Riot EvrMoar Responds to Shroud’s Recent Complaints About Valorant’s Ranked Mode

Popular Twitch streamer Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek recently shared his complaints about Valorant’s ranked mode and called it “hot garbage.” Since patch 2.02, Valorant players who are Diamond 3 and below have been able to queue as a full five-person team. Players above Diamond 3 are forced to either queue alone or with just one other player. This has led to a lot of community outrage and pro players like 100 Thieves’ Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin have spoken out against the current state of ranked. Valorant game designer ‘EvrMoar’ finally responded to these recent complaints and shared his thoughts. 

What is Wrong With Valorant’s Ranked Mode?

The game currently restricts more than two players who are Diamond 3 and above from queuing together, which means that players have to rely on the matchmaking system to put together evenly matched teams. 100 Thieves’ Hiko recently said “Being on a team that’s stomping isn’t fun. Being on a team that’s getting stomped is even less fun.” Following the recent complaints, Riot Games pushed out an update to “tighten matchmaking skill.” 

The biggest change that the community is asking for is more balanced matchmaking. Valorant uses an internal matchmaking rating (MMR) system known as ranked rating which is separate from the ranked rating shown to players. Players will never see their MMR and this is what Riot Games uses to create fair matches. The studio made a blog post about the rank system back in March talking about how the team is trying to prevent the internal rank rating from pulling ahead of player MMR. The developers promised changes in future Acts which is expected to improve matchmaking. 

RELATED:  Valorant Devs Explain How Ranked Rating and MMR Works

Riot Games' EvrMoar Responds to Shroud 

Shroud has been vocal about the current state of the game and Valorant game designer ‘EvrMoar’ responded to the streamer on Twitter recently. He states that he is working on a way to enable five players to queue together but it will take time for the system to be implemented. There will also be some short-term solutions while a bigger system is worked on. However, Riot Games cannot promise when these changes will go live.

After months of complaints, Riot Games is finally addressing the issues brought up by the community. It remains to be seen if the upcoming changes will improve the overall Valorant player experience. These changes are likely to be in line with how Overwatch implements its ranked system where bigger groups of players are matched against similarly skilled ones at the expense of longer queue times. This leads to fairer matchmaking process and protects solo and duo players from running into pre-made teams, which are generally better coordinated.