Valorant has been over a month in closed beta and a lot has changed during that period. A lot hasn’t though like the lack of solo queue in ranked.
Players have been criticizing Valorant’s ranked system for some time now. The biggest complaint is that it heavily favors premades and parties. As a result, trying to grind up ranks as a solo player isn’t such a pleasant experience. Valorant's devs recently posted an update on why the ranked system is the way it is among other topics.
This one's a long one, but it's also what you've been asking about: strafe shooting and peeker's advantage, why no solo solo queue?, and more (always more!) Vanguard updates. Let's get into it. https://t.co/engkfAMRnJ pic.twitter.com/TWgllk41lF
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) May 13, 2020
It's important to us that competitive matchmaking in VALORANT is focused on teamplay, because we believe that playing as a team is a major component in your overall mastery of the game. If players have a group of teammates they perform well with, we don't want to discourage them and set a precedent that the real test of skill is in solo play.
Needless to say, the players weren’t happy with the response and criticized Riot’s decision. Some of them claimed that in order to have a fair competitive experience a strict solo queue is mandatory.
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solo queue is imperative for a truly fair competitive experience, especially at the highest ranks when matched against a full 5-stack of playersthe lack of soloq hurt competitive Overwatch in the long run and it will hurt Valorant as well https://t.co/nb5yOdOfg2
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) May 13, 2020
Others gave examples with famous CS:GO teams like Astralis, which was probably not the best idea. The reason being is that CS:GO also has no strict solo queue and players will often play against a stacked team five. Riot’s post wasn’t all bad as it mentioned that while you’re in a smaller group, the system will try to match you against a similar party.
If you are playing solo or with smaller group sizes, we’ve worked to make it so our matchmaking will favor placing players against similar premade team sizes
Despite that, some players claimed that they’ll avoid Valorant’s ranked as a whole.
Unfortunately it seems like ranked will continue put solo queue players against 5-stacks and that it is an intended featureMendo 10-mans FOR SURE coming back since it seems like ranked will be a temporary thing if the current form of it stays past beta!Excited to 10man again! https://t.co/rMqc8mwgIS
— Liquid Mendo (@Mendo) May 13, 2020
While the 10-mans mentioned by Mendo seem like an alternative they won’t be part of the ranked system. For now, anyone who wants to climb up the ranks will have to put up with the lack of solo queue.
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Riot’s decision to enforce teamplay is an expected one. As we already mentioned above CS:GO also doesn’t have a strict solo queue for which it has been heavily criticized. Valve’s other title Dota 2 briefly had the option to play only against other solo players but it was eventually removed. One of the main reasons given by Valve when it got removed was the increased queue times. Clearly Dota 2’s player base is currently much lower than CS:GO or Valorant’s. There’s still plenty of time for Riot to change their mind as the title is still in closed beta.
Stay tuned for more Valorant updates and make sure to check EarlyGame for more news and videos.
