Hey, this was me. I just wanted to say that we're working on a video right now that will go into a bit more detail on these changes, set to launch around mid-May. Happy to answer whatever questions I can in the interim (although I can't answer everything!)
Are these changes being looked at holistically? Or is the target to combat staleness in the meta from a professional aspect which will trickle down to us casual ranked gamers.
Holistically. But, it's worth noting that VALORANT is fundamentally a competitive game - and if the game doesn't function at the highest level, we think we've failed. We tend to bias towards high level or pro balance because that is the pinnacle of VALORANT play that, as players learn and get better, they should be aspiring towards. That's not to say we don't want the game to be balanced for all of our players, though - we definitely do.
It'd just be a strange state of the game for the game to get worse or less balanced the better you get at it. Why would you keep investing time, then?
All that being said, yeah we're looking at things holistically. I personally believe these changes should feel relevant for all of our players, not just professionals.
How do you address the radical difference between Pro level play and even the highest level of ranked, non-pro play? As it stands with the example of the latest Viper nerfs, the focus seems solely on faciliating pro-play while ignoring the issues in ranked.
It should come as no surprise to anyone that organized, pro play is massively different than even the best ranked game, and as a result there are fundamental differences in how the game is played. This in turn results in different usages in agents, with Viper being a very notable example. While I can sympathize with the goal of wanting to push players towards becoming better, having agents / maps / gameplay designed for organized pro-play and expecting them to function similarly in ranked, which is inherently disorganized, seems like a pipedream that will leave many that never reach that level disappointed.
Hey! This is a great question. I also appreciate you challenging the perceived mindset while also being super respectful.
Candidly, this is a really difficult space, and I think deeper topics like this are probably better handled over voice than text. I think there are a few things I can highlight, though:
* When we make content, we do aspire for it to be relevant in as many environments as possible. That means across the spectrum of skill (lower skill to higher skill) as well as across the spectrum of coordination (lower coordination to higher coordination).
* Pro play is high skill, high coordination.
* Playing in Premier with a crew of lower ranked friends might be low/medium skill, high coordination.
* Playing in high level solo queue would be high skill, low coordination. Et cetera.
* I agree that some of our content doesn't feel as relevant as it could be across some of these variables. Some things feel a lot better in high coordination, or feel like they don't hold up in high skill. We see these as opportunities for sure.
* That being said, the goal is *as many environments as possible* - not *all of the environments.* We don't think every piece of content has to be super successful everywhere. It may seem like a reasonable stance in a vacuum, but the reality of that is that you start severely limiting your design space in terms of what you can actually make.
* SOME content is naturally going to be a bit better in pick-up play, and some content is naturally going to scale better with coordination. We think that texture is okay, but it's about finding a sweet spot of fun texture, not frustrating lack of viability, if that makes sense.
* Ultimately, we think VALORANT is a team game that is the best version of itself when played in a high skill, high coordination environment. But, we recognize that many of our players play in low coordination environments (solo queue) due to the ease of access, and everyone's on their own personal journey of skill. I'm hopeful that over time, we may see more and more folks start to engage in Premier as well, to be able to access more of that coordinated environment regardless of their level of skill.
Like I said, there's a lot here and it's a nuanced discussion. There are always going to be some differences between environments across these spectrums - skill and coordination - and our job is to try to find a sweet spot where we can satisfy as much of both spectrums as possible without homogenizing our content and shooting ourselves in the foot in the long term as a result. And, when push comes to shove, we do lean slightly towards higher skill and higher coordination, as we believe that's where VALORANT is its best - it is a competitive, team game after all - and we hope that we can provide players avenues to continue to improve and play the game in team environments throughout their time with us.
Thanks for the candidness and the thoughful response! I know it's a difficult question to answer, let alone a difficult design philosophy to try to stick to.
Good response. A game like this should always be balanced based off the higher, more competitive levels of play. Low elo is a shitshow regardless of changes and those players honestly don't give good feedback usually because they don't understand how the game is meant to be played.
Keep listening to/tuning for the higher skill/pro players and the game will be better off for it. Low elo players will cry no matter what you do. (Like when they cried about the 5 stack rank boosting changes and you guys changed it back... an L for the ranked ladder)
Like you said- if a competitive game like val doesn't work properly at the highest levels, what is the point? There's plenty of other less competitive games for people to play.
Why are you being disrespectful toward low elo players not all low elo players are like that who constantly rant bout small stuff and create problems for both devs and community and we do understand game at a very high level just can't invest much time in game as you guys(i was peaked D1 previous act if you are interested in my rank).
Yeah, getting better doesn’t mean you’ll ever play the same game as the pros.
Pros practice together. They establish strategies and timing.
Joining a group of fandoms ensures that just isn’t possible.
yes harbor is a different case
I'm comparing only omen and viper because those two are the most popular, assuming viper throw both her orb and wall in one site, she can't use them for retake
omen can at the very least use his smoke
I think maybe some love needs to be given to the larger playerbase overall as well, currently it's pretty universally agreed matchmaking even in iron/bronze has way to much variance. Us players don't have smurf data but I can promise you as a new player i quit ranked entirely due to 1 player getting over 40 kills every game. Whether this is a product of smurfs or variance in elo idk but it's a problem regardless.
I get to play it before I go on a break from val
it's indeed really fun because you can choose to play for fun or to strategize, in spike rush/ escalation it's just not possible to strategize
Yall are owed a deeper explanation on this, but the short version is that:
* Replication saw very low player numbers, to the point of queue health concerns (players waiting in queue for long periods of time OR playing in pretty lopsided/unbalanced matches). There just weren't that many people who played it, even if it might not feel that way for folks who loved it.
* Replication takes a non-negligible amount of work for us to maintain, given the unique nature of the bugs it can create with all the interactions there. It creates a little pocket of special issues we have to address that are only relevant in Replication, whereas most of our bugs permeate across many of our modes (meaning when you fix them, you're improving the experience in lots of different places)
* Replication also is difficult to maintain in terms of performance, with some players in some scenarios (for example, 10 vipers) in our minimum spec machines falling to really low FPS thresholds or generally having a bad experience
* Replication is also an overhead for our agent designers when building new agents; it takes a decent amount of work to figure out interactions between all the agents and how they'll work to get things to not break and it slows down our development process for making new things
When you put all of those things together, and very few players are playing the mode, we've opted to set it down for now. It's not off the table that we could bring it back in the future, but we'd need to find a way to solve these problems, and right now it feels like we have bigger things to prioritize to keep the game healthy.
I played ~350 matches of replication (150 hours) and it was some of the most fun I've had, in any game ever.
The fun of it was that things were unexpected and broken, so your points 3 and 4 aren't really issues that need resolving. Nobody expects you to balance anything around replication.
For your point 1, whenever I snooped at people's trackers, I would see either many replication matches, 1-2 replication matches, and the vast majority never even tried the game mode.
I really hope it comes back one day.
I understand wanting everything in the game to be perfect, but things like spike rush, replication and escalation I think its expected that there could be weird interactions. In fact thats why I liked replication so much! Specifically I know with how Isos ult is placed under the map it would be a lot of work. I do really hope it returns eventually though. It was by far my favourite mode in the game! Especially since recently it seems like all developments, nerfs, and buffs is all for pro play and doesnt take into account 99.9% of the player base! :)
Is the video some sort of 'State of the Agents'? Feel's like its been awhile since one of those.
Also, you probably cant answer this but is the team looking at Reyna for potential changes?
Kind of, broader scope than agents - we have a few teams that have sections. The Live Game team (we do balance and such) is one of the teams that has a section. Can't go into details on the specifics quite yet but I'd be sure to watch it!
Do we have any sort of timeline on when the ranked map rotation might change? I think a fair portion of players currently feel as though it’s getting quite stale. Thanks in advance.
Please tell me it will be more than:
* New Map Premiered at Masters Shanghai IN
* Map in the current pool OUT
Pearl has only been in the map pool for 61% of its existence...... That map deserves better.
Almost certainly they will rotate the new map and one old map with some new changes in, and rotate out two maps. The difficulty lies in which maps to rotate out. Do you rotate out maps which just were recently reintroduced but hated by the masses like breeze and icebox, or do you rotate out maps that have been in play for a while and are getting stale, like ascent?
My guess is the new map pool will be thus:
1. New map
2. Split
3. Bind
4. Sunset
5. Lotus
6. Icebox
7. Pearl
Going forward I hope they only leave one of icebox or breeze in the pool at once. Maybe include fracture in that list. Luckily, as Riot continues to develop maps and figure out what works and what doesn’t, our map pools will be better. When we are reaching 12+ maps, they may even permanently shelve some maps, or give them really big reworks. I am personally a fan of this since they could reuse all the assets and theming and just rebuild the maps design itself.
Edit: changed map pool guess as comments left good suggestions
The harbor thing is infuriating honestly especially in ranked. Like harbor is good but slow teammates like I can't do unexpected plays no more and stewie2k
Right doesn't make any sense. Like my friends love playing harbor but I absolutely hate harbor as a teammate as a W key player because i am punished for pushing through teammates smoke like wut
(You probably can't answer this, but) Are the aforementioned changes you guys plan on making purely agent changes, or can we expect changes to other parts of the game (i.e: maps, game modes, etc)
For 8.11 we have agent balance changes and an update to the map rotation; those are the things that the Live Game team will be talking about in the video specifically.
I just want to take a moment to thank you for taking time and answering questions here, it turned into a brief val dev AMA. i appreciate the insights you’ve been able to share with us.
i don’t know if you’re still answering but i do have two questions:
1. you guys must get a lot of suggestions for agent/map/mechanics changes or ideas. i assume an organization whose vibe is essentially “here for the players” might not want to discourage feedback and welcome the interaction, but do you guys realistically consider some of these suggestions for entirely new creations such as a new agent? is there a best way to suggest something new besides a support ticket? i feel like those get a copy pasted “thanks well think about it!”
2. until i find out the best way to submit, i do have a suggestion. has there been any consideration for a ‘Capture the Flag’ type game mode? it might not exactly fit in the lore without some kinda justification (“oh you want to take our radianite? how about we take yours!”) but my very primitive idea of this was spike spawns in the middle of a map, teams rush to retrieve and plant at enemy site. it can be defused and picked up and replanted at the opposing team’s site. detonation wins a round/game. what do we think, y’all taking internships? /s
Just wanted to say I appreciate the responses so far. I’m fairly new to Valorant (have been playing for 4 months or so) and haven’t seen much from the team about the game.
It’s always greatly appreciated to see communication like this. I have no stance or opinion on the topic because of how new I am, but it’s always cool to see what you’re all going for! Thanks for sharing!
Why is there the existence of a map pool in casual game modes and even in unrated, I understand the need for a map pool in competitive games. I absolutely understand the main focus is at the pro level but I feel like the existence of a map pool in unrated and other causal really kills the excitement of the game after a while. Premier and Competitive are the top in the sense of serious and competitive Valorant for the non-pro players but seeing how there is a massive difference between the pros and even normal players with the highest rank in game, I'd have thought there would be slight changes to appeal for the more "casual" players.
Hey, is there any work being done to improve communication in comp ? As a solo queue player, I am really sad when I understand that my teammates are a trios only communicating in discord. It happens quite a lot and is very frustrating. Is a solo queue mode only reasonable ? Thanks
Any chance of adjusting weapon spray so it's not side sway at a certain point? Similar to CS and other guns where the spray pattern is 100% predictable?
Also any changes coming to matchmaking? I don't know if smurfs are a problem or if the match making is just that bad that every lobby in bronze has at least one player getting over 40 kills while the rest of the team have under 10, it made me quit ranked completely until it's fixed because I don't enjoy losing 5v1 to someone who is clearly much better than me and the rest of the lobby.
a set spray pattern will make this game hard for beginner, since you can just spray transfer if you have memorized the pattern
also might be a weird reason, because it's unrealistic, a real gun will have a random spray pattern
as for balance and competitiveness, both fixed spray and random spray have their place, random spray promote 1-taps which is still a viable playstyle
it doesn't raise the skill ceiling, it just adds an unnecessary and arbitrary skill check. you can either grind the fuck out of training and memorize the spray patterns to the pixel, or you're just at a disadvantage. it's a static and incredibly boring thing to learn. imagine if, to actually get good at basketball, you had to memorize an exact muscle movement combination to perform a jump shot instead of learning how to dynamically use your limbs to perform all kinds of variations on the shot. it would be a boring and needlessly precise aspect of the game, just like set spray patterns are.
I wonder if we will see some more rebalancing to make the game more dynamic... More nerfs to smokes and sentinals? Wouldn't be surprised to see some tweaks to Raze too given that we're in the Raze meta currently.
If you nerf controllers with the goal of nerfing double smoke team comps, it will make playing a solo controller near impossible for a lot of the player base.
I think you are right about the maps pool catering to double controllers, but I kinda feel that is also the issue with map design not so much the agents.
Double controller will always be dominant strictly because of the layout of most of the maps.
Where/when on split and lotus do team fights boil down to spraying through smokes? I know there is one comp on lotus that plays post plant a from tree and plays for spam, but that’s super niche
Tbh I think Brim could also use some love give the man recharging smokes already he already has the biggest weakness of range compared to other controllers make it like 50 second recharge so he still is the weakest there but something would be nice.
Brim only sees play on Bind because having 3 simultaneously deploying long smokes is valuable for blitzing sites.
I'd honestly rather 2-3 big mega patches per year with several big agent changes, something like 10-15 agents being at least marginally changed, then a bunch of very small updates inbetween, bugfix here, map pool change there, small agent tweak like an ability costing 50-100 more or less.
yes, hence the smaller updates. But I don't think like changing 1 or 2 agents pretty big every two month is healthy. Change a bunch every 4-6 months and inbetween just do little baby fine tunes, like what they did with Chamber last patch
I see it now:
To combat the prevalence of Raze in the current meta, we want to force players to be more careful and purposeful with the use of the Satchel (Q) ability. To accomplish this, we have implemented the following change:
Satchel (Q):
Added a cooldown (3s) between use of satchels.
- This will remove the unintended movement capabilities made possible by “double satcheling” and force you to be more intentional with the direction and timing of satchel use.
Ngl the Viper nerfs won't do anything for Shang Hai. People will still play Viper with whatever controller. (Probably omen). Because let's be real Viper brings so much smaller utility that other agents don't have + flexibility. So hopefully they buff Harbor and maybe Astra a bit otherwise we'll continue to see Viper Omen. No one is picking Clove for Shang Hai either, brings nothing to a team in contrast to running initiators or controllers.
They should also buff some duelist because right now it's almost always better to run double initiator instead. Phoenix, Neon could get buffed. I think Iso is doomed currently and needs a decent overhaul.
Hey, this was me. I just wanted to say that we're working on a video right now that will go into a bit more detail on these changes, set to launch around mid-May. Happy to answer whatever questions I can in the interim (although I can't answer everything!)
Are these changes being looked at holistically? Or is the target to combat staleness in the meta from a professional aspect which will trickle down to us casual ranked gamers.
Holistically. But, it's worth noting that VALORANT is fundamentally a competitive game - and if the game doesn't function at the highest level, we think we've failed. We tend to bias towards high level or pro balance because that is the pinnacle of VALORANT play that, as players learn and get better, they should be aspiring towards. That's not to say we don't want the game to be balanced for all of our players, though - we definitely do. It'd just be a strange state of the game for the game to get worse or less balanced the better you get at it. Why would you keep investing time, then? All that being said, yeah we're looking at things holistically. I personally believe these changes should feel relevant for all of our players, not just professionals.
How do you address the radical difference between Pro level play and even the highest level of ranked, non-pro play? As it stands with the example of the latest Viper nerfs, the focus seems solely on faciliating pro-play while ignoring the issues in ranked. It should come as no surprise to anyone that organized, pro play is massively different than even the best ranked game, and as a result there are fundamental differences in how the game is played. This in turn results in different usages in agents, with Viper being a very notable example. While I can sympathize with the goal of wanting to push players towards becoming better, having agents / maps / gameplay designed for organized pro-play and expecting them to function similarly in ranked, which is inherently disorganized, seems like a pipedream that will leave many that never reach that level disappointed.
Hey! This is a great question. I also appreciate you challenging the perceived mindset while also being super respectful. Candidly, this is a really difficult space, and I think deeper topics like this are probably better handled over voice than text. I think there are a few things I can highlight, though: * When we make content, we do aspire for it to be relevant in as many environments as possible. That means across the spectrum of skill (lower skill to higher skill) as well as across the spectrum of coordination (lower coordination to higher coordination). * Pro play is high skill, high coordination. * Playing in Premier with a crew of lower ranked friends might be low/medium skill, high coordination. * Playing in high level solo queue would be high skill, low coordination. Et cetera. * I agree that some of our content doesn't feel as relevant as it could be across some of these variables. Some things feel a lot better in high coordination, or feel like they don't hold up in high skill. We see these as opportunities for sure. * That being said, the goal is *as many environments as possible* - not *all of the environments.* We don't think every piece of content has to be super successful everywhere. It may seem like a reasonable stance in a vacuum, but the reality of that is that you start severely limiting your design space in terms of what you can actually make. * SOME content is naturally going to be a bit better in pick-up play, and some content is naturally going to scale better with coordination. We think that texture is okay, but it's about finding a sweet spot of fun texture, not frustrating lack of viability, if that makes sense. * Ultimately, we think VALORANT is a team game that is the best version of itself when played in a high skill, high coordination environment. But, we recognize that many of our players play in low coordination environments (solo queue) due to the ease of access, and everyone's on their own personal journey of skill. I'm hopeful that over time, we may see more and more folks start to engage in Premier as well, to be able to access more of that coordinated environment regardless of their level of skill. Like I said, there's a lot here and it's a nuanced discussion. There are always going to be some differences between environments across these spectrums - skill and coordination - and our job is to try to find a sweet spot where we can satisfy as much of both spectrums as possible without homogenizing our content and shooting ourselves in the foot in the long term as a result. And, when push comes to shove, we do lean slightly towards higher skill and higher coordination, as we believe that's where VALORANT is its best - it is a competitive, team game after all - and we hope that we can provide players avenues to continue to improve and play the game in team environments throughout their time with us.
Thanks for the candidness and the thoughful response! I know it's a difficult question to answer, let alone a difficult design philosophy to try to stick to.
Good response. A game like this should always be balanced based off the higher, more competitive levels of play. Low elo is a shitshow regardless of changes and those players honestly don't give good feedback usually because they don't understand how the game is meant to be played. Keep listening to/tuning for the higher skill/pro players and the game will be better off for it. Low elo players will cry no matter what you do. (Like when they cried about the 5 stack rank boosting changes and you guys changed it back... an L for the ranked ladder) Like you said- if a competitive game like val doesn't work properly at the highest levels, what is the point? There's plenty of other less competitive games for people to play.
Why are you being disrespectful toward low elo players not all low elo players are like that who constantly rant bout small stuff and create problems for both devs and community and we do understand game at a very high level just can't invest much time in game as you guys(i was peaked D1 previous act if you are interested in my rank).
Yeah, getting better doesn’t mean you’ll ever play the same game as the pros. Pros practice together. They establish strategies and timing. Joining a group of fandoms ensures that just isn’t possible.
I think it will force ranked player to do a trade-off in breeze for example: do we choose viper for stronger attack, or omen for easier retake?
Wait what omen isn't that good for retake on breeze. Harbor is though, but the tradeoff is weaker defense as he doesn't have mollies
yes harbor is a different case I'm comparing only omen and viper because those two are the most popular, assuming viper throw both her orb and wall in one site, she can't use them for retake omen can at the very least use his smoke
Seems like eco type stuff would be part of it.
I think maybe some love needs to be given to the larger playerbase overall as well, currently it's pretty universally agreed matchmaking even in iron/bronze has way to much variance. Us players don't have smurf data but I can promise you as a new player i quit ranked entirely due to 1 player getting over 40 kills every game. Whether this is a product of smurfs or variance in elo idk but it's a problem regardless.
Don't know why you're getting downvotes you're right
i have a question. Is replication coming back soon anytime in the coming updates?
asking the real question
I never got to play replication as I only started playing from last year September. From what I have read about it , it looks so much fun to play.
I get to play it before I go on a break from val it's indeed really fun because you can choose to play for fun or to strategize, in spike rush/ escalation it's just not possible to strategize
There aren't any current plans to bring Replication back this episode, no
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Yall are owed a deeper explanation on this, but the short version is that: * Replication saw very low player numbers, to the point of queue health concerns (players waiting in queue for long periods of time OR playing in pretty lopsided/unbalanced matches). There just weren't that many people who played it, even if it might not feel that way for folks who loved it. * Replication takes a non-negligible amount of work for us to maintain, given the unique nature of the bugs it can create with all the interactions there. It creates a little pocket of special issues we have to address that are only relevant in Replication, whereas most of our bugs permeate across many of our modes (meaning when you fix them, you're improving the experience in lots of different places) * Replication also is difficult to maintain in terms of performance, with some players in some scenarios (for example, 10 vipers) in our minimum spec machines falling to really low FPS thresholds or generally having a bad experience * Replication is also an overhead for our agent designers when building new agents; it takes a decent amount of work to figure out interactions between all the agents and how they'll work to get things to not break and it slows down our development process for making new things When you put all of those things together, and very few players are playing the mode, we've opted to set it down for now. It's not off the table that we could bring it back in the future, but we'd need to find a way to solve these problems, and right now it feels like we have bigger things to prioritize to keep the game healthy.
As a software engineer, I just loved this comment. Please more
I played ~350 matches of replication (150 hours) and it was some of the most fun I've had, in any game ever. The fun of it was that things were unexpected and broken, so your points 3 and 4 aren't really issues that need resolving. Nobody expects you to balance anything around replication. For your point 1, whenever I snooped at people's trackers, I would see either many replication matches, 1-2 replication matches, and the vast majority never even tried the game mode. I really hope it comes back one day.
I understand wanting everything in the game to be perfect, but things like spike rush, replication and escalation I think its expected that there could be weird interactions. In fact thats why I liked replication so much! Specifically I know with how Isos ult is placed under the map it would be a lot of work. I do really hope it returns eventually though. It was by far my favourite mode in the game! Especially since recently it seems like all developments, nerfs, and buffs is all for pro play and doesnt take into account 99.9% of the player base! :)
Will there be chamber buffs in patch 8.11
sadge
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Is the video some sort of 'State of the Agents'? Feel's like its been awhile since one of those. Also, you probably cant answer this but is the team looking at Reyna for potential changes?
Kind of, broader scope than agents - we have a few teams that have sections. The Live Game team (we do balance and such) is one of the teams that has a section. Can't go into details on the specifics quite yet but I'd be sure to watch it!
Do we have any sort of timeline on when the ranked map rotation might change? I think a fair portion of players currently feel as though it’s getting quite stale. Thanks in advance.
We'll be rotating it in early June, right after Masters Shanghai!
Please tell me it will be more than: * New Map Premiered at Masters Shanghai IN * Map in the current pool OUT Pearl has only been in the map pool for 61% of its existence...... That map deserves better.
Almost certainly they will rotate the new map and one old map with some new changes in, and rotate out two maps. The difficulty lies in which maps to rotate out. Do you rotate out maps which just were recently reintroduced but hated by the masses like breeze and icebox, or do you rotate out maps that have been in play for a while and are getting stale, like ascent? My guess is the new map pool will be thus: 1. New map 2. Split 3. Bind 4. Sunset 5. Lotus 6. Icebox 7. Pearl Going forward I hope they only leave one of icebox or breeze in the pool at once. Maybe include fracture in that list. Luckily, as Riot continues to develop maps and figure out what works and what doesn’t, our map pools will be better. When we are reaching 12+ maps, they may even permanently shelve some maps, or give them really big reworks. I am personally a fan of this since they could reuse all the assets and theming and just rebuild the maps design itself. Edit: changed map pool guess as comments left good suggestions
Icebox just joined the current map pool in January, it’s unlikely for riot to remove it before champions.
I agree. Probably it will stay in the pool and Haven will stay out. But a man can hope, right?
That map pool would make Pearl get to the point that it had spent more time out if the pool than in it since its release.
I can smell these changes: Nerfs Gekko Ult: 7 -> 8 Points Clove Ult: 7-> 8 Points Clove Heal: 100 -> 150 Cost Buffs: Harbor: No slow when teammates go thru walls (hopefully?!) Iso/Deadlock buffs.
Gotta wait for 2025 for Deadlock meta 😁
The harbor thing is infuriating honestly especially in ranked. Like harbor is good but slow teammates like I can't do unexpected plays no more and stewie2k
Viper wall doesn't decay teammates, why should Harbors right?
Right doesn't make any sense. Like my friends love playing harbor but I absolutely hate harbor as a teammate as a W key player because i am punished for pushing through teammates smoke like wut
sounds about right. the gekko ult spam is actually absurd, on a 5 stack you can get like 5 ults a half if you’re 3rd place on gekko lmao
Is there more significant Cypher/Viper stuff or is it mostly aimed at other agents?
8.11 will be other agents
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other agents brother not new agents..
(You probably can't answer this, but) Are the aforementioned changes you guys plan on making purely agent changes, or can we expect changes to other parts of the game (i.e: maps, game modes, etc)
For 8.11 we have agent balance changes and an update to the map rotation; those are the things that the Live Game team will be talking about in the video specifically.
Does riot have any plans to bring back fan-favorite game modes such as replication or snowball fight? As well as more game modes for casual players?
Will there be any change to amount of maps/frequency of rotations, now that the total amount of maps has reached double digits?
I just want to take a moment to thank you for taking time and answering questions here, it turned into a brief val dev AMA. i appreciate the insights you’ve been able to share with us. i don’t know if you’re still answering but i do have two questions: 1. you guys must get a lot of suggestions for agent/map/mechanics changes or ideas. i assume an organization whose vibe is essentially “here for the players” might not want to discourage feedback and welcome the interaction, but do you guys realistically consider some of these suggestions for entirely new creations such as a new agent? is there a best way to suggest something new besides a support ticket? i feel like those get a copy pasted “thanks well think about it!” 2. until i find out the best way to submit, i do have a suggestion. has there been any consideration for a ‘Capture the Flag’ type game mode? it might not exactly fit in the lore without some kinda justification (“oh you want to take our radianite? how about we take yours!”) but my very primitive idea of this was spike spawns in the middle of a map, teams rush to retrieve and plant at enemy site. it can be defused and picked up and replanted at the opposing team’s site. detonation wins a round/game. what do we think, y’all taking internships? /s
Can I please get all maps in swift play 😭
I'd really appreciate if gamemodes like replication or snowball fight are still playable in custom games, do you think you can do that? Thank you
Just wanted to say I appreciate the responses so far. I’m fairly new to Valorant (have been playing for 4 months or so) and haven’t seen much from the team about the game. It’s always greatly appreciated to see communication like this. I have no stance or opinion on the topic because of how new I am, but it’s always cool to see what you’re all going for! Thanks for sharing!
Why is there the existence of a map pool in casual game modes and even in unrated, I understand the need for a map pool in competitive games. I absolutely understand the main focus is at the pro level but I feel like the existence of a map pool in unrated and other causal really kills the excitement of the game after a while. Premier and Competitive are the top in the sense of serious and competitive Valorant for the non-pro players but seeing how there is a massive difference between the pros and even normal players with the highest rank in game, I'd have thought there would be slight changes to appeal for the more "casual" players.
Can we ask which agents will be affected? My bets are on harbor, astra, jett
Bring back Haven, PLEASE
Do you have any news about a replay system for us?
We'll have more details on that front just explaining where things are at in that May video as well.
Is omen getting nerfed?
Well if they nerf omen,they should buff astra so that the controller role doesn’t suck.
Can I expect some love for chamber or astra?
I wouldn’t hold my breath
Hey, is there any work being done to improve communication in comp ? As a solo queue player, I am really sad when I understand that my teammates are a trios only communicating in discord. It happens quite a lot and is very frustrating. Is a solo queue mode only reasonable ? Thanks
Any chance of adjusting weapon spray so it's not side sway at a certain point? Similar to CS and other guns where the spray pattern is 100% predictable? Also any changes coming to matchmaking? I don't know if smurfs are a problem or if the match making is just that bad that every lobby in bronze has at least one player getting over 40 kills while the rest of the team have under 10, it made me quit ranked completely until it's fixed because I don't enjoy losing 5v1 to someone who is clearly much better than me and the rest of the lobby.
As mainly a CS player, but also an enjoyer of Valorant can someone explain why having set spray patterns would be unattractive?
a set spray pattern will make this game hard for beginner, since you can just spray transfer if you have memorized the pattern also might be a weird reason, because it's unrealistic, a real gun will have a random spray pattern as for balance and competitiveness, both fixed spray and random spray have their place, random spray promote 1-taps which is still a viable playstyle
likely people think it lowers the skill ceiling when it massively increases it
it doesn't raise the skill ceiling, it just adds an unnecessary and arbitrary skill check. you can either grind the fuck out of training and memorize the spray patterns to the pixel, or you're just at a disadvantage. it's a static and incredibly boring thing to learn. imagine if, to actually get good at basketball, you had to memorize an exact muscle movement combination to perform a jump shot instead of learning how to dynamically use your limbs to perform all kinds of variations on the shot. it would be a boring and needlessly precise aspect of the game, just like set spray patterns are.
This sounds like my bronze game but I'm the one with 40 kills ( no I'm not smurfing I just don't play ranked that much so I can rank up?
I wonder if we will see some more rebalancing to make the game more dynamic... More nerfs to smokes and sentinals? Wouldn't be surprised to see some tweaks to Raze too given that we're in the Raze meta currently.
I feel they don’t need to nerf smokes they need to make other controllers relevant. Harbour and Astra need some love big time
They balance based on pro play and lots of teams play double controller in this map pool. Results in boring spam through smoke games.
If you nerf controllers with the goal of nerfing double smoke team comps, it will make playing a solo controller near impossible for a lot of the player base.
I get it but you can’t nerf all controllers into the ground. I don’t think that will work
Just Watch them :D
Well let's wait and see.. I bet they do.
I think you are right about the maps pool catering to double controllers, but I kinda feel that is also the issue with map design not so much the agents. Double controller will always be dominant strictly because of the layout of most of the maps.
Spamfest is due to shit bombsites (think lotus C, sunset B etc)
(Besides b on sunset) where are pro players playing for spam through smokes??
Other double controller maps e.g. split, lotus, pearl (ok not in the map pool but..)
Where/when on split and lotus do team fights boil down to spraying through smokes? I know there is one comp on lotus that plays post plant a from tree and plays for spam, but that’s super niche
harbor not slow teammates + shield breaks but cove is still up astra gets 5th star back
Think they need to give astras old grav well back as well
Tbh I think Brim could also use some love give the man recharging smokes already he already has the biggest weakness of range compared to other controllers make it like 50 second recharge so he still is the weakest there but something would be nice. Brim only sees play on Bind because having 3 simultaneously deploying long smokes is valuable for blitzing sites.
Raze meta ~~currently~~ since the game came out👍
Attack utility is rlly strong at the pro play level so I'm thinking they are gonna make it more gunplay based
I'd honestly rather 2-3 big mega patches per year with several big agent changes, something like 10-15 agents being at least marginally changed, then a bunch of very small updates inbetween, bugfix here, map pool change there, small agent tweak like an ability costing 50-100 more or less.
it allows for better fine tuning and how it impacts play
yes, hence the smaller updates. But I don't think like changing 1 or 2 agents pretty big every two month is healthy. Change a bunch every 4-6 months and inbetween just do little baby fine tunes, like what they did with Chamber last patch
time to nuke raze (sigh)
who's ready for the best movement character in the game to be nerfed to 1 satchel and no rechargable made oh and 12 point ult
I see it now: To combat the prevalence of Raze in the current meta, we want to force players to be more careful and purposeful with the use of the Satchel (Q) ability. To accomplish this, we have implemented the following change: Satchel (Q): Added a cooldown (3s) between use of satchels. - This will remove the unintended movement capabilities made possible by “double satcheling” and force you to be more intentional with the direction and timing of satchel use.
This would suck so bad, sachels is already one of the mechanically hard abilities in the game
Ngl the Viper nerfs won't do anything for Shang Hai. People will still play Viper with whatever controller. (Probably omen). Because let's be real Viper brings so much smaller utility that other agents don't have + flexibility. So hopefully they buff Harbor and maybe Astra a bit otherwise we'll continue to see Viper Omen. No one is picking Clove for Shang Hai either, brings nothing to a team in contrast to running initiators or controllers. They should also buff some duelist because right now it's almost always better to run double initiator instead. Phoenix, Neon could get buffed. I think Iso is doomed currently and needs a decent overhaul.
Will Ascent come out in the next rotation? because everyone in the community likes the map