One crafty player might’ve solved VALORANT’s AFK issue with a simple fix

VALORANT’s AFK problem has been plaguing competitive matches since its release, but one suggestion might just repair it for good.

A VALORANT player on May 1 suggested the client should run a one-minute “ping stability test” before the match begins, eliminating a large selection of pesky teammates. This would mean matches might take longer to begin, but it seems like it’s worth the wait. 

The ping test would begin either before or as the match is accepted, kicking out players with unstable connections. The community banded together in a Reddit thread on May 1, agreeing that this would be the right step for the Riot devs, and begged them to implement the feature as soon as possible.

It seems that players would much prefer to wait a minute before the match begins instead of entering a competitive game and being down a teammate.

This new solution, unfortunately, wouldn’t entirely remove all forms of AFK players. So while the change is welcome, it might not solve everything. There’ll likely be people who have a normal ping, but choose to sit in spawn anyway.

Players pointed out that there’s a feature like this in VALORANT already. But the current feature only shows which region a player would have the best connection to. Some players also shared that VALORANT’s ping detection isn’t always accurate, so a tweak on the system would be an interesting idea.

The AFK issue is something that the Riot devs have already been tinkering with. The VALORANT creators recently implemented harsher punishments for queue dodgers and AFK players. The community’s still, however, vying for an alternative approach.

The newly introduced penalties increased ranked rating losses whenever several games are dodged in a row, and also implemented day-lone penalties for those who consistently go AFK. 

While these changes have been praised by players, they don’t seem to fix all AFK-related issues. If this is implemented, we might see fewer AFKers in our games.