Riot Games Addresses VALORANT’s Map Diversity in Latest Blog Post
Riot Games has released its latest System Health Series blog post, focusing on map diversity in VALORANT. The post highlights the improvements made to the map rotation system in competitive play over the past two years.
The System Health Series is a platform for Riot Games to provide updates on various aspects of the game. In this post, Riot specifically addresses the impact of map selection since the release of VALORANT in 2020.
In analyzing data collected from players over the past two years, Riot Games discovered that players in the competitive queue were frequently experiencing the same maps. To address this issue, Riot made adjustments to the map selection rates, implementing a new system with Patch 4.04. The aim was to reduce the number of players seeing the same map three or more times in a row.
However, further improvements were needed, as revealed in a survey conducted with North American players in March 2022. The survey indicated that 67% of players often or very often encountered the same map multiple times in a row in competitive play. As a result, Riot made additional changes to the map election process, ensuring that players would play their least-seen map more frequently to avoid such streaks. Although Riot currently has no clear plans for a dedicated map selection in the competitive queue, they remain open to making changes in the future based on community feedback.
Insights Manager Brian Chang commented on the improvements, stating, “At this point, we feel relatively confident that deterministic map picks alleviate much of the pain regarding diversity in map selection. Our most recent surveys also show that sentiment improved after the changes. We’ll continue to monitor our data to see if any additional changes need to be made, but so far, the changes seem good!”
Related keywords: Riot Games, VALORANT, map diversity, competitive play, map rotation system.