Valorant players are demanding for the Riot devs to stop removing maps from the “stale” game.
There’s now a total of 10 maps in Riot’s first-person shooter Valorant, significantly more than when the game first launched in 2020. However, since Episode 5, the devs have implemented a map pool, limiting the amount of maps in rotation to just seven at any given time.
It’s safe to say the feature has been fairly controversial amongst the Valorant community. Many believe it was added because the devs think there are “too many maps.” But despite that, players have demanded that the map pool be removed, slamming it as “awful.”
In a March 22 post on Valorant’s Reddit, similar demands were made, with one player kicking off a discussion as they called for the devs to stop removing maps.
“Stop removing maps. More variety doesn’t hurt anyone,” the player hit out. “I hate having to wait literal years to play maps again. The game feels a little stale with only 7 maps.
“I’m currently missing Haven, Pearl, and Fracture. Haven especially as it was an OG map.”
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They continued: “The rationale of it being hard for new players to learn a lot of maps doesn’t make sense to me. Maps are relatively easy to learn compared to agents. Anyone who puts the time in to climb the ranks has more than enough time to learn all the maps.
“And for casual/low rank players, isn’t the extra variety more fun than only having a few maps? I think we would all appreciate the variety,” the player added. “This isn’t like CS where you need tons of esoteric flash and smoke line ups.”
In the replies to the post, many other players agreed. Some suggest that devs should allow maps to be played in Unrated and other non-competitive game modes. “Even just in the unranked gamemodes, I wanna play for fun not get only breeze and f**king sunset,” they said.
“Make map restrictions comp only or something. I get why they do it, but I don’t agree because I like the variety. F**k balance, give me fun!” wrote another.
With that said, players are looking toward the next map release, which is expected at some point in Episode 8 Act 3. And, the community is convinced they’ve found what’s in store thanks to hidden images on Valorant’s website.