Valorant players already want Riot to remove “garbage” map Icebox

Lauren Bergin
Icebox-Opinions

With Patch 1.11 now finally released, Valorant players were looking forward to getting to grips with the new map, Icebox – but the reaction hasn’t been as Riot might have hoped.

Patch 1.11 has delivered a whole host of new features into Valorant. With Skye finally making her appearance on Future Earth, as well as Breach getting some game-changing buffs that were left out of the official patch notes, Valorant has become quite a different game.

One of the other main features of the new update, though, is Icebox. The new map is a former excavation site for a long lost kingdom that has fallen under a veil of ice and snow. Set in the arctic tundra, fans were excited to explore this very different looking map.

However, opinion on the map is very divided.

Icebox may look beautiful, but does it play beautifully too?

Icebox isn’t proving popular…

Valorant announcing that Icebox will be available during the global First Strike tournament after 30 November was met with a wave of backlash from players.

One of the most popular responses to this Tweet came from user SingularityCS, who called for the map to be removed from the game entirely due to the easy lines of sight making players feel like sitting ducks in a shooting arena.

This disappointment also translated across to the Valorant subreddit, where a poll by user jonweck showed that, while 1000 users simply voted ‘meh’ to the map, the opinion swung in the direction of dislike with ‘hate it’ currently beating out ‘love it’, comfortably.

Valorant Icebox map poll
The general feeling is more ‘meh’ than anything else, but the ‘love it’ vote is struggling.

Among the comments there are several calls for the map to be deleted entirely from the game, with most users echoing SingularityCS’ tweet.

Others compared it to a Call of Duty map, where any misstep means certain death at the hands of at least 5 different players.

Some fans really love Icebox

Despite the waves of criticism that the map has received, some fans have really enjoyed playing the map. Although the positive comments seem to be much fewer than their negative counterparts, the map appeals to different people for different reasons.

Maybe once fans see it in professional play they’ll be able to adapt their strategy to fit this very different style of map. Until then, however, we’ll just have to try out the map for ourselves and see what we make of it.

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About The Author

Lauren was formerly Dexerto's Features Editor and resident Diablo Sorceress. With two Master's degrees under her belt and a lot more Steam achievements, she specializes in all things Blizzard and Riot Games, with some Lost Ark and FFXIV on the side.