Valorant players bash Riot’s map pool changes ahead of Pearl release

With Valorant’s eighth map Pearl releasing shortly, fans of the popular first-person shooter have hit out at the devs after they announced the removal Split from the pool to reduce the amount of maps.

Valorant has come a long way since its beta release in early 2020, starting with only 10 playable agents and three maps. Over two years since the official launch of Riot’s first-person shooter, fans can enjoy 19 different agents and eight maps with the release of Pearl in Episode 5.

However, despite having more content than ever to enjoy, fans have hit out at the devs after they announced their decision to remove Split temporarily in order to keep the map pool at what Riot believes to be a perfect seven.

Instead of introducing the highly-requested pick and ban system for the map pool, the Riot developers decided to take a different approach. In a blog post on June 16, the devs revealed that Split will exit the map pool in Competitive and Unrated queues. Level Designer Joe Lansford explained that the dev team belives seven maps “is a nice sweet spot that offers both variety and mastery.”

However, players aren’t too keen on the changes, as demonstrated in a Reddit thread on June 18, as they hit out at the dev’s decision to remove a map instead of allowing players to ban one. As noted by player Paperblocc, introducing a map ban system could cause potential issues. However, the fan came up with some nifty ideas to counteract any problems.

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“Every player is just going to choose Fracture as their banned map every time they queue. While there are many options to deal with a map ban system in this game, I’m going to mainly focus on the aspect of 8 potential maps being too overwhelming,” the player said.

“You’re given the option to ban a map once every 24 hours. You can also just enter the queue without selecting a banned map for those who like the chaos. Once you ban that map, if you play in that 24-hour period, you are guaranteed to not get that map. Once the 24 hours end, the map will be put on a ban cooldown for a certain number of days.”

Others suggested Riot should take a page out of Ubisoft’s book with Rainbow Six Siege. “Siege did it right by giving 3 maps to choose from, and let teams ban one each simultaneously,” said one.

“It’s just funny to me how they think 8 maps is too much when the randomized system still gives me the same map twice in a row often,” another responded. “I can grind a long 5-6 games and maybe only get to play on 2-3 maps within them.”

Regardless, it seems like Riot is persistent with not adding a map pick and ban system, no matter how much it’s requested by the Valorant community.