Since the implementation of a competitive mode in VALORANT, amateur and pro players alike have had plenty of complaints about its ranked system. But Joe Ziegler, the game’s director, revealed last night that the developer team is planning to make some changes to ranked soon.
Ziegler said Riot is checking out changes “that will improve many aspects of competitive,” although he didn’t specify which areas of the system it’ll approach. But the VALORANT community had plenty of feedback that could make identifying problem areas a lot easier.
Popular streamer and pro player Brandon “Aceu” Winn, for example, voiced his frustrations with the ranked system while streaming earlier this week. One of his biggest issues is that many people have played in a five-stack to get to a high rank, only for them to struggle when playing solo.
These inflated ranks make it hard for other actual solo players who have earned their rank by themselves to climb. On the other side of things, however, five-stack groups being able to queue against solo players also presents a balance issue. Five teammates will always have better comms and synergy than five random solo queue players.
As a result, these games end up being mostly one-sided due to the difference in teamwork and communication. This also makes it difficult to climb as a solo player if you continuously run into premade groups. Even running into premade groups on your own team can be hard because they’ll rarely communicate in-game since the premade players will probably be talking in another program like Discord.
One possible solution—as many people have pointed out—is to adopt a similar ranked system to Riot’s other popular title, League of Legends. Having one queue for solo-duo play and another queue for ranked five-stack play should ensure that each match is fair and balanced.
VALORANT fans should expect to get more details about upcoming ranked changes once Riot’s teams come back from their week-long break.
