Valorant’s an incredibly fun FPS game that combines strategy, precise aiming, and teamwork. However, there’s one massive problem: AFK players. Whether it’s due to toxicity or someone trying to drop ELO, players will go AFK for a variety of reasons and cause their team to struggle.
While this can be annoying in certain game modes, it wreaks havoc on the competitive scene. To work with this problem, Riot has implemented a remaking system. However, the system itself has several problems from being nearly impossible to see to having ridiculous requirements.
Riot’s attempted to help solve the problem, but it’s just not working. The system needs a complete overhaul.
Valorant’s Remake Vote Doesn’t Make Sense
To remake a match in Valorant, players have to enter “/remake” into the chat during the second round. And, if the AFK player happened to spawn in and then AFK, it doesn’t even work. It also doesn’t queue a remake vote like it does a surrender vote – if you don’t input the code at some point during the second round, then it doesn’t work.
Players have taken to Reddit upset about the system. It’s not clear how it works at all, and the requirements for even getting to the vote option don’t make sense.
Riot’s other multiplayer game, League of Legends, also has a remaking system. However, it automatically prompts for players when a teammate hasn’t shown any activity. This does make a bit more sense for the MOBA game since it’s very easy to spend the first 10 to 15 minutes not even noticing teammates in other lanes. The game actually had the same remaking system as Valorant before updates, which begs the question of why it’s still in Valorant.
While it makes sense for League of Legends to pop up without a prompt, it should do the same in Valorant. There’s no justifiable reason that it shouldn’t, and it doesn’t harm anything by existing.
Riot’s Past Answers
The remaking system in Valorant may be problematic, but the real issue lies with the high number of AFK players.
To dissuade people from AFKing or disconnecting before a match, Riot has constantly changed penalties for doing so in patches over the years. However, people are still going to AFK – that’s just how online games work.
It’s a balancing act between figuring out who’s AFKing to drop ELO or troll and who’s actually disconnecting due to connectivity or server issues. Because of this, some patches seem to do more harm than good.
What a Better System Could Look Like
While there’s never going to be a perfect system, there’s no reason for a remake vote to not automatically go off. If a player didn’t move the entirety of Round One, or if they’re not even connected, then the remake vote should automatically appear.
Beyond that, something needs to be done about the timing of remakes. This is another tricky thing to balance because players will tilt and quit if it means potentially keeping their rank the same. Perhaps making it so that the offending player loses RR even in the case of a remake would make sense – it may be a bit harsh, but what’s harsher is making it so that all four teammates lose RR after inevitably missing the remake option.
What do you think? Could Riot do a better job serving the majority of a team instead of overly worrying about punishing one AFKing player?
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