Valorant developers will be bringing changes to help 5-player queues after high-elo ranked frustrations

Valorant’s ranked experience in Episode 2 has been less than ideal the higher players go on the competitive ladder. Pros have had quite a bad time with the matchmaking system since Riot Games decided to introduce some changes earlier in January.

With the new changes, the publisher started putting a cap on Immortal and Radiant ranked players and restricting their premade to just two players.

The cap was soon extended to Diamond 3, and many players started having a rough time as they were not getting proper teammates and were often paired with trollers who just wanted to waste their time.

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

Professional players like Cloud9’s Tyson “TenZ” Ngo and TSM’s Yassine “Subroza” Taoufik have been quite vocal about how disappointing the ranked matchmaking in Valorant currently is in higher elos.

They even went as far as to suggest that Riot should implement 10-man lobbies so that grinding in Valorant’s ranked matchmaking is a bit more enjoyable than what it is at the moment.

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Riot responds to growing frustrations with Valorant’s ranked matchmaking

We can still try to solve it 😈My statement on this topic is "We are currently looking into ways 5 stacks can play together competitively" - This isn't exactly what TenZ was asking about but I think it will help this space a bit! We are thinking of how to solve these issues.

— EvrMoar (@RiotEvrMoar) April 14, 2021

Fortunately, Valorant Senior Competitive Designer Jon “EvrMoar” Walker addressed the growing frustrations with the game’s competitive matchmaking in the higher elos.

In response to one of TenZ’s initial points on the matter, he replied:

“This isn’t exactly what you’re asking for, but we are investigating how to empower five stacks to have a competitive space. What that means, and what it looks like TBD. Unfortunately, large systems like these take time.”

So an update that empowers 5-man stacks will very much be on the cards in a future Valorant update. In higher elos, one of the most crucial aspects of a tactical low-TTK shooter is team coordination and accurate call-outs.

In solo queues, players hardly ever communicate with each other, let alone provide accurate call-outs. TenZ talked about this during his Twitter rant, saying:

“People barely ever talk, which makes it just extremely emo at times. Ranked is extremely frustrating at times, especially when you open the round with two huge frags just to witness your team spoon-feed the enemy team.”

As high elo players are restricted to 2-man lobbies, having proper team coordination in a competitive game is incredibly rare. It makes for a frustrating experience that the pros have to go through, and getting a 10-man lobby can indeed help with the competitive health of the game in the long run.