Ever since Valorant released, the ability to select maps in Competitive has been something players often request. Many wondered if developer Riot Games had plans to implement this feature in Valorant, but they recently received their answer and it wasn't good news.
Despite Valorant's popularity during its beta, and the positive reviews after release, it isn't without its issues. The best way to get to the meat of those issues is by asking players directly. With this in mind, the developer took questions from its players and answered them on the game's official blog through an article called Ask VALORANT. Among the many questions asked was one that touched on map selection and if it was making its way into the game.
In short, the answer was no, but Ian Fielding, the game's Senior Producer, explained the decision, saying that it had to do with queue times. "Splitting up matchmaking into separate map pools would reduce the overall players in our matchmaking pool, which not only slows down matchmaking, but makes it more difficult for us to produce fair matches," Fielding replied. "Given that, we currently don't have plans to enable map specific selection for Matchmaking."
While this is solid reasoning, players weren't entirely happy with the decision and vented their frustrations online. One Twitter user, @DonHaci, stated that players won't want to keep playing the same maps over and over and suggested a feature to ban certain maps, keeping it out of their map pools. According to a reputable leaker, Rainbow Six Siege is adding map bans later this year, so it isn't out of the realm of possibility that games like Valorant could add the feature down the line.
Another issue affecting Valorant is the state of its ranked mode, which could use some improvements. During a separate Q&A session, Ryan Scott, a lead designer, touched on the topic. Unfortunately, the news was also a bit disheartening. He confirmed that there are no updates planned for ranked mode at this time.
Valorant is available now on PC.
Source: Dexerto