Valorant is a game where the outcome is decided in a matter of seconds—if not milliseconds. Just like every other competitive FPS on the market, a little bit of lag can make success nearly impossible against similar skill-level players. For players stuck with a teammate experiencing connectivity issues, victory is nothing more than a pipe dream. Riot Games, developers of Valorant, hinted that they are finally looking at addressing this age-old problem that continues to plague FPS games.
A few days ago, Redditor Vengtan took to the Valorant subreddit to propose a possible answer to laggy players in competitive matches. The idea caught the eye of a Riot employee who said the team was eyeing a similar system. The solution would be to flag players with a high ping before they enter the match, and offer them at least a chance to not queue and fix their connection before continuing. This could prevent players who were unaware of connection issues from accidentally queuing up, as well as make it understandable to punish players who choose to go ahead anyway. Like with AFK players in Valorant, players who queue with chronic connectivity issues will eventually be punished.
This is just the latest in a sign of renewed efforts to foster a headache-free competitive environment. It was announced at the start of the year that an unusual pairing of Bungie and Riot Games would take on cheaters together. Now, with community solutions on Reddit being addressed by Riot employees, it seems they aim to make good on their promise of improvement.
Ask players with a bad connection are they sure they want to proceed to a competitive match from VALORANT
Whether this solution proves fruitful or not remains to be seen. Players will probably have the chance to queue regardless of the proposed pop-up warning, but fans can at least be assured that the issue is on Riot's radar.
Valorant is available now on PC.