In my opinion, the new UI for the main menu is a downgrade over what we had previously.

TLDR;

• New UI uses space inefficiently
• The trend of dynamic backgrounds introduced visual and audial clutter
• The UI is less unique than it was before
• Extra obstacles to navigate between tabs/submenus is a downgrade compared to the old UI

First, my comments on what we have with this patch:

A screenshot with markup from the new game menu

The header and its options have moved from the top of the screen, the green area, to the side, the blue area. This has forced the movement of the news to the right side of the screen. I feel like this throws off the balance of the menu and has made more similar to other shooters -- I believe Valorant's menu felt unique among other games.

The right side feels very crowded and busy compared with the left side that struggles to fill the space. Compounding this bad idea, the tab for your friends comes out over the news and partially impedes it -- an issue not faced by the old UI. Adding the Valorant logo with the act and episode number with the large DIMENSION in the top left feels like an odd attempt to cover more space and restore balance to the image, however, it just makes the bottom left feel even more empty as a result.

A marked-up store tab as an example of a frustrating submenu

From the options on the main menu, you can reach the various submenus for Career, Battlepass, Collection, Agents, and the Store. In each of these submenus, you once again have access to the old header UI, but it's missing most of the options. There is plenty of space to The features that they did include in this header are not well picked and are likely there to fill space. The "Back" option in the top left has the same function as the "Home" option, so they are redundant (this was the same in the old menu, but at least the "Home" option existed to fill the space to balance out 3 options on either side of the play button (visible in screenshots below). Of course, the other option is the store tab. I realize that Valorant is a free game and is trying to sell skins to turn a profit, but why would they remove functionality and options that were already baked into the header to instead reduce it to Home, Play, and Store?

Now, looking back to old the old UI:

My favorite menu so far, I believe it was Episode 2

Here's an example of my favorite menu thus far. The header presents all of your options and remains when navigating each tab. While the home button is still redundant, it serves the purpose of maintaining the visual balance of the 3-3 split on each side of the Play button. In this old header, you even get battlepass and agent tier progression bars that are gone with the new UI. With the news (in this case New Player progression) on the left side, the expansion of the friends list bar does not cover any information. The arbitrary Valorant logo still exists, but it is small and serves to balance the settings logo in the other corner.

Dynamic background example (still image)

I believe that this was one of the first examples of a background that moved and made a fair bit of noise. This is one of the least offending backgrounds as it still maintains decent visual simplicity, but it was the start of things to come (present day UI). It's not terrible to have the background move, but I can really appreciate the Episode 2 background because it is a shot with a lot of personality despite the stillness that it has. My quarrel with these dynamic backgrounds is the constant noise that they make, and this noise is not tied to a particular game setting that can be changed without affecting audio in the actual gameplay. Menu music is a setting that you can change the volume of, but it is not possible to turn off the menu background sound effects.

What are other people's thoughts? Obviously I will still play Valorant, I just would like to help keep the game in the best possible shape and make it presentable to as many players as possible. I don't think Riot needs to hotfix this and change it right away as that takes resources away from other areas, but I would like them to consider reverting their changes in the next major update. Improvements can still be made to the features of the old UI, the Collection favoriting system is an example of that, but the overhaul was unnecessary and served as a step in the wrong direction.