Shroud calls Valorant ranked “hot garbage” for its queue restrictions

The latest content creator to criticize Valorant’s Competitive ranked system, Michael ‘Shroud’ Grzesiek blasted the mode’s forced solo and duo queues that prevent players from consistently fielding a full team in higher ranks.

Valorant’s ranked mode, also known as Competitive, has cemented itself as a mainstay for many content creators on Twitch and YouTube. Despite its popularity, however, the ranked mode has been hit with a steady flow of criticism from the community since its release.

While streaming his ranked gameplay on Twitch, shroud called out the forced solo/duo queues put in place by Riot Games in early 2021, and said the decision to split full teams of players apart at a certain point in the ranked climb has turned the mode into “hot garbage”.

After one of his teammates commented that Riot should ease the limitations on full teams of players in ranked, Grzesiek quickly jumped in to agree: “I’m sure they will soon because this s**t f**king blows.”

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“Literally, ranked is hot garbage because of this duo queue bulls**t. It’s such a bad dynamic,” the streamer said, expressing his full distaste with the mode’s restrictions and how being forced to play with strangers negatively impacts the experience.

“It’s not fun when you’re playing with randoms, [and] it’s also awkward that it’s duo queue because you have a duo pair, another duo pair, and then you have a solo.”

Riot’s stated goal in adding the forced solo and duo queues to Valorant’s Competitive mode was to prevent five-stacking among higher ranks to improve the experience for a wider audience, but so far has been met with a fair bit of pushback from pros and streamers alike.

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It’s unclear if Riot has considered any tweaks to the mechanic (or removing it completely) but they have pushed out changes to ranked queues in order to “tighten matchmaking skill,” which should hopefully ease the pain for players who aren’t thrilled with the current five-stack limitations.