Riot Games has just announced that starting with patch 8.11 all Valorant maps will be playable in Unrated, Escalation, Swiftplay, and Spike Rush.
Riot released a statement on May 21 about the current map rotation, explaining that Breeze and Split would rotated out for Haven and a new upcoming map.
On May 22 Riot returned with another Valorant announcement. This time revealing that all maps would become playable in modes outside of competitive. This means that Pearl and Fracture, two maps players haven’t seen in awhile, will also be returning in some capacity.
“We have decided to remove map pool restrictions from Swiftplay, Spike Rush, Escalation, and Unrated queues. Starting 8.11, these modes will have all Valorant maps,” said Valorant Product Manager Tiffy Tsay. “We’re listening and testing these changes based on your feedback and so we still want to make sure you have the tools to practice.
The map pool isn’t the only thing changing 👀 pic.twitter.com/rCv7s6qm2z
— VALORANT (@VALORANT) May 22, 2024
This change is something that the community has been calling for for a while. Many players have called the current map pool system “boring” due to its lack of diversity.
Although this was relatively well-relieved by the community, there were still many unanswered questions and room for improvement.
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Multiple X users asked why Fracture and Pearl were excluded from the competitive rotation. Others suggested that a map voting would be a better solution.
As Tsay stated, the Valorant team is constantly making changes based on community feedback. However, a map voting system was not mentioned.
That said, map voting could be a possibility in the future now that the Valorant devs have confirmed it has no intention of permanently removing maps from the map pool. This means there may come a time when a map voting system makes sense due to the sheer volume of locations in the pool.
Valorant update 8.11 comes after the announcement of the highly anticipated new map which is set to be revealed towards the end of Masters Shanghai. Until then, Pearl, Fracture, and Haven will remain out of the current map rotation.