Valorant’s new Game System Health update reveals improved map queues

Valorant announces that the latest changes to their map selection were a success in April 2022.
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Image: Riot Games

Valorant’s ongoing Systems Health series continues to show how patch notes affected players directly, and the latest update proves that poor map diversity may finally be resolved for good.

Here’s the tweet from Valorant’s official channel, regarding the Competitive queue:

The Systems Health series has covered a variety of issues, beginning with AFKs and even addressing online toxicity.

Lately, the series has focused on problematic map queues, directly responding to fair complaints about running into the same map too many times in a row. The official blog mentions that this can create boring gameplay, but the variety issue goes beyond that.

For more competitive players, it can be highly frustrating if they are repeatedly forced into a map they dislike. It can emphasize their weaknesses, and even force them into a losing streak. Their general experience and stats are more likely to suffer.

Content creators also suffer when there’s no variety, because the audience is going to be subjected to the same kind of gameplay for too long. This may not always be an issue, but it can be if the game is expected to offer better map distribution, as in Valorant.

Map diversity solution and results

A deterministic map selection was patched into Valorant at the beginning of March, replacing a random selection process. These recent changes have seemed to greatly improve the situation, according to the new results for April gameplay.

Now, only .06% of players are getting thrown into the same map three times in a row, and none of the playerbase experienced a 5-time streak.

Although the devs mention that they’re still open to more control over map selection in planned tournament modes, it seems that the current map selection process is here to stay.

You can read more about Valorant and other hit free-to-play games in our news section!

Anthony Fertino

Anthony Fertino

Anthony Fertino is a novelist and lifelong gamer, born and raised in Southern California. He's been a content writer for over 10 years, and studied film at SMC for 4 years. When he isn't playing shooters, RPGs, or indies, he's reading SFF novels and trying the latest tabletop games.

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