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Valorant solo-queue players have been plagued by one or the other players coming into the game and instalocking a Duelist, mostly Reyna and Jett, and then ending the game with a 6-18-5 stat.
Following this, a second and a third person will also lock in a Duelist, hoping that they will carry their team to victory. This tosses the idea of a balanced team that has Agents to gather information, watch flanks and smoke sight lines straight out of the window. Although this phenomenon is more common in the lower ranks, it can be found in Valorant's highest-ranked games as well.
Overwatch also faced a similar problem. Their response was to introduce a role queue to tackle this. Role queues ensure that each team follows a certain structure that covers all bases.
This article will investigate what the role queue might look like in Riot's character-based tactical shooter and what implications it would have for the ecosystem, given the differences between the two titles.
What role queue will look like in Valorant
Valorant has four classes of Agents: Duelists, Initiators, Controllers, and Sentinels. Since each class focuses on a different aspect of gameplay, a standardized team will include at least one Agent from each class.
The fifth spot on a team will be flexible and can be filled with an Agent based on the requirements of the team and the comfort of the player. However, this spot will have to be the last to be filled to prevent people from autolocking a Duelist.
One way to implement this would be to ask players to select two roles out of five (the four Agent classes and one flex role) that they want and the game will place them in a match accordingly.
Role queue will standardize teams in Valorant
Each team will have at most two Agents from the same class. This might limit the possibility of having a Triple-Initiator Ascent or a Triple-Sentinel Icebox that players see in the VCT.
They need to remember that team compositions like this work so well in professional games because they have hours of practice behind each execution idea. Ranked games in Valorant are more straightforward and often lack a lot of planning and communication.
Therefore, having a standardized team with flexibility in one spot seems like a better alternative to having three instalock Duelists, one Chamber, and a Controller who is not comfortable with the role.
Players will be pushed towards learning more than one role
The majority of Valorant players can only play one role, with Duelists being the most popular due to their relatively simple playstyle designed to win 1v1 fights. In ranked games, this creates an awkward situation when a Duelist main is forced to fill smokes or when one of the two Omen mains is forced to play a Sentinel or Initiator.
Knowing that they will have to play one of the two roles they queue for will encourage players to learn both roles to a reasonable extent. It might be chaotic at first, but with a fair number of Agents to choose from in each class, players will find their niche and become really good at it in the long run.
Queue time might be longer in the lower ranks
In lower ranks, where people don't use utilities, instalocking Duelists is much more common. The role queue system in Valorant will increase queue times in these lobbies because there will be a large number of people wanting to play Duelists compared to other roles.
With time, hopefully, the long queue times will act as a deterrent for one-trick Jett/Reyna mains, who will be pushed to learn other Agents of different classes over time.
Furthermore, players in these lobbies will gradually learn to play with their teams and utilities, which will improve gameplay and most likely help them climb the rank ladder faster. Currently, a lot of games are ruined by there being lopsided team compositions, resulting in losses.
The addition of a role queue has more benefits than drawbacks for Valorant ranked.
Agent roles in Valorant are not as airtight and abilities are not as central to the game as they are in Overwatch, but having terrible team compositions in Riot’s shooter has a significant effect on players’ mental health and the outcome of games.
While longer queue times and standardized team composition may appear to be barriers to implementing a role queue system in Valorant, the benefits of such a mechanism will improve gameplay quality in the long run.
