VALORANT Episode Eight, Act Two is about to close its curtains, but that hasn’t stopped players from calling out its shortcomings.
When a player pointed out how difficult Act Two has been due to its “matchmaking problems to map pool, smurfing, boosting, and various concerns about win/loss ratio of RR” and asked the community for its thoughts, no one could deny it.
Dubbing it the “worst Act ever,” the VALORANT player said their friends “with thousands of hours” in the game have quit thanks to problems related to matchmaking and map pool. “It just feels like progress is so sluggish, and with the current map pool, every game sort of blends together,” they wrote in the post.
But players didn’t just call out VALORANT’s competitive issues. The most upvoted comment under the post called Act Two’s battle pass “shit.” Another comment took the opportunity to point out the trend of “new Premium skins being increasingly obviously HEAVILY inspired by parts of other skins,” which has been a matter of debate for quite some time now.
Besides citing bland cosmetic and game content, several players highlighted VALORANT’s “broken” matchmaking system that pits them against balanced enemies in one game and switches to much higher Elo players in the next. “Had a Plat lobby you did well in? How about you get fucked by a bunch of Diamond players who peaked Ascendant 3 last act,” one player wrote. VALORANT players also called out the unfair RR gain and loss system that rewards less and punishes more.
VALORANT clearly has issues with its ranked and MMR system. It might have something to do with Riot’s anti-smurf system that tries diagnosing players who are better than the Elo they’re in—but it seems to be doing more harm than good.
The cheating problem has also been much more apparent than any of the previous Acts, with players sharing they get confirmed reports of a cheater being punished more frequently than before.
Looking at the thread overall, it seems players have been bottling plenty of frustration inside them for a while. Whether Episode Eight, Act Three makes the state of VALORANT any better is a story for another day.
