Riot talks about introducing 5-stacks matchmaking and high-stakes competitive experiences in latest Ask Valorant post

Valorant is a competitive shooter at heart, and tactical communication between teammates serves a key role. Solo and duo format ranked matchmaking often act as a deterrent to the communication factor.

It is not uncommon to sense frustration among Valorant players regarding teammates in their matches who barely communicate. In a game where precise callouts make or break the game, the cohesion between players in a team is a huge factor.

The developers at Riot Games recently discussed this long-standing conundrum and elaborated on its pros and cons on May 31’s Ask Valorant post.

On this Ask VALORANT, our devs stop by to address performance, that 5-stack question, and those crustaceans on Breeze. Read it here: https://t.co/vulS0ZFWrq

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) May 31, 2021

5-stacks in a competitive game like Valorant is a complex thing to balance. It seems like they are taking into account all the pros and cons of this system along with player feedback before setting up their plans regarding this aspect.

Riot talks about 5-stack matchmaking and high-stakes team competitive experiences in Valorant

Riot split up the 5-stack matchmaking topic into two questions before giving an elaborate explanation regarding their thought process about it.

The first question was -

“How can we enable five-stacks, with wide ranges of skill, to compete in ranked?”

They referred to the difficulty of splitting up ranked matchmaking queues into two and the issues it would bring. The existence of two ranked queues, one for 5-stacks and one for the others, would dilute the matchmaking pool. This can result in problems creating fair matches in low queue time.

There is also the possibility of a feeling that the community might develop - of one queue being the less prestigious one. Competitive players often hold solo matchmaking performance above everything else, and they may dismiss one’s performance in a 5-stack as it is considered ‘easier’.

The second question was -

“How can we create a high-stakes competitive experience for teams?”

The Valorant community has seen many pros being vocal about the poor quality of ranked matches in high ELOs. Tyson “Tenz” Ngo’s suggestion of implementing a 10-man lobby system like FPL garnered a lot of positive responses from other Valorant pros.

Really think adding some form of FPL or Pro 10 man hub would be super beneficial to the top players who don’t want to touch ranked. I know for a fact that the Pro players that do play ranked only play it because of their streams. Reasons why it would be so good to have 1/?

— TenZ / Tyson (SEN) (@TenZOfficial) April 14, 2021

The Valorant Devs did not spell out any concrete plans regarding this, but quite suggestively, they alluded to Spencer “Hiko” Martin’s recent video, where he talked about his ideas of improving the ranked matchmaking queue.

The dev promised to talk more about this at the beginning of Episode 3 in Valorant.