After months of complaints from the VALORANT player base, Riot Games has finally made a massive change for the map pool system in the game—and casual players are rejoicing.
Product manager Tiffy Tsay announced today that when Patch 8.11 releases, there will no longer be a restricted map pool for any non-competitive queues in VALORANT, meaning every map in the game will be available in Unrated, Swiftplay, Spike Rush, and Escalation.
This was a highly-requested change after players became burnt out from the lack of map variety, especially for those who aren’t jumping into ranked play. Some players were sick of seeing the same maps in ranked, but since the same map pool was in other, more relaxed modes, there wasn’t anywhere to experience the full map rotation except in custom games.
These changes were originally introduced by Riot to help newer players adjust to the game while keeping the map rotation small, while still helping casual players make the jump over to ranked queue by maintaining the same map pool.
This was, however, poorly received by the player base. From pro players and ranked demons to swiftplay enjoyers alike, most users were left disgruntled by the changes and the repetitiveness of the climb. Many players even considered this season to be one of the worst in the game’s short history due to how unbearable the climb was with the current maps in rotation.
When Patch 8.11 drops this coming June, casual players and newcomers can experience every map in the game while staying in a more relaxed environment, giving longtime players the variety they crave in multiple different modes. With the upcoming changes to the competitive map pool, fans might finally be free of the stifling map selection as we head into the second half of the year.
