Shroud slams "garbage" ranked Valorant, dev confirm five stack queues

Fariha Bhatti Published 17/05/2021

A Valorant developer recently brought positive news to high-ranked Valorant players like Michael “shroud” Grzesiek who are sick of “trash” ranked experiences.

First-person shooter games are highly centered on aim and team play. Your odds of winning drastically drop if your team coordination isn’t up to par. A good aim can get you as many as 30 kills, but bagging round wins becomes a tall order without support. For all these reasons, a high-ranked Valorant game can be a nuisance to play due to lobby restriction.

Numerous professional players, including Tyson “TenZ” Ngo, have expressed their exasperation regarding ranked games. Shroud is of the same belief as he went as far as to call ranked games “hot garbage” in his recent stream.

“Literally ranked is hot garbage because of this duo queue bullshit. This is such a bad dynamic. It’s not fun when you’re playing with randoms,” he said.

Valorant patch 2.02 completely transformed the high-level Valorant play by locking lobbies to two players. Diamond 3 and higher players can’t queue in five-man teams. Instead, they are allowed to duo with other Diamond players to climb ranks. While this restriction reduces the chances of boosting, it also makes high-ranked games dull and painful to play.

Fortunately, Shroud’s frustration with ranked restriction prompted a response from senior competitive designer Evrmoar who assured five-man queues in the works.

“I’m working on a way for five stacks to play together competitively, we agree we want something(unfortunately, it’s taking time). We are also talking about a short-term solution, while we work on the bigger system. Unfortunately, no ETA’s,” EvrMoar said.

The developers have been brainstorming ideas to tackle smurfing recently, as revealed on May 6th Ask Valorant. Riot Games addressed the increasing number of smurfers and clarified that the team is digging for the root cause of the problem. According to shroud, expanding ranked queues will also counter smurf problem in Valorant.

That’s what we like to hear! Also friendly reminder that incentives to play ranked/5QComp would solve a lot of smurfing! :)
— Michael Grzesiek (@shroud) May 15, 2021

High-ranked Valorant players often create new accounts to enjoy the game with a stack of five. This leads to unfair matchmaking as the match gets littered with Diamond players in Gold lobbies, making it hard for low ranked players to ladder up.

The developer has confirmed that five stack queues are definitely on their radar, but no estimated time has been revealed. Players should expect a significant update to Valorant in future patches to improve the ranked experience for both high and low MMR players.

Fariha Bhatti

About Fariha Bhatti

Fariha Bhatti is a long-time gaming writer who loves competitive FPS games and slots with particularly fun themes. She got her start playing classic games developed by SNK, from legendary fighting game series The King of Fighters to challenging platform franchise Metal Slug. She now spends most of her time playing Valorant and Counter-Strike 2 while working her way through new slot releases to find her next favorite. Fariha has been published at PCGamesN, TalkEsport and ONE Esports.

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