"How is there Bronze?": Valorant players shocked to see Bronze player in Immortal lobby

While playing in an Immortal lobby in Valorant, players from either of the top three ranks in the game are expected, i.e., Diamond, Immortal, and Radiant. However, a Bronze player recently managed to show up, bringing Riot Games' matchmaking capabilities into question.

The Patch 3.10 update allows players to play the Competitive mode of the game by making a five-man stack lobby, irrespective of rank. Although fair matchmaking is expected by players most of the time, a recent incident managed to take them by surprise.

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How did a Bronze player show up in an Immortal lobby in Valorant?

Recently, a professional Valorant player named "it not han" from the team Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) posted a picture on his official Twitter handle where a Bronze player managed to show up in a Diamond-Immortal lobby.

Not too long ago, Riot Games pushed an update through Patch 3.10 where players were allowed to queue for five-man stack Competitves in higher ranks. It costs players some Rank Rating (RR) but helps increase coordination among the team.

As a result, players generally expect to face opponents with a similar skill or rank. But Han and his teammates were shocked when they found a Bronze player present in the opposing team after the match was over.

From the picture above, it can be seen that Han's team had two Immortal and three Diamond players. But the team at the other end had four Immortals and a Bronze player. The only possibility of such an occurrence could be after the use of the implementation of the new five-stack rule by Riot.

Such a huge disparity in the ranks leads to a 95% less gain or loss of RR. This means players will not gain or lose many points upon winning or losing a match. This exploit is useful when players don't want to lose much after matching against high-ranked players.

The Bronze player on the enemy team managed to score only six kills in the entire match while dying 18 times. Although Triple Negative is not an impressive stat, the player will be happy to have secured those six kills against Diamond and Immortal players.

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Does such high disparity in ranks ruin the Competitive experience of Valorant?

Players having such a high difference in ranks does more harm than good. Neither high-ranked nor low-ranked players get to improve on a personal level. Unranked mode is there for having fun with friends with ranks of wide variety.

But most Diamond, Immortal, and Radiant players play Valorant seriously in order to compete at higher levels. Occurrences such as this lead to the the desired experience getting hindered.

Apart from the new five-man stack rule, several other additions were included in Valorant with the Patch 3.10 update, including the introduction of the Sentinal agent Chamber with teleporting abilities and the introduction of the Magepunk 2.0 Cosmetic collection.