Until recently, one of the biggest problems faced by dedicated Valorant players was card selection, specifically getting the same card multiple times in a row. Over time, this problem has diminished considerably, and it’s not just the increased size of the card pool. In a new blog post, the Valorant team described how they managed to beat one of the biggest bugs in FPS gaming.
Valorant Competitive Team member Brian Chang explains how roughly a quarter of the player base can get the same card three times in a row initially. He adds that in a given five match window, you have a 1% chance of getting the same card five times in a row. Chang says this is due to the original card selection system, which gave each of the four cards an equal chance of being selected in a lobby.
Throughout the life of Valorant, Chang and his team have changed the card selection process to drastically reduce the number of players who repeatedly pick up the same cards.
You can read about the full development process in the official blog post, but in the last major map selection update that came with patch 4.04 in March, Riot ditched random selection in favor of “decisive “. This means that the game will always prioritize choosing the map that the lobby has collectively played the least in recent matches.
With this change, the number of players receiving the same cards has been significantly reduced. Chang says just under 24% of players are dealt the same card twice in a row, but only 0.06% of players immediately take the same card three times.
Our series on the health of the game system continues with a look at the changes we’ve made to support map diversity in the competitive queue. Read here: https://t.co/pnPptaTciE pic.twitter.com/3CBHBNO8u5
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) May 30, 2022
Additionally, in Riot’s testing, it was dealt four times in a row to just eight players across Valorant’s entire player base – and Chang claims two of those cards were deliberately evaded.
There are also no reports of players getting the same card five times in a row.
You probably wouldn’t mind getting on the back of your favorite map over and over again during your Valorant ascent, but it was slightly worse than playing your bogey map two, three, or even four times in a row.
While Valorant still has a lot of wrinkles to iron out, it’s good to know that now it’s something that will only piss off the most disgruntled players.
Source : The Load Out
