Right after the VALORANT players noticed Riot’s inquiry about the active competitive map pool, the community’s reaction was immediate and frankly quite volatile. There was one map in particular that drew all the heat while the rest of the maps received a healthy dose of love and hate from the community.
I want to get this out of the way because I’m hoping this is some epic gossip.
Typically, it’s the VALORANT Leaks account that kind of hints at new things, but in this case, it’s the account that posed the question about the map pool. Within an hour, hundreds of people showed up with responses, and within a few hours, there were hundreds of strong opinions about maps. And when I say strong opinions, I mean people are ready to throw punches over certain maps.
The “biggest piece of garbage”? Definitely Abyss; there’s no competition. Everyone is abysmally failing to come up with sufficiently scathing comments, but phrases like “Abyss is the least fun map in the game” and “I dodge Abyss 4 times a day” get the point across. Just to add to the drama, one user claimed they’re “1 abyss game from endin it,” which is fairly dramatic, but honestly, ‘moody’ is the vibe I’m getting and honestly, same. I agree with the consensus. Everyone is claiming that “Abyss is near impossible to attack on” in competitive and casual play. Multiple players have called it “impossible to attack on the defensive side,” “impossible.” So yes, everyone is skipping this map. Everyone.
Things don’t get any better when some of these players apparently demand the removal of Corrode alongside it. With comments like, “Corrode needs gone” and, “remove Corrode add Icebox” the “remove X add Y” package, the map removal and adding seems to be all over the place.
This is a little fascinating—maps people genuinely want to bring back. When it comes to asking for it back, Breeze is the most tweeted-about map, with multiple tweets simply begging for its return. One person tweeted, “PLEASE BRING BACK BREEZE,” while another shouted, “GIVE ME BREEEEEEZEEEE!!!!!!!!” and could’ve powered a small city with all the enthusiasm they emitted. However, there’s that one irritating comment that says, “Atleast we don’t have breeze,” so I’m guessing not everyone misses it?
Breeze isn’t the only map people want back, as Pearl is also gaining votes to return to the rotation. “Remove _____. Dogshit map Atleast we don’t have breeze” was a statement, while “replace Sunset for Pearl and it’s perfect” was a suggestion. Pearl has been explicitly demanded back from the players as one user was literally yelling in all caps, “REMOVE SUNSET AND BRING BACK PEARL,” and as much as you want to tune out, people really do feel strongly about maps.
There are Pearl and Breeze, but Icebox is also getting some mixed reactions. There are some who are happy that Icebox is gone (good, finally no Icebox), while others are asking for the map to be brought back (bring back Icebox). As if the community cannot decide if they love or hate some maps, which is quite typical of VALORANT players, if we’re being honest.
It would seem that Haven and Sunset are also “catching some stray bullets.” Players are stating they are “BORED of Haven” and would like to “delete haven and sunset” at the same time. On the other hand, people are stating this is “the best pool in a while” and “might be the best in the last couple of episodes and acts fr.” So regarding the maps, opinions are all over the place.
One of the most interesting aspects of this, is the complete opposition of opinions on what makes a good map pool. “With Fracture instead of Ascent it’s the best of all time” is one group, while the other is complaining about Ascent, “Tired of playing ascend it’s been there forever.” It seems like a perfect maps combination for everyone is unattainable as one suggestion is, “swap lotus with split!”
Almost all the times, map preferences in VALORANT are personal. It might be because of the player’s overall style of gameplay, the agents they like, or just their overall vibes. Some maps just feel better to be played on. To put it in the context of competitive play, VALORANT is a grind, especially if you want to climb the ranks, having to deal with maps you dislike makes the experience even worse.
For one, Riot Games tries to alter the map rotation in competitive play, providing seven maps and temporarily removing others for updates, or just to freshen things up. Regarding how they make these changes, it seems like they don’t care much for the maps that are genuinely disliked, compared to the ones that just need minor changes, or maybe they need to rethink the frequency of these changes.
The intense emotions VALORANT fans have regarding maps is clear based on their feedback themselves. Whether or not Riot acts on these suggestions remains a question, what is clear is that the current map pool is tearing the community apart. Judging by the response, Riot Games may need to pay attention to which maps are truly unpopular versus the maps that just need some tweaks. Riot Games has always been fairly quick about removing and adding maps to the competitive pool, usually keeping seven maps at a time while removing others for updates, or just to keep things fresh, but maybe they need to reconsider the frequency of these changes.
Honestly, this is one of the most dated gaming conundrums in the books. The way to tackle this, which Riot seems to have ignored, is blend listening with a grain of collecting feedback. Implement a channel that collects data automatically and from that do manual feedback rounds. This can fix the noise that is in every community “feedback” loop in every single game. It then feels like the community is being ignored. The feedback seems to be 100% emotional, which Riot takes in and makes the player base more upset with the results. What Riot turns the blind eye on or deflects is that the majority doesn’t generate feedback or complains passively. Imagine Riot focuses on the muting the loudest 20% of players, who apparently are the most competitive ones. The number of people annoyed by sustained negativity increases rapidly.
From a broader view, the fact that the opinion of what makes a map pool good is almost polar opposites is what’s amazing. One faction wants Fracture in and Ascent out (“with Fracture instead of Ascent it’s the best of all time”), while the other just wants Ascent to go away (“Tired of playing ascend it’s been there forever”). There are more suggestions like “swap lotus with split!” which proves that nobody can agree with a definitive, perfect map collection.
