Valorant: Riot Games might be introducing a new shooting range for players to practise on while waiting in matchmaking queue

Getting to practise one’s aim while in queue has been a long-standing dream among Valorant players ever since the game’s closed beta launch.

It wasn’t just the average player base who was asking for a practice range while in queue. Even professional players like G2 Esports’ Mixwell had addressed the matter in one of his tweets.

Hello @PlayVALORANT, it would be awesome if you can include this ASAP.- Shooting range while being in queue.- Elo system in Radiant like in League of Legends.- Coach spots in private games.- Rework Viper's ultimate.Type "thank mr.Valorant" to make this happen.

— G2 m1xwell (@Mixwell) July 3, 2020

Being able to access the practice range or any sort of an aim trainer can, indeed, help players warm up before their competitive games.

Since queue times take a very long time to find a match in the higher elos, getting their wrists warm and ready in the range is certainly a good use of the player's time.

Riot Games talk about the possibility of a practice range during Valorant queues

We're back with another Ask VALORANT. This week, you asked about in-game pauses, sharing crosshair settings, and if you'll ever be able to play on the practice range while queueing. The answers await at https://t.co/ZS5djXwYXX. pic.twitter.com/4bu3fUqvjo

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) October 8, 2020

In their very recent Ask Valorant #9, Riot Games go into a lot of detail about their take on a ‘practice range while queuing’.

One question that was posed was:

“Will we ever be able to play on the practice range while queueing?”

Riot Games replied:

“The tech is feasible to let you jump into the practice range while queuing, but we’ve been reluctant to pursue this because it is straight-up, not efficient for what it’s accomplishing and we’re more excited about alternatives, like an aim trainer you could access while in queue.”

The Valorant devs continued:

“Here’s why: A practice range 'match' is currently just as expensive for us to run on the server-side as a standard 5v5 match, but the effort is about 10x less efficient per player because it is only serving one player at a time. We prefer to preserve our server horsepower for bread and butter competitive matches.”

Riot Games saying that the addition of a practice range to the Valorant queue is not efficient for their server is quite a bummer for players. However, the silver lining comes in the fact that the developers might introduce an alternate aim trainer which players can use while in queue.

Jared Berbach, the Lead Games Mode Producer of Valorant, wrote:

“Now about those alternatives. I mentioned a possible simple aim trainer that can scratch the trigger itch, and that could be a step to a future solution where you queue for something like FFA Deathmatch. There is a bunch of prerequisite tech we need to figure out there before we could do something like this, but an early step we are taking toward this is to implement the ability to join FFA DM games in progress—which we hope to get done early next year.”