I've been playing Valorant for about 2 months now, and I am loving the game. It's my first PC shooter, I come from COD/Halo on Xbox for over 15 years but this learning curve of tactical shooter + transition to PC has been rough on me! But I love the grind and don't mind losing..however, the ladder itself is extremely unenjoyable, through Iron/Bronze I have played almost 250 games, and 30 games in I decided to keep track in a Google sheet. Out of 220 games I have played on NA servers 43 have had a teammate go AFK for a significant period of time (3 rounds +), and 27 (!!!) games I have had a troll/griefer on my team, (intentionally going AFK, but moving enough to not be booted, stealing the spike every round and not planting, or even sometimes using abilities to harm/kill their own team). This is an ASTONISHINGLY high rate and even though this is my favorite game at the moment makes me want to quit, I always report with detailed explanations but have never ever received confirmation from RIOT that action has been taken, and in some cases I have been placed on that persons team later on the SAME DAY, if I cancel the queue I am penalized. I believe that there are some design choices RIOT made that make it a stomping ground for trolls at lower level, and I want to outline why..

The Spike
This is such an easy fix I hope it gets implemented, right now if you have a troll on your team depending on spawn locations they can grab the spike -every- round on offense. If you are playing even a halfway competent team and you can't get your own spike, your chances of winning that game are EXTREMELY low, especially considering that troll will often not participate, meaning it's also a 4v5.

How hard would it be to either (a) have the team be able to vote on who receives the spike between rounds? (best case) or (b) put the last person who got the spike furthest from the spike in spawn the next round so the same person couldn't just grab it over, and over, and over....

The Vote to Surrender

The fact that one person can ruin a game for the whole team AND be the reason the other people can't leave is an issue. This essentially takes 30-40 minutes of the whole teams time, which if you're someone like me with children, could be a big chunk of my gaming time that weeknight - this has caused me to avoid playing Valorant and opt for games I enjoy less but know I won't encounter trolls/be stuck in a 4v5 for 40 minutes in. Asking for 5 out of 5 to accept surrender is unreasonable, and in my opinion a 4 out of 5 vote should be deemed enough to warrant a surrender. You have 80% of a team saying they are ok with giving up their RR to get out of a game early, there is probably a good reason most of the time. This current setup gives a troll/griefer way too much power to really waste 40 minutes of your life, as if you leave or go AFK, you will be penalized and unable to play again (perhaps that entire evening).

Enforcement

I've searched long and far, and can't find any substantial evidence that RIOT ever does anything with reports of griefing/sabotage. I know there are chat bans for people that are toxic (this is good), and that now with the recent update AFK'ers are more harshly punished, but I can't find any evidence that griefers are dealt with, and I've never once received a notification of someone I reported receiving any punishment. In my opinion these people should receive bans (probably permanent, but atleast permanently banned from comp/ranked play) . Does anyone know differently?

I wish more attention was given to this, if someone is saying some offensive/inappropriate stuff in chat it doesn't bother me that much as it's super easy to mute them or even turn off chat entirely, but I have no control over 1 person deciding they're going to ruin a game for me and 3 others. It's extremely tilting.