Ranked match selection a no go say Valorant devs

Few things in Valorant are more annoying than settling down for the night to play some of your new favourite competitive shooter and thinking you are going to get the chance to flex your skills on all four of the maps that shipped with Valorant, but instead, seemingly against all the odds find yourself playing Haven four times in a row (It is the worst map and I won't hear any different).

(Picture: Riot Games)

It should be noted that Ascent was, for a short time after launch, statistically more likely to come up giving players a greater chance to play the game. Riot has confirmed that all maps now have a 25% of being picked meaning if you are continually getting the same map, you have just been unlucky.

One way to combat this would be to give players the ability to choose maps, I mean CS:GO does it, and Valorant is basically CS:GO with even worse voice acting.

"One more win, then we're goin' out for drinks, lads!" Yes, please that Pheonix up.

(Picture: Valve)

So yes CS:GO does do it, and Valorant is a newer game so perhaps it's just another feature to be added further down the line? Well, according to Valorant's Senior Producer, Ian Fielding, that isn't the case.

In the bi-weekly "Ask Valorant" series which gives Riot the chance to answer some of the community's most asked questions, Fielding explained that in regards to match selection in competitive the increase in queue times could prove problematic, and there was also the issue that as you split up the player base effectively matching players based on their rank becomes more difficult, increasing the chance of mismatched teams facing off against each other.

"Given that, we currently don't have plans to enable map specific selection for Matchmaking," explained Fielding.

So that's, that or is it?

Some players clearly feel that some system, any system is an improvement over the current one and that was largely the focus of the discussion on the Valorant subreddit.

One suggested a system similar to that seen in Guild Wars 2, which allows players to select three maps which are then voted on by the lobby giving players some agency over the next match.

• Read more: Riot devs respond to accusations that Ascent is "unplayable"

"Once a match is formed each player is given an option of 3 maps out of the map pool to select as their preference. These selections are then put into a pie chart based on how many people voted on each map," suggested Ekopleks. "If everybody picked the same map then it would be selected, if there is a split then each map would be given a percentage of the pie chart and a "spin" would happen, landing on the map to be played. This system would allow for some agency for the players in map selection without having to have separate queues for each map."

Other's felt that Valorant system makes the game more competitive, stopping players become one-trick ponies on one map, but struggling on others a phenomenon one player dubbed "Office Global Elite" a reference to CS:GO's Office map.

At the moment it looks like Riot's decision is final, but it's an issue that is likely to be brought up while players feel they are constantly playing the same map.