Idiot here, is there any major reason players can’t have a choice? I think that your point about the entire map pool being overwhelming to new players is completely valid, but removing the option for any public matchmaking on those maps seems cruel. There are a lot of people who want to play the inactive map pool that don’t have 9 friends who play Valorant, much less 9 friends that can all play at the same time just so we can play on a different map.
A lot of the maps currently in the inactive pool are really fun, and as more maps are released, eventually a majority of the maps will be in the inactive pool. If this is the long term solution, there would be no way for a majority of players to actually play a majority of the game.
My idea would be a box that is checked by default every time you launch the game, put on the UI next to the queue button that says “Competitive Map Pool Only”. Have it there for every game mode (INCLUDING Unrated) that isn’t Comp or a game ...