Riot dev responds to Shroud’s request for 5-stack teams in Valorant competitive queues

After a request from Twitch streamer Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek, a Riot Games dev has confirmed they are working on adding a dedicated five-player competitive queue to Valorant.

The state of competitive Valorant has forever been a hot topic of discussion among players. Since update 2.02, players have been able to queue with up to four other people until they hit the rank of Diamond 3 or above. If you’re above that rank, you can only queue alongside one other person. This has prompted several high-profile players to make their frustrations known to Riot about the state of ranked, with shroud himself labeling the lack of five-player queues “hot garbage” and 100 Thieves IGL Spencer ‘Hiko’ Martin calling competitive games a “coin flip.” Pressure has consequently been on Riot to change the ranked system and allow players to stack up in a five-player squad if they wish to do so.

After shroud took his frustrations about the ranked system to Twitter, Valorant senior competitive designer Jon ‘EvrMoar’ Walker explained that they are working on a system to allow premade five-player teams to fight on Future Earth. “I’m working on a way for 5 stacks to play together competitively, we agree we want something,” he said. “We are also talking about short-term solutions, while we work on the bigger system.”

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Walker later responded to TSM Apex Legends content creator MacKenzie ‘Albralelie’ Beckwith, who asked if the new system would resemble League of Legends’ flex queue, which operates on a separate ranked ladder dedicated to team play. https://twitter.com/RiotEvrMoar/status/1393704081101836299 “It’s definitely something that comes up in talks,” Walker added. “Right now we are trying to see if there are better options. Our main concern is that one ranked playlist becomes the real “ranked” mode.

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“We will probably try a few other things first, [but] we don’t have plans for it currently.” It seems the plans for a dedicated ladder for players looking to queue as a full team is very much in the works. But as things stand, it’s all in the preliminary phase, so we could be waiting a while before shroud & co. can queue as five.