Valorant's 'consecutive map streaks' problem is finally fixed, Riot says

pcgamer.com:

If it seems like you're not seeing map repeats as much as you used to in Valorant(opens in new tab) these days, you can take comfort in the knowledge that it's not your imagination. In a new deep dive on the challenges of "map diversity(opens in new tab)," developer Riot Games explains how it's gone about improving Valorant's map randomization, which was a bigger challenge than you might think.

«A common sentiment that we’ve seen in the past is frustration when you encounter the same map multiple games in a row,» Riot's Brian Chang explained. «In a recent survey, over a third of Valorant players responded that it is 'Extremely Frustrating' to encounter the same map multiple times in a row.

»This isn’t too surprising. Playing the same map gets stale quickly, and limits the type of challenges that you face in the game. As a result, we wanted to make sure that we could improve the diversity of maps played without compromising the health of matchmaking (by influencing things like queue times or match balance)."

When Valorant originally launched, map selection was purely random: There were only four maps, and each one had a 25% chance of being chosen for a round, regardless of how often players in the match had seen it previously. That wasn't ideal, obviously—a quarter of players saw the same map three or more times during five-game stretches—and so a few months after release, Riot implemented a «pseudo-random» system that was intended to put players on maps they hadn't recently encountered.

Bolstered by the addition of more maps, the weighted system was better but still not ideal. A March survey of North American players found that 67% believe that they're «always» or «often» seeing the same map multiple times in a row. 

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