Role queue is an important part of any game that has characters with different abilities and different scenarios where they are best used. League of Legends and Overwatch both have systems like this in place but not Valorant. Today, we pose the question of if Riot Games should implement a system like this into the competitive FPS.

The Purpose of Role Queue

The way role queue works is simple: players must pick one character in each role (DPS, healing, tank, etc.). To make sure that there is somebody able to play each role, the players queue for their desired role(s) when queuing for a game. This is to ensure that team composition is even and people don’t just stack overpowered tank characters. Players can also branch out and play more than just one or two characters which is helpful to their individual performance.

It would be beneficial for Valorant to have a system like this for much of the same reason. In Overwatch’s early days, players could just five-stack the same character. This meant that you could have a full team of Meis that could wall off a site and make things extremely difficult for the opposing team. This could also apply to having a full team of tanks, like Roadhog, pulling in everyone in sight. While everyone picking the same character is not a thing in Valorant, role queue would ensure perfect team composition and allow for balanced games more often than not.

A Separate Queue?

There’s also the question of whether this should be a separate queue from the main one. While some might argue that this system takes away some freedoms, the whole point of a role queue is to make the entire competitive system balanced. In turn, having it as an optional feature would defeat the purpose of the system in the first place. It should be implemented into the competitive system as the only way to queue for matches.

Will Riot implement this? It’s hard to say. In their Ask Valorant #3 on July 16, they said they wouldn’t implement map selection in competitive. The reasoning behind this was that it would increase queue times and somehow “reduce the overall players in our matchmaking pool”. This leads us to believe they are wary of introducing any changes that would affect competitive queues. Role queue might affect queue times since people wouldn’t be able to pick the characters they want every time and thus, fewer people hop into competitive matches.

What do you think? Should Riot add role queue to Valorant or not? Join the discussion happening right now on our Discord. And as always, for more news, exclusive interviews, and guides on Valorant, follow us at Run It Back.