Playing Valorant can often become frustrating when encountering other players who intentionally throw matches for their own amusement. However, this kind of behavior might be coming to an end, as Riot Games reveals their plans to combat the increasing number of AFKs, throwers, griefers, and smurfs in the game in their latest Ask Valorant blog post released today.
For starters, to reduce the number of players going AFK in-game, Valorant is changing the restrictions for ranked queue from 20 matches to 10 wins starting from the next patch.
“We hope this will force players who are just spam farming matches to actually participate in play and strive for wins,” producer Sara Dadafshar said.
Riot has also claimed that they’re working on “better detection of this type of behavior that will lead to harsher punishment.”
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The list of punishments for AFKs, griefers, or smurfs that Riot is looking into includes “rank penalties, experience mitigations, longer queue time restrictions, and even bans if it comes down to it.”
Dadafshar continued, “We want to distinguish between disruptive behaviors that stem from comms and gameplay, and then penalize accordingly. I can’t give away our secrets in terms of what our plans for detection are, but know that we are actively working on a way to make the game more enjoyable in this regard!
Riot has also mentioned that they might start planning to work on a system that lets players block griefers to prevent being placed in queues with them.
“There’s some nuances we’d have to work through to ensure queue times don’t significantly increase, but we understand how frustrating it is when you get matched up with someone who you just reported in the prior match,” Dadafshar said.
Valorant Patch 1.13 Release Date:
VALORANT patch 1.13 is expected to drop on December 8th.
VALORANT PATCH 1.14 Update is out now. Check it out right now.
