Although Riot Games are doing their best to penalize toxic players in Valorant, they admit some further changes must be made in their current approach.
This comes after an increasing number of player complaints about the negative effect of communication bans on other players’ games.
Inevitable occurrence
In gaming, most especially in online multiplayer games, toxic players are an inevitable occurrence. These trolls aren’t limited to one game genre only— as you will find the likes of them in every online game there is.
These toxic players are in the pursuit of ruining the game experience of others, but Riot wants to protect its player base through Valorant’s comprehensive reporting system.
Players who gain enough reports for toxic behavior will be immediately investigated by the system.
If there’s enough proof, the devs will then give the player in question some sort of punishment— which depends on the severity of their in-game toxicity.
This may seem all ideal but some innocent Valorant players are getting tired of having to pay the price for others’ actions.
Riot devs were quick to respond to the increasing number of player complaints. One developer even went on to agree that their current system needs to be improved.
A change is needed?
When players queue in rank, it’s already a great drawback if someone in your team has been hit with a communication ban. This puts the team at a disadvantage.
One player took it to Reddit to share his opinion about how the current way players are punished needs to be changed.
“If you randomly get a banned player, your [team communication] get hurt a lot. Why is this even a thing? If someone’s terribly toxic, you can just mute them,”
The sentiment garnered the attention of one Valorant developer, who is keeping a close tab on player penalties.
The dev was a designer on the central player dynamics group, part of the team involved in the current penalties experience on Valorant.
The Valorant developer went on to say:
“What we have today isn’t what we intend to be the final solution and we’re working on making it better,”
“I’ll admit that we probably underestimated the negative effect on teammates of having a comms muted player and that’s something that we’re going to think more about.”
Valorant is still in its early stages in comparison to the bigger picture Riot visualizes the 5v5 tactical shooter to be.
In the long term, the developers are continually listening to player feedback and adjust their approach as they deem fit.
The developer further explained how they are considering changing the game’s current communication system.
“An awesome future would be to have tools that give the speed of use and specificity of voice chat today, without requiring players to participate in freeform voice chat.”
Previously, the devs hinted on their plans to improve Valorant’s ping system, in a way callouts delivered by non-verbal comms are improved.
