The VALORANT Competitive Queues Need to Change and Here’s Why
VALORANT’s recent release of a Competitive playlist in the Closed Beta was announced to the delight of many fans looking to test their skills against similar players. The ‘Rated mode’ (or Ranked) has a tier system similar to Battle Royale Apex Legends, with many tiers and subsequent levels to climb before you reach the pinnacle; VALORANT.
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However, although the Competitive playlist was what many players wanted, the reality of it has put a dampener on their spirits.
VALORANT is a 5v5 tactical shooter, so it’s possible to queue for these games in a group of five (yourself and four teammates) or, solo queue and face going up against a fully coordinated group, probably friends who are communicating on Discord, and be left with random teammates who are almost guaranteed not to perform as well. This is becoming the norm and is leaving fans and pros alike, very frustrated.
Riot did try to avoid this issue however, and when the Competitive game mode went live, assured players that “our competitive matchmaking takes into account your pre-made party size and automatically optimizes your match to favor similar premade sizes on the opposing team.” Anticipation aside, their system has clearly failed on that part.
The Ranked games for higher levels are volatile, going up against a full five-stack is obviously going to be harder than a team of five solos. But the requirements for Ranked are concrete and rated on individual performance, so becoming a higher level than your preferred teammates can happen on occasion, leaving you unable to queue with them, and left to the hellish landscape that is solo-queuing. Pro-player Shroud has already been having issues with this system, including exorbitant wait times, and as he himself states:
In a bizarre twist of fate, Shroud’s 5-stack did come up against another pro-player who was solo-queuing – TenZ. TenZ became the first North American player to reach the VALORANT rank and is clearly skilled enough to do so, but Shroud’s full team shows just how damaging solo-queuing can be to the gameplay.
And we can see from the very first game of the clip below that TenZ did not fare well in this exchange and provides more than enough evidence as to why the current queue system is not working.
TenZ himself took to Twitch to explain why he isn’t enjoying solo-queueing, and says;
If I was going to go play Competitive right now, I’d probably just try to go in a stack… because 99% of the time you’re going to go against a stack.
He also goes on to mention the LoL queues, such as solo/duo and flex.
Myth also voiced his opinion on Twitch, making the point that it doesn’t make sense that solo and duo players are able to match up against groups of five, for obvious coordination and communication reasons, and it needs to change.
In the latest VALORANT news, players all over the internet (most notably on Reddit) are calling for Riot Games devs to implement a similar queueing system to League of Legends and their Competitive mode, to prevent the all-out murdering when a team of five individuals comes up against a pre-made team of five. Some are even comparing VALORANT’s system to CS:GO, which they say “no one likes”.
League of Legends currently employs two types of queue, Solo/Duo and Flex, for their 5v5 games.
Solo/Duo queues are for just yourself or add a friend, where no one you face on the opposition will be grouped with more than a duo themselves.
Flex, however, allows for any group size, including a full pre-made team, where you will most likely verse similarly grouped players.
The queue limitations are similar to VALORANT, where you can only party up with other players who are within one tier of the highest players rank (2 ranks in VALORANT), with restrictions becoming tighter based the higher up the ladder you go.
League of Legends ranked queue system wasn’t always this smooth though. It was only two months ago that a developer blog appeared addressing the issues of duos and auto-filling and promising more balanced matchmaking.
We’ve all been in games where we feel like we’re at a disadvantage from the start. We want to take a look under the hood of our matchmaking system and make sure that the current system is balancing player matches out the gate to the best of its ability.
So will VALORANT take heed of the online comments, and make a big change to their Competitive queues? Stay tuned to the dev blogs, and GGRecon, to stay updated on any changes to VALORANT Ranked.
Images via Riot Games