy joins the roster alongside Gustavo “Sacy” Rossi and Bryan “pancada” Luna, two former players of LOUD, who bring championship-winning experience to the team.
The face of VALORANT
A system built around him@TenZOfficial is here to stay pic.twitter.com/6PybnEQmbm
— Sentinels (@Sentinels) October 12, 2022
Sentinels haven’t been competitive since Valorant was about who had the most former CS:GO pros on their team, but things are starting to look up. With reports coming out that Dapr is trialing with Evil Geniuses, it remains to be seen how Sentinels round up their roster.
Valorant client receiving changes
Many departments on Riot’s Valorant team are hard at work, preparing Valorant for its next chapter. The upcoming changes will start rolling out with patch 5,08 with the main focus being put on improving the experience outside of the game. Apart from improving functionality in some areas, this revamp is mainly focused on preparing the client for the future of Valorant.
With their plans of adding more features in the near future, the stage must be set, and part of that already happened with patch 5,03. The recent changes to the Agent Browser interface were the first step towards creating a more enjoyable product outside of the game. Massive changes are coming to the loading screen, pre-game and post-game lobby, aiming to make it more efficient and aesthetically pleasing.
While League players continue to harp about the functionality of their client, it’s worth noting that Valorant is much easier to handle from that perspective. With Valorant being made and compatible with the Unreal engine, making adjustments like this is much less of an issue. Considering League is a game more than a decade older, with five different coding languages probably used while creating it, making adjustments to a tower of cards is a lot harder.
Header: Twitter/ Sentinels