Toxic players are the scourge of every online game, and Valorant is no exception. As it turns out, Riot is thinking about applying solutions that have worked for other games.
Toxic players are everywhere, and Valorant is no different. After all, it's become a new home for many players from an infamous older game, CS:GO, and we all know about that community. Fun.
The fact is, according to this survey, about 80% of Valorant players have had to deal with toxicity at some point. Anyway, things are getting so bad that Riot is beginning to intervene. Developers are particularly interested in two solutions that have worked in other competitive games, which Sara Dadafshar (Valorant Game Producer) talked about in a recent Valorant Reddit thread.
Toxic Gamer vs. Good Gamer #Gaming #Gamingmemes pic.twitter.com/rigRzxgO4o
— EarlyGame (@earlygamegg) September 22, 2021
Block-list Feature In Valorant
Valorant isn't the only game by Riot with toxic players. Yesterday they announced the end of "/all chat" in League of Legends, which you can read more about here. Would this be a good solution for an FPS game? Not likely. We're not even sure if it's a good solution for any online game. So, what could Riot be considering?
As it turns out, the developers are considering adding a "block list" feature that worked well in League of Legends and Overwatch. This way, when we come across a player who annoyed us in previous games, he will be automatically muted in the future. See what Sara Dadafshar, one of the producers of Valorant, said about it:
There's been other competitive games that have tried to implement this feature, but at high elo, folks used the block list as a way of avoiding playing against certain individuals that they would not have a good time going up against. Often times, this block would be thrown left and right against good players, causing them to be on a mass ignore list, tanking the queues that they'd join. It's a great way for folks to isolate certain individuals from queues, even though the intent of it is to "block/ignore" the disruptive players who are tossing profanities and other inappropriate things into voice/chat.
Honestly, it sounds pretty promising. However, it would be good if such a list had some sort of limit and if you could manage it. It would be too good if we couldn't queue with the same player a second time, but well, that could be abused. At this point, we're pretty sure that each of you has one such player in mind that you would never want to play with ever again, right?
Player Behavior Rating System
And that's not all! Riot is also thinking about implementing a rating system that would evaluate players' behavior so that the matchmaking system can assess a player's true worth, and therefore avoid situations where you end up with a smurf or a toxic player in your match.
So the upvote/downvote idea is on our radar and we are going to probably add some variation of it in the near future (we want to make sure it adds clear player value, and there’s so many systems out there that don’t achieve the outcome they’re hoping for, so we are deep in design for this right now)
This sort of thing works in other games. It doesn't exclude anyone from the game, but instead given motivates them (maybe) to reflect and start being nice to other players. After all, no one wants to be muted at the beginning of every game, especially if the rest of the team gets to know about it.
If you want to play with non-toxic Valorant players be sure join our Discord, it's a great group of people just looking for good games. If you want access to exclusive content, giveaways, and community tournaments, don't hesitate and create your MyEarlyGame account now.