Valorant is one of the most popular online multiplayer games for PC out there. Ever since its release in 2019, the game has gathered a huge audience and love from the e-sports gaming community. But, like any other game to exist, Valorant is not void of problems or bug-free. Although bugs are addressed regularly by the developers, one concern in the game stood out from the rest. This was map repeats.
What are Map Repeats in Valorant?
Map repeats are a silly but annoying issue. Valorant has a bunch of different maps and the number stands at seven at the moment. The maps include Ascent, Icebox, Split, Haven, Bind, Breeze, and Fracture. These maps are diverse, and by switching between them during gameplay, the experience can be vastly improved. But, changing maps up during consecutive games was not coded into Valorant. Thus, a lot of players report getting the same map over and over again.
Valorant’s players were not happy with getting the same map multiple times in a row. In a poll recently conducted by the developer, Riot Games, almost a third of Valorant’s community has described the occurrence of multiple maps in a row as “extremely frustrating”. This information was published by Riot Games official Brian Chang in a report this week.
What Map Changes Were Implemented into Valorant?
Riot has finally gone about changing this system and improving the map randomization system built into Valorant. According to the developers, implementing this feature was much more difficult than it sounds. The developers have gone about increasing the diversity of the maps while not “compromising the health of matchmaking”. The game will reportedly achieve this by influencing match balance and queue times. Valorant was initially launched with four maps. The game did not have any system to randomize maps upon launch. Out of the four maps, one would be chosen randomly regardless of whether players had encountered it before. Thus, players would come across the same map 3-4 times during a 5-game stretch.
As more maps started to get introduced into Valorant, Riot had implemented a “pseudo-random” system that would decide on maps that players had not recently encountered in a game. Although this system made map selection much better than it was, the addition was not enough. A report suggests that a whopping 67% of North American Valorant players report seeing the same map multiple times “always” or “often” during gameplay sessions. The results from this report got developers thinking. Thus, they finally have rolled out a map randomization system with the 4.04 patch released this March. Riot Games official Brian Chang describes this update as “the most significant improvement thus far.”
How Did the New Changes Affect Map Randomization?
After the new system has been in place for a month, the percentage of players who are encountering the same map three times in a row has dropped to a 0.06%. That makes for only 1 Valorant player among 1700 others who got the same map multiple times. Interestingly, only 8 among several million gamers have seen a map 4 times in a row. Two among these intentionally avoided some maps and preferred some over the others. But, for the other six, it can be deemed bad luck.
Although Riot is quite comfortable with the current situation of the game, they have informed that the game will be continuously inspected to improve matchmaking and map randomization experiences.