It may be time for Valorant to look at what other shooters are doing right to stop toxic teammate issues, like a block list. Overwatch’s “Avoid as Teammate” is better, but this could be a step in the right direction. In Overwatch, you can flag someone to avoid, and you won’t get them again. This would be amazing, as sexist, racist, bigoted talk is incredibly common in Valorant, much like other shooters like Call of Duty. All players can do is hit the mute button, but that doesn’t mean those players won’t do what they can to make your time in-game as awful as possible. That’s what we need the ability to put a teammate on a block list in Valorant, to hopefully not see them again.

It’s important to communicate in team-based games, but far too frequently, we see toxic teammates. People in League of Legends get blocked often and are auto-muted in future games. Overwatch we already discussed, but it also has a block option. The “Avoid as Teammate” isn’t an infinite list either, so you have to consider who is just the worst carefully. One of the most requested features for Valorant is a block list for a rude teammate, and a member of the Valorant team spoke about it on Reddit.

It’s a great idea often requested, but the Valorant team is worried players will abuse a feature like this to make their matchmaking easier. If they want to avoid playing against someone, they can just hit the block button and avoid that potential loss. 

Here’s what Sara Dadafshar said: “Often times, this block would be thrown left and right against good players, causing them to be on a mass ignore list, tanking the queues that they’d join. It’s a great way for folks to isolate certain individuals from queues, even though the intent of it is to “block/ignore” the disruptive players who are tossing profanities and other inappropriate things into voice/chat. With that being said, though, the idea isn’t completely off the table. This concept is something that gets brought up often, and we are very down to implement some safe version of it that won’t be abused but keeps players protected as well.”

She did say she understood and that the team is looking into ways to let players play with less toxic teammates effectively, but as described above, it’s a bit of a tricky thing to tackle. One Redditor also suggested different block/blacklist groups for Rated/Unrated matches. For unrated, they suggested you could have up to 10 people you don’t queue with, and the rated pool could have an upvote/downvote system. The upvote/downvote system is something they’re reportedly looking at as a possibility. The ideas presented in the Reddit thread are a possibility, and it’s good that Riot Games is looking at the feedback and giving it a fair shake. A block list for a rude teammate could change the game in Valorant. We’d have to make sure it’s not abused so that people can have easier climbs in Ranked. As it stands right now, all we can do is mute and report, so use these when necessary – not just because someone picked a character you don’t like.