[2020] We need news on Competitive Mode.

It's still coming in a bit. 'After a few patches' is still the stance.

It's also only been a week of this game being out, and I'm assuming you played in the CB, which many players didn't. We may have been a little too cautious in giving space for the game to stabilize (balance/network/infra/perf/etc), but maybe that's suffering from a smooth(ish) launch.

I'm personally enjoying unrated games right now, because when ranked does come on, I find myself under a lot of pressure to get on it. Not saying my perspective is THE perspective but I think there's a number of takes on this (look around the comments! I know you disagree with them but someone's on the other end with that opinion!).

I will say, if you're really unmotivated from playing unranked and feel like you've already got a firm grasp on Ascent, maybe take a break! We'll still be here! This isn't to undermine your request—I think the team hears you pretty clearly, but there's just some order of operations to go by.

We're not shoving comp down anyone's throats, but by having it available we are making some commitments and promises as to what the experience is.

What was a small earflick in unrated becomes rage-inducing in ranked. Maybe you're a reasonable person and you're fine with that tradeoff ("Oh they turned rank on early, there's bound to be roadbumps!"), but I guarantee there are many others who stake a lot in their ranked standing and will hold us accountable to getting everything perfect. I don't think we'll ever be 'perfect' but I do think when we take that step, we should be confident.

By the way, I don't ascribe to the "well, give them the choice!" approach all the time, because if ranked is up and there's a game-losing bug running around, I think you'd expect us to disable ranked. What if we slapped a little warning, "hey you might just lose your game!" but let people queue into ranked? That's offering a choice, but I think it's a dumb one. That's what I mean by the fact that ranked being on is a commitment that we want to do due dilligence on first.

This one I agree with, by the way. I'm currently playing in-houses or running 5-stacks in unrated (to match into other 5-stacks) to get more competitive games, but I agree with you that if you're just solo queueing, it's sometimes difficult to get a balanced, competitive game. As a weird note, I think playing more games of unrated will help you get calibrated higher (it has MMR too).

What I think is happening sometimes is some players aren't motivated to play unrated because it's unbalanced (or they HATE no ranked progression), then they cave and play one game, find it unbalanced, and stop playing. Meanwhile if you play a few more games, you'll get your MMR out of the entry-level pool and can find some reasonable matches. In ranked games, you'll probably also have some stomps (or being stomped) as you calibrate your elo, but I suppose that feels different.

My dude it's my own statement and I believe it, why you gotta come at me so aggressive saying my personal reasoning is BS, lol.

It's a known fact that powergamers can and will burn themselves out on un-fun things if it's the optimal thing to do. See Destiny's loot cave, or any other obnoxious way of grinding gear/ranked/whatever. Having ranked on does create pressure. I'm not saying this is the reason we're not turning it on, I'm just trying to give additional perspectives on other inputs. You're not arguing with the guy who's even in charge of turning it on, I'm just here to debate on the internet in between writing emails.

Because I seem to have 3 folks hounding me in every comment trying to prove me wrong, I just want to note I'm not trying to say my experience is representative of everyones. That said, the ones who care enough to spam comments are the ones who disagree with me, while the ones who agree are probably just playing or silently upvoting.

I'm just trying to weigh out the argument.

We'll probably hold off on new map availability in the rated pool as a steady state until it gets soak time in unrated.

Because we're both slinging anecdotes but you're chasing me in every comment thread trying to tell me your individual experience is representative of a failure of matchmaking. There are some people who are having unbalanced matches. There are some people who are having balanced matches. There are some people in between.

I'm telling you that of the many people playing, the only ones who will come in to complain are the ones having bad matches. The ones who are having good matches or just normal matches aren't coming in here to complain because a.) their posts don't get traction ("I'm having a fine time!") and b.) They're probably just playing.

This fix should be coming soon (in a couple days), sorry about that!

https://twitter.com/PlayVALORANT/status/1270068071785324544

https://twitter.com/PlayVALORANT/status/1270068071785324544

Sorry for the lack of update! We did run an update at the time, but it did not solve the root issue and only solved a small portion of the issue. We have a fix planned to deploy with the the patch downtime this week.