Why Valorant will not be adding a ban phase

Many games include a pick and ban phase at the beginning of competitive matches. Depending on the title, this can allow teams to vote to ban or protect certain characters or items. Players will then select their setup accordingly.

In the latest edition of “Ask VALORANT”, a feature which sees the developers answer popular community questions, we found out why this sort of system won’t be coming to Valorant.

“Will there be a pick and ban system with Agents and maps?”

Senior Game Designer, Trevor Romleski gave his thoughts. The main reason that Riot want to avoid a ban phase is that teams will build their whole game plan around specific Agents. “Banning an agent would invalidate that entire strategy, and we don’t want to discourage practice”, Romleski clarified.

On top of wanting to keep individual players and teams happy, they also don’t think a ban stage should be necessary. Instead, they aim to maintain balance across all Agents, such that no one is insanely overpowered, and any choice is viable.

Of course, this may change further down the line. In Rainbow Six Siege for example, Ubisoft introduced pick and ban around 3 years after launch. After adding a bunch of new operators, they felt that this mechanic deepened the strategy of the game and allowed players to develop their own meta.

With Valorant planning to release roughly 6 new Agents per year, this could potentially be a topic that resurfaces in the future. For now though, they are doing a great job of balancing Agents and a ban phase seems unwarranted.