We all know and love toxic teammates when we’re having a bad day shooting heads. So, you may want to block them in Valorant.
Generally, when players get into a game and choose a random agent, they get locked in a lobby with someone toxic, misogynistic, and homophobic, considering their play style.
This could be due to the ‘nature of the first-person shooting,’ but there need to be more steps to help players have a better time in the game by avoiding playing with these players. So how to block someone in valorant and can we do so are the type of questions we would answer in this piece.
Can You Block Someone in Valorant?
It’s not easy to develop a blocking system. Other games have attempted to include this functionality. However, at high elo, people used the block list to avoid playing against people they wouldn’t enjoy playing against.
This block was frequently thrown at good players, putting them on a mass ignore list and ruining their joined queues. The goal is to “block/ignore” the disruptive players who fling profanities and inappropriate things into voice chat. It’s a terrific tool for people to separate certain persons from queues.
The game could consider having separate blocking/deny listing systems for rated and unrated content to stop disruptive behavior.
Because the unrated pool is more prominent, it can maintain good blocklists of people with whom players don’t queue. However, a different rating system can be implemented, such as a thumb up or thumb down system with some variations.
This would not block the person but significantly reduce the player’s chances of getting into a lobby with them. A similar kind of system is utilized by some other games as well.
It’s a terrific idea that people frequently ask; however, the Valorant team is concerned that players would misuse such a feature to make matchmaking easier. For example, they can use the block button to avoid playing against someone and prevent potential loss.
A system that adds clear player value is needed today, yet there are so many systems that don’t produce the desired results.
Is Valorant Toxic?
Valorant has replaced other games like CS: Go and League of Legends regarding toxicity and profanity in voice chats or texts in video games.
Maintaining a positive atmosphere in the team lobby might be challenging, especially in first-person shooter games. To win, players must work together, but even minor misunderstandings can lead to toxicity in competitive games. According to adl.org, Valorant is the newest game in this category, and it has swiftly become the most poisonous.
Valorant has the most significant percentage of players who have encountered abuse and harassment in the last six months of any video games studied.
It has quickly grown its player base with appealing agent characters and addictive gameplay. The Riot game teams are trying their best to provide measures against those part of this ‘toxic community’ in its gaming world, but their efforts have been in vain.
According to this assessment, the game still has many toxic users. For the second year in a row, Valorant has reported toxicity cases.
Why Are Valorant Players So Toxic?
You can attribute the high rate of toxicity in Valorant to the diversity of players worldwide. Many players came over from Fortnite, CSGO, Overwatch, and other games to play Valorant.
Players from all genres and categories make up Valorant’s community rather than being built from the ground up. Valorant increased as the toxicity of these games decreased.
Unlike other shooting games like CSGO, Valorant has aggressively pushed marginalized genders to compete in professional tournaments. As a result, the player base has become much more diverse.
In 2021, there will be more women competing in Valorant. However, we have seen that as more and more women players are joining, there’s an increase in reports of women complaining of misogynistic comments.
Riot Games appears to have failed to create a safe zone while having a diverse user base. Although the team of riot games is trying their best to implement some secure version and remove other inappropriate things, the task hasn’t been easy for them.
Hopefully, the new statistics will shed light on a problem that will only worsen as the game becomes more popular.
What Happens if You Block Someone in Valorant?
Valorant should consider what other shooters are doing correctly to avoid toxic buddy concerns, such as using a block list. “Avoid as Teammate” in Overwatch is superior, but this is a step in the right way. For example, a player can flag someone to avoid in Overwatch, and she won’t see them again.
This would be fantastic, as sexist, racist, and discriminatory remarks abound in Valorant, as they do in other shooters like Call of Duty. Only the mute button is available to players, but that doesn’t mean they won’t do everything they can to make players’ time in-game as unpleasant as possible.
In team-based games, communication is crucial, yet unpleasant teammates are all too familiar. For example, people in League of Legends are frequently blocked and auto-muted in subsequent games. We already described Overwatch, but it also features a block option.
Because the “Avoid as Teammate” list isn’t limitless, the player must carefully determine who is the absolute worst. A blocklist for a disrespectful colleague is one of the most requested additions for Valorant, and a member of the Valorant team discussed it on Reddit.
How to Block Someone in Valorant?
Unfortunately, a player cannot block certain players on Valorant as of this writing. On the other hand, blocklists are something the developers are considering, as Riot games producer Sara Dadafshar stated on Reddit.
She said, ‘ We mention this concept frequently, and we are eager to build a safe version of it that no one will be able to exploit, keeping people safe. Other competitive games have attempted to include this functionality; however, at high elo, people used the block list to dodge people tossing profanities.’
Players can still report others for toxicity and silence them in chat, despite the devs acknowledging that the improvements are likely a long way off in Valorant and future games.
There’s a reason riot games are keeping their heads down for so long. They’ve been hard at work improving the experience of speaking with other players in-game.
“Communications bans for all” are over. Text moderation is now available in over 11 languages, and we have updated our penalty mechanism for text-based infractions. The system now has more nuance, with punishments increasing by the frequency and severity of the crime.
Game bans, comms bans, warnings, and extended comms bans are some of the few penalties that players could face if players use toxic language.
However, it would be best if you warned that their present text evaluation tools could not determine who began the raging war. Valorant will catch players saying something bad, regardless of who started it. So, for example, suppose someone is harassing someone verbally. In that case, we suggest not responding by pestering them or repeating what they have said. Instead, report them, and systems will handle it.
What About the Valorant AFK and Smurf Problems?
Disruptive players being AFK is a concern in any competitive online game, and Valorant is no exception. Riot has taken two initiatives to reduce the number of AFK players in their games.
Because Riot is modifying the conditions to play rated matches, the first stage will only affect unrated matches. Instead of simply playing games, Valorant will require players to win a certain number of them.
Their second strategy will address both rated and unrated AFK players. They’re working on better ways to detect when players go AFK. They’re considering a variety of punishments, such as rank penalties, experience mitigations, longer queues, or bans, for those who do.
Riot doesn’t appear to have an answer for smurfs in Valorant just yet. According to the rules, Valorant will report players who are purposefully feeding to de-rank. Players who are currently smurfing or boosting their pals have not revealed anything.
Final Words
Toxic behavior and usage of toxic language are not fine in any circumstances, be it real life or the game. Therefore, it becomes vital to sensitize people regarding the same as a significant number of people, nowadays being online in the virtual world for a substantial amount of time in a day.
Also, if you’re a Valorant player and experiencing storage issues, you’d want to move Valorant to a different drive, so check this out!
Not only it’s the responsibility of the team and producer of games to stop this abuse, but simultaneously, self reluctance concerning these kinds of behavior is also appreciated. We don’t talk enough about mental health regarding online gaming. The same needs to be taken seriously with each individual.
