Riot Games' Valorant released just over a year ago and quickly rose in prominence. More recently, the 5v5 competitive shooter hasn't grown as much much in popularity, but it still remains a top free-to-play game on PC. Valorant boasts a competitive scene with professionals and tournaments regularly played, and features a generally balanced Competitive mode that doesn't host many concerns other than smurfing. Smurfing in Valorant can be frustrating, but what can be done about this issue?
Smurfing is a common issue in modern multiplayer games. Creating multiple accounts for a game is more common in free-to-play games as price is no obstacle. Some players want to play their favorite game at a lower rank to take advantage of lesser-skilled competitors, and others may have too large of a skill disparity between them and their friends. Whatever the reason may be, smurfing creates unbalanced game lobbies that can ruin a competitive experience.
Playing a new multiplayer game like Valorant for the first time is always exciting, and after a few games, naturally players look to see what the requirements for Competitive/Ranked are. For Valorant, a player must first win ten unrated games before they are able to play in Competitive lobbies. This makes it too easy to create multiple accounts at varied skill levels quickly, whereas in other games like Rainbow Six Siege there are much higher requirements for accessing Ranked matches, like needing to achieve level 50 in the game. The requirement in Valorant to play competitive is too low and results in poor game lobbies.
How To Stop Valorant Smurfing: Restriction Changes
Widening restrictions on group size would also help the smurfing issues in Valorant. Often times, multiplayer games are enjoyed by friends grouping and playing together, but sometimes those friends can be at differing skill levels. With 22 total ranks in Valorant, having a group of five friends all be similar ranks can be tough. Riot makes it so that players are not allowed to group together if they are just a few ranks separated. This leads players to create second and third accounts just to play with their friends, and an even cause Valorant's smurfing players to throw games and place at extremely low ranks n purpose.
There is no perfect system for any type of ranked game mode, but it seems as though the higher restrictions are, the better the balance is. Although it may be annoying as a player to grind out hours of gameplay to finally participate in competitive lobbies, the end result of better gameplay should be worth it. Valorant is constantly updating with new modes and features, like the recent Replication game mode, so seeing Riot Games tackle smurfing issues more accurately could be on the horizon. A few restriction/requirement changes could help Competitive mode for the better and make the rank-up grind a little easier for new players.