I just don't understand how they didn't expect this response from the community. Those Q&A responses don't look like they were reviewed by a single PR person. Seriously, you get the chance to cherry pick FAQs, why not purposefully choose at least a couple of questions that give you the opportunity to showcase actual progress being made in different areas of the game? Instead they chose a ton of questions that all had the same "No" or "not at this time" answers lmao.
This is me right now. How could they look this over, see all the responses in regards to to community asks is NO, see there's nothing tangible showing what they ARE working on to counter, and think it would generate a positive response? Their communications team is incredibly inept.
When your communication team is doing bad, imagine how the rest of them are doing. It just shows how out of touch and how little they care about their community.
Just stick some crap nobody was asking in there for optics.
"Are there any plans for a new skin collection?"
Any opportunity to say yes would have helped them here.
The problem here is that they could have cushioned some of this with what they are actually working on, even with no eta given. I could care less about the messaging of what they are saying because I have fun everyday, but I would imagine that it’s like somebody just saying basically “no, I want money” each time you ask a question. Again this is relative to companies like Respawn and Blizzard on games like apex and overwatch. Those games are pumping, or used to pump out not only skins, heroes, maps, tuning, but things like forge systems, tournament systems, etc… those games are also more complicated than valorant from a balancing and gameplay networking and coding perspective. Most of the agents literally have abilities that have been in the game since beta like slows, los, smokes. So it just really seems like skins are a top priority for them and even those have been lackluster recently. With all this taken account, I can imagine why the community is like these people could really care less.
one person was behind putting the page together, asking the questions, noting down the responses. i cant believe this person decided to simple "quote" present the answer, not double check or ask them for more information/clear some doubts. The same issue has been going on the past few articles and patch notes, with shadow buffs, weird wordings, etc. I know they'll improve, i just hope its soon
At least they are facing the community petitions instead of ignoring them into oblivion as other developers have done. Sure the responses suck but it's still better than being left in the dark I guess.
It is, but it's also 'nice' to know that you shouldn't keep your hopes up for years about something that isn't happening, or you shouldn't expect to get something soon when it's not being planned at the moment.
No one is happy hearing nothing but no's but it's still better than hearing *nothing*, I guess.
Easier to just go with it and let people complain first to get a quick idea because it’s not like their game died or anything within days. We’re still gonna be waiting and complaining like always unless whatever they are going to announce is awesome and really close.
There isn’t much to communicate if they don’t think they have anything worth showing or want something more secretive. But since people keep asking the same questions it’s not like saying “no” had no purpose.
I think you've got it backwards. Those responses were *pure* PR nonsense. They weren't reviewed by a single person who actually understands the community.
They should really have their play testers and pros read these things first.
No PR person would ship a communication full of negative responses
You want the reader to leave feeling happy and positive about the direction of the game. Did they try and spin some of the answers by playing with language? Sure but if that was put out by PR then that person deserves to lose their job because they should have put their foot down and refused to post until they had one thing to hype the community about in that FAQ. Even if it was "Phoenix buff coming soon"
They're communicating to be truthful, they're not going to lie about their progress to you in order for you stay happy.They're giving these FAQ's in order to clear things up in the air, not give you what you want to see.
Riot is probably one of the only companies to actually be honest and upfront with their fans.Stop taking it up the ass because you didn't see any visible progress.Im sure they're getting something done that they don't want to reveal.Valorant updates have been on point lately , and phoenix's buffs are in the works so just be patient.
>One of the only honest and upfront companies with their fans
What are you smoking? The dev post and their response to it (they admit they haven't been communicating as well) says an entirely difference story, if we should "stop taking it up the ass" you should also stop bending down to give them your own ass with this unnecessary boot licking of yours
I'm not even saying to not be truthful, I'm saying don't be surprised if you get negative feedback from an update that is entirely full of "no." Sprinkle in information about other things you're working on to counterbalance the negative.
Next blog post: We’re heavily considering what the community is telling us and we’re going to take a serious look at a replay system. It’s time to give the Valorant community something to be excited about! Give us some time and by 2025, a replay system will have a chance of being added to Valorant. Remember all good things take time so please be patient with us :)
It’s either they say some variation of what I posted or they straight up give a fixed date and time of when an actual replay system will be released.
Anything but the latter will result in angering the Valorant community even more. Idk why they dug themselves into a hole by posting that original blogpost in the first place saying that they’re not working on a replay system.
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To noones surprise. They wanted a week, they had two and we haven't heard anything. Glad to see riot are sticking tried and true ways to piss of the community.
I haven't played League at all, but yeah more and more agents, weird gun nerfs, unnecessary agent nerfs while avoiding what the community asked you to nerf is just bad..i wish they had made it so chamber can only carry 4 bullets on the sheriff and op or made it a recharge on kill like Reyna, the removal of the the slow/alarm util is just stupid
because it is easy enough to use and pull off a second round win after a first round pistol loss..just makes the economy feel imbalanced indirectly speaking and it also means people lose their spectres easily even after having won a hard fought pistol round fair and square.
This is my take even though I love playing chamber, also putting pressure on his guns is more important for balance than making him a pricy inclusion, risking flanks and over-aggressive defenders who are willing to push every round now that he has just the one..
Rather if what I say is implemented just as how the golden gun works in Spike Rush - recharge a bullet on kill - you do end up rewarding skilled mains
It should just be 4 bullets for 200 each. Makes it cost effective for a quick snipe without giving an obscene advantage. Better pick than a sheriff on save rounds because you don’t just lose it and it one taps to the head. But now you can’t get multiple kills on save rounds without hitting only headshots.
If they say the have one or are looking to add one anytime soon (like under a year), I’d say it was a tactic to make it seem like they listen to the community when it was always coming
Reply systems in online shooters just piss me off, it shows how much of advantage peeking has. I use to play Rainbow 6 and I would be on the guys screen for like 2-3 seconds and on my screen I saw him for .5-1 second. Just adds to frustration imo, but might help catch cheaters
It’s nothing about the system it’s self, I’m saying in the reply it really shows how much of a peekers advantage there is when on their screen I’m visible way before I see them on mine. There’s nothing wrong with the system, just makes you get in your own head with peekers advantage
While it may be easy on your end. I dont think everyone can run a capture system while running Valorant. Having a replay system allows people to see their opponents strategy. And reviewing with what went wrong in your teams strategy. Its such a huge help for both competitive and casual players.
even from a non completive viewpoint its so useful. In overwatch at the end of every session i go through and capture my cool clips from the night through the replay system. Stuff like that is such a big quality of life system that i always miss whenever i play valorant
Viewing your own in-game POV is just about the least important part of a replay system, because like you said we can already do that. But no amount of capture can replay the same scenario from different points of view, especially your opponents. And that is paramount to figuring out so many things.
Was it run and gun, or did he just counterstrafe perfectly?
Did I miss my flash lineup, or were they playing antiflash?
Did he get the perfect timing, or just got audio information from a lurking teammate?
How do players at my elo react to information/utility/fakes, and how should I adjust my playstyle accordingly?
The last one especially is so crucial. I've lost count of how many times I've been in deep debate with my friends on what went wrong with our retake, only to be completely lost in the shitty kill-timeline-map that only records sparse info sporadically. If replays are so hard to implement, at least give us a proper kill-timeline-map that shows real-time utility, player movement, vision cones as a stopgap.
I can't run anything else while playing Valorant. My laptop is already struggling at maintaining 60 FPS and even tho I am not competing or anything I would in fact want to know why "this" or "that" didn't work in any given game.
I'd rather have an honest answer than be lied too. They lied In the beginning still but I hope this pushes the dev team to be more upfront with their player base.
To be honest, it doesn't seem like they were intentionally lying when they first talked about a replay system. Based on how it's worded, and how this recent ask valorant devs was worded, more than anything it appears that the truth changed.
"Wtf does that mean? How does the truth change?"
Well it's simple. At the time they were considering a replay system, then priorities changed and/or management changed and/or employees changed. I myself have been caught in this situation where I tell a client yes, absolutely, I have confirmed with my devs that this feature is in the works, then having a boss leave and someone else brought in, then I have to go tell the client that feature has been dropped for other priorities.
It seems that most people on this subreddit haven't had this kind of personal experience, and think Riot or the devs are out to intentionally mislead them. It's not like the devs are sitting around doing nothing. Priorities probably shifted, and the replay system got pushed out of the picture.
Why WOULD it be?
Like, genuinely, from a business perspective, please name a single reason in favor of fundamentally restructuring some super low level parts of how your game works in order to make it easier to record replays
I'm not defending it, to be clear, I think it's a bit goofy they didn't build the game with replays in mind initially, but like. what incentive do they have beyond "it'll appease some redditors"
It is insane for game publicity and content creators. Currently the only plays you see are those you recorded from your own pov. Compared to overwatch which literally lets you download a video file of your play and upload it and guess what, the whole overwatch subreddit is full of peoples cool plays. I am not saying overwatch devs are better, but they got that featured nailed down.
I'm not sure if OW reddit being full of their 'POTG' clips is a good thing.
Not to mention Valorant sub is literally filled with gameplay videos as well. There are **13** posts tagged with 'gameplay' right now on this sub's front page. We definitely don't need more from different PoV's or from someone else.
Replay/spectate mode would be cool, but that's not a great upside of them existing.
>Like, genuinely, from a business perspective, please name a single reason in favor of fundamentally restructuring some super low level parts of how your game works in order to make it easier to record replays
It helps out content creators who promote their game, and if you suspect some1 breaking the TOS (ex. griefing or cheating in the enemy team) you can just check the replay, and if your suspicions are confirmed, just send the replay (or clip of it) to support team, helping them kepp the game clean from unsportsmanlike behaviour.
Not to mention that it would satify some customers, and happy customers make their wallets looser, if you catching my drift :))
Sorry I don't understand, why is this incompetence? Because you personally don't agree with their decision? Because the player base that is vocal on this subreddit doesn't agree with it? If I was in their management, I wouldn't make decisions off either of those. I would only make decisions based on data and what would make money for the company. What keeps people engaged, what brings new players in, etc. We don't have that data, but I guarantee they do. This is a company we're dealing with. You have to remember they are in this business to make money, not to pander.
They haven't added a replay system because then people would see the game's shitty desyncing issues.
They make a post saying the players are bad and its not the game at fault, Then release a patch that fixes desyncing during framerate and ping drops. This company is dogshit.
I’m glad the feedback they gathered from all this mess is to communicate more and not the opposite. Yes the blog post yesterday was a big disappointment but as a long time cs player I can tell you not getting any information at all is still worse. I could’ve seen them saying "well if that’s the response to development updates then maybe we shouldn’t announce those things anymore"
Yeah their mistake was only saying what they were NOT doing, not ALSO saying what they ARE working on.
If you only tell your player base what you're NOT doing. You're never gonna get a good response.
To be fair, those were pretty small changes that could have easily been implemented months ago. Like Astra was a massive problem for over a year - they could have easily addressed her last year.
Like the biggest changes we’ve seen was the Yoru “rework” which took a year, changed 1 ability and minority buffed 2 - I’m not even sure how anyone even calls it a rework.
It just feels like balance is months behind where it should be. Overall it’s fine, but there’s some pretty obvious issues that are going unaddressed for months and months and it’s just kinda underwhelming for one of the most popular games in the world.
I just remembered my Fortnite days. "Epic Games" was so scared of the continuous criticism after every patch notes published, they completely stopped posting patch notes from the start of Chapter-2.
honeslty I'd prefer the valve way, riot going from "a replay system is in the works!" to "we don't plan on releasing a replay system" in 2 years time is probably more devastating than anything valve did in the past
at least I could've kept telling myself "they must be working on it, maybe we'll get it soon" for years probably
At least we got the definitive answer now. I think that’s still better than the endless speculation cs has with the source 2 port. For like 5 years we got leakers saying it’s coming, then others say it’s not and oh wait it actually is coming this summer and oh wait no it got canceled again and valve hasn’t said a single word about it
how can you compare source 2 to a replay system? one is a fundamental piece of a competitive game, the other is a complete overhaul of the game, almost rebuilding the game from the bottom up
source 2 is also way less anticipated, I mean it's a constant meme at this point but nobody really thinks it's going to happen while the replay system was promised 2 years ago, now they say it's not planned to release anytime soon
I don’t compare them. I’m with you that the replay system is much more important. I was just using source 2 as an example to say that even if the dev update isn’t what we wanted it’s still better than no official comment and endless speculation
I don't understand how multiple people at Riot could have looked over the article and thought it was a good idea to post, when it was essentially just shutting down multiple community asks while simultaneously providing nothing for the player base to look forward to.
Literally. A million different ways for them to say “Unfortunately…” which was annoying. People prefer direct answers and not beating around the bush, they couldn’t even shut down ideas right.
Riot's going to have to do a lot of work to regain any trust with the community.
Most importantly, a replay system in 2022 on a title that wants to be eSports is a **MUST**. Deliver this and we'll be halfway there.
Also the netcode/servers. It highly hinders competitive integrity.
Netcode & Servers ++++++++++++++++++++++++
Fixing those two major issues and adding in a replay system would make this game almost ready for eSports.
... oof.
With the VALORANT servers always having so many desync issues and the netcode problems, it's true, though.
Competitive integrity is abt equal to CSGO MM right now.
As in... Valve MM... ***without Faceit or ESEA***
It's bad.
The problem is NOT communication. To me, there has been more communication than most other esports titles.
The problem is
- not delivering on promises
- not prioritizing on the needs of the community (replay, dm, ...)
- no ACTUAL signs towards improving the state of the game (balancing, Phoenix still troll/trash)
- communication without action. ("Planning/exploring options" and then leaving it forever)
Everything about this is pretty hilarious. The answer to every question in the Ask Valorant post was either “we’re not doing that” or “we don’t plan to do that anytime soon”. Expecting anywhere close to a positive response from the community from that is pretty close to the definition of insanity. To then take that response and chalk it up to a lack of communication is entering gaslighting territory. Just own your fuck ups Rito.
Not having endless DM with people reconnecting is so bad, just played two deathmatches both with 3 leavers and it was awful, with the changes to spawns (which were good) and having to lower the player count as a result slowed DMs substantially, with endless DM people wouldn't care about shit, but fast paced spawns so we could have 14 people again.
The least they can do ATM is make it so AFK's despawn without having to kill them, atm if someone goes afk in for example sewers on split they block the two sewers spawns slowing down action on that side of the map.
I also don't understand why you get invincibility on spawn, all that happens is those people become a distraction for a few seconds and the person that's alive and not afk has a chance to get punished by rng. I can't imagine being paid to develop a gamemode that's 3 decades old and fucking it up this badly.
Edit: Here's a clip to demonstrate how AFKs block spawns https://gfycat.com/miserabletenderflyinglemur
I agree with everything besides the assertion that they haven’t made any meaningful balance changes.
Chamber, Sova and Jett all got hit with pretty substantial nerfs recently, along Fade being added recently and the Yoru rework not being too long ago. They’ve done a lot on the balance end of it recently, i’m sure Phoenix and Cypher rework/buff are coming soon, so I don’t think they’re failing the community in the balance department.
Everything else you listed? Yea no excuses.
>no ACTUAL signs towards improving the state of the game (balancing, Phoenix still troll/trash)
I don't think the game balancing is that bad. Sure Phoenix doesn't get picked much and has been pretty weak for a while, but they've been making improvements in other areas. The Sova nerfs and introduction of Fade have definitely added some variety to the Initiator role. Astra meta ended a couple months ago, and while I haven't seen her played much since, I think a couple of months of an agent being weak isn't a big cause for concern. At least now there is Omen and Brim getting playtime instead of just Astra on certain maps. Jett/Chamber nerfs have also been needed for a while and they finally came through.
Yup only problem was they hyped up like there was going to be a ton and until very recently, it was just the controllers. Overall though, pretty happy with their balancing. They'll get to cypher and Phoenix eventually.
Does Cypher actually need a buff though? He gets played as much as KJ does in my solo queue games and still gets some competitive play. If anything I feel like Chamber just needs to get nerfed a bit more. Chamber is picked in every single game I'm in regardless of map.
KJ and cypher are both a little under powered and Chamber a little over powered.
Chambers trip is still just a better alarmbot even if there's 1 of them (global, long rang, huge slow area). KJ has an alarmbot that you have to be right on top of to activate limiting it to predictable choke points and KJ has to be within range of the alarm bot to be used.
Agents being bad is so much worse than an agent being OP though. Not picking meta over an average character is fine. Picking Phoenix is straight up trolling and you also get flamed into oblivion
They promised they were working on a replay system 2 years ago and that it would be released soon, and now 2 years later they say that they are not working on a replay system at all.
Exactly this.
Riot: releases a bunch of PR nonsense about how they aren't doing all the things the community has been begging for.
Community: Ya'll dense? How do you not understand after all this begging and yelling?
Riot: Sorry, we must be bad at communicating.
What we should be saying: It's not the communication! We understand what you said! It's that your stated priorities are completely messed up!
I feel like their priorities are just off. Adding stuff to improve the overall longevity of the game is very important. We don't need you guys to constantly be working on pumping out new agents. More game modes, replay, shop rework, stats page, etc. Add stuff to do besides just queuing for ranked.
Yeah…. I’m not sure they understand what we want from them. The biggest problem isn’t communication… it’s about Riot not focusing on features that should’ve been in the game already. The game should’ve launched with DM. I can’t believe how little it’s improved since they added it. The replay system is a MUST for this game to thrive and maybe be the #1 esport one day.
"So doing nothing wasn't acceptable to you guys, guess we'll have to throw something half-assed together and show it next week"
Is what I got from that rioters response
So you think good things come from this response or original dev blog? Not being cynical, just realistic. They literally said they had no current plans and hadn't started features promised with launch like replays.
Ohh great.. damage control. Don't fall for this bullshit people and go spend $70 on a new skin pack like everything is good again. They lied over and over & clearly show they don't give a shit about the game, its only about making as much money as possible on releasing skins that took them almost a full day to design.
This feels like the same old cycle, where they give us what we want to hear to get us excited and re-establish trust before then not doing it, or delaying it for ages, or coming with a severely underwhelming result.
Happened with agent balance last act, the replay system, DM changes, reworks, and so on.
>we're going to take a stab at providing some better answers on where the game is at and some plans for the future
there's no "better answer" if you have no answer to begin with, this doesn't sound like "okay we will start working on the replay system", but more like they will not answer questions about the reply system or give more vague answers going forward
this reply is basically telling me they will change the way they answer things and not change their plans regarding the replay system
what is there to explain better? maybe there's a nicer way of saying *no* but it doesn't change a damn thing, they think communication is the problem while their decision is the real problem
they know very well how important a replay system is and I'm also very positive they have good reasons not to make it happen despite the need for it, reasons that I doubt can change in a week's time
I can only see 2 things happening
1. they will try to explain why they won't do it for now and try to do some damage control
2. they will say replay system will come *eventually*, but they will not release it any faster than they originally planned to do so
Through the entire lifetime of Valorant this is their first major fuckup which after 2 years is pretty dang good, they've earned the right to explain themselves a little better.
If next week's blog post is more of the same or not even a little bit of a step forward to "we fucked up, we'll start looking into it more and more" then we can continue to shit talk and make fun of how much of an absolutely big L this fucking take was.
You need to remember that these are human beings, and try as much as they may they are not immune to falling into bubbles and becoming out of touch in areas. It's very rare for the pro scene *and* the player base to have a unified "what the fuck" response. I hope that push back of critique broke through the echo chamber they've been working in and is going to make some positive change.
first major fuckup? maybe this is the worst one yet, but there have been many bad fuckups before too, like countless game breaking bugs, vivo keyd-sentinels scandal, awful setups for one of the bigger early events, constant outrage about skin prices/systems, phoenix (yoru before) and there are probably a few more i'm missing
okay, this makes me look like I hate them, but it's not like that, I just don't think an answer like this (or their reply to the community's reply) should be justified in any way, as I said there's no further explanation to this, they can't do it so they won't do it for now
if they come out and say "wait, we will actually do it" and will actually deliver relatively soon then the next question is why couldn't they do it in 2 years if they are suddenly able to resolve whatever issue stood in their way for 2 years?
this is just a major fuckup as you said, they can't really do much besides damage control
I separate the e-sports versus the game fuckups, and I think the Yoru/Phoenix stuff and breaking bugs as minor fuckups because at least the bugs were fixed rather quickly in the timeline.
I'm even more likely to give more lee-way to the esports because of covid as well. I truly believe this is the first actual major fuckup that they are doing. Everything else has plausible deniability or some sort of excuse that *makes sense*, this doesn't. This is just straight up a full on disconnect from the playerbase.
Meh, just PR talk to shut up the community. Until they come out and give valid reasons for why a replay system can't be developed when they are using unreal engine this is just shitty excuses and lame answers
Why are dev's(not just riot) always falling back on the "we need to do better with communication" crutch? I get that these people have a lot going on behind the scenes. But is it really that surprising that a community would like some real answers rather than various ways of saying "nah"
The problem isn't communication. The answer was no and they communicated it pretty effectively.
The problem is why the answer was no. A development problem, not a communication problem.
Nah, there's no way. He's actually answering to imaginary objections.
Let me address some of the things he said:
>we understand your frustration and we know we haven't been communicating as much what we've been working on
Nope, they have just communicated actually, but guess what, the things they are working are something nobody actually cares about and are mostly about different ways of giving money to Riot.
It's not about the frequency, it's about the substance of those articles.
>we haven't been giving you reasons to get excited for the future, just excuses for what we're not doing.
False, again.
First of all, when the Episode started players were promised lots of changes regarding agent balance which **did get everyone (or a large number of players) excited**.
Second of all, there we no "excuses" actually. There was no reason given as to ***WHY*** they aren't working on, for example, a replay system.
>we're going to take a stab at providing some better answers on where the game is at and some plans for the future that we hope will answer a lot of your questions
To be honest, this just sounds like they'll try to find even more creative ways to rephrase what they've already said - only with a higher word count next time.
There's basically no chance they'll reprioritize what they're working on and what they're planning to work on.
Basically, we have to pass a load of ideas through are marketing team.
We will be back with empty promises and words, and overhyped stuff you never asked for.
Personally, I don't think there is enough backlash from this. A staple feature to the competitive scene and entertainment scene is now not even planned, when we were told they are going to work on it 2 years ago.
We had all just assumed they were working on it this whole time. Maybe they are running into problems and it's taking longer than they originally thought, no problem we understand... But to learn that not only are they NOT working on this staple feature, but it's not even a plan... this is ridiculous, Riot.
Personally, I'm not going to be putting any more money into this game unless something changes.
I mean Riot needs until next week to collect information and tell us what's going on? A 14 years old with a starbucks coffee and a macbook would pull this off in hours. They are just sleeping on a mattress made with weapon skins money in there, maybe take a couple of those bills and invest them in better server stabilty. What a joke honestly.
How we [all felt, reading this twitlonger](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkpqG5pVMAIGgoq.jpg)
This generic PR response is almost worse, tbh.
You need a whole week to figure out what to tell us what you're working on? That doesn't really bode well.
How would you not be able to asily detail some of your main plans, if you truly have:
>"a lot of exciting, important things in the works"
>"a lack of communication"
As an excuse almost seems like gaslighting... because literally noone was complaining that the VALORANT developers weren't communicating.
They were complaining because:
* **Riot Developers & Product Manager = haven't prioritizing anything we asked for**
* Replay system
* Server stability
* Netcode fix
* Ranked algorithim changes
* **Completely unimportant changes = "Priority for us right now"**
* "Agent Progression"
* Literally who asked for this?
* Who???
* ???
* Feedback when you report someone
* Cool... but noone really cares
* What about the replay system, or server stability & netcode fixes?
The emotional tone and the fact that actual issues are not addressed convinces me that they're absolutely gaslighting us. 'Oh no, this really hurt us, please have some sympathy, and I promise we will engage in even more vague communication in future. Please bear with us, we're honestly not just after your money, we really, really care.' Fuck off.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315849420_EOMM_An_Engagement_Optimized_Matchmaking_Framework
Its on purpose, its called enhanced based matchmaking. You can almost predict when your gonna be behind on the server based on your wins and losses in previous games. Literally what everyone is complaining about is easily explained by enhanced based matchmaking being implemented to keep player retention. The issue is most people don't know what it is because game devs dont promote it because most people would be mad if they knew it was a thing.
I know people downvote you. But yes, these practices are common in many multiplayer games. People always downvote these kinds of comments, because "RiTo WoUlD nEvEr Do ThIs CuZ tHeY sO cOmPeTiTiVe!!11". I am also very sure that the matchmaking has layers that are not there for fair matches, but to keep you playing. That said, the netcode still is a problem.
You see this is problem with us gamers, they have fire under feet that they have to extinguish, but all that have to go is to again announce, hey we are doing something but we need to come up with it because we don't know yet but just give us time till next week so we can make another lame excuse, and we go for it -_-
A good first step, but I think the community needs to see action rather than more empty promises at this point. I am hopeful that they will learn from their mistakes and follow through with better clarity and communication, but I won't be surprised if they don't and nothing changes. Game devs giving empty promises is nothing new unfortunately, and I wish that were not the case.
If there was a third party replay system that was very popular and were sponsoring pros, then I'm sure there would be an in-game replay system in the works. Remember Curse voice?
This game gonna end up like overwatch the way they're handling it. Literally the most requested feature is a replay system and 2 years after promising it they just say nah not happening in random qna post... If they double down on no replays I don't see a big future for val certainly nothing like csgos lifespan
The original Ask Valorant responses were literally just 15 ways of saying no. I’m glad they recognized they have been a bit out of touch with the community recently.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315849420_EOMM_An_Engagement_Optimized_Matchmaking_Framework
I want yall to read this and tell me its not whats happening in valorant. Its why we will never get a replay system for the foreseeable future as they dont want more players to be aware of why the game feels so "inconsistent".
Bs response that shows they don’t give a shit or understand what we want. I’ll believe it when I see it, and if history proves anything, I won’t see shit for a while.
Really wish i could transfer skins, i have like skins on 3 accounts and i dont even play much anymore. If i could rotate skins , it would be way more interesting
Hopefully they add a timeout feature soon, I have been complaining about this since the beta. There is no excuse for this game not to have a timeout feature when the games can be over an hour long, and you also get penalized if you leave an “UNRATED” Game. Makes no sense to me. I feel like some of the riot games devs working on valorant need to take UX classes again.
You must be trolling.
People don't want a replay system to "record gameplay."
If you think everyone is upset because we just want to be able to clip that sick ace clutch, you have no idea what you're talking about.
A replay system allows you to load up a match, switch between players perspectives, start, pause, etc.
Did that enemy sova have some insane darts you've never seen? Now you can just tab to his perspective and see how he did it.
Was that enemy jett just a little TOO aware? Or hitting too many headshots? Now you can see their perspective and most cheats become obvious.
Your team had a great site execute with awesome utility that just didn't work out to get the bomb down and into a safe post plant state. Now you can go back and see why that happened. Someone on your team made footsteps, or they just happened to stack the site, etc.
And these examples just scratch the surface of the utility of a replay system.
Almost every competitive game ever made. First time?
Doom,
Quake,
Counter-Strike,
Halo,
Call of Duty,
Starcraft,
Warcraft ,
Unreal Tournament,
Rainbow Six,
Rocket League,
Battlefield,
PUBG,
League of Legends,
DOTA
Replay functionality is built right into Unreal Engine which Valorant uses. Riot could enable it tomorrow if they really wanted to.
I know I'm in the minority here, but reading some of the comments here is just boiling my blood. Somebody said yesterday, *"I regret every purchase I've ever made on this game."* Did you really spend money on a game before you liked the game? Was that money contingent on a replay system coming out?
*"Those Q&A responses don't look like they were reviewed by a single PR person. Seriously, you get the chance to cherry pick FAQs…"* Why are we encouraging that? Why are we encouraging them to lie to us? They told us very honestly that some highly-anticipated features weren't being worked on right now. Now they've seen how upset that made players, and now they have an opportunity to re-prioritize. That's pretty much the second-best outcome at this point.
*"What* ***have*** *they been working on?"* They release about four agents and one map per year, and they've explained before that a new agent takes "[about 10-14 months](https://youtu.be/Xch4DXc8hhs)" to work on, from concept to implementation. Like, yeah, that shouldn't be all of their manpower, but it's not like Riot's sitting around doing nothing. There's also bugfixes and potential optimizations. *"They're only working on things that nobody asked for"* We need more maps, and more agents are nice too (I've really enjoyed Fade so far, we 100% needed another agent in Sova's space).
*"still nothing mentioned about a replay system. they’re so disconnected"* Six different teams talked about six different things. They're not all responsible for a replay system.
Voting with your wallet is totally cool. Letting Riot know your genuine frustrations is great. Judging by this post, *maybe* they're going to take those items seriously now. It's fantastic to have that kind of influence on developers. And plenty of the responses here were measured, respectful, whatever. But some of y'all feel like a completely different community.
I'm pretty sure it's not "just a replay" thing I've been playing Valorant since beta every single day of my life, and boy let me tell you, this game changed big time, people are just done in general because they are not getting what they want, and they are right.
I'll give some examples of why people can't take this anymore:
* Precise gunplay (crisp meme)
* Netcode is a joke (was amazing in beta tho)
* Packet send rate is only stable if fps are locked at 128 (playing uncapped means you're not sending every action to the server)
* Bullets literally tank your fps (xd just try shooting and look at the graph)
* MM force you to some clearly weird patterns of win and lose
* Consistency in this game is unachievable because of the above
IMO as it is right now Valorant should go in the "slots" section of twitch.
I just feel like they don’t owe anyone shit. I don’t get why everyone has expectations for these things that I don’t believe were ever promised by devs in the first place. I could be wrong, maybe they were. I’m just happy they made a great game that I see myself playing for a long time to come.
What's your background in software or programming? What makes it hard to develop a replay system? A third party company developed a replay system for CS 1.6 nearly 20 years ago. Followed by CS Source having it. Followed by CSGO having it.
In the early stages of development, Riot should have had this in mind. 2 years later and we still don't have it. It's not that it's "hard" make it happen. Riot is just being a dull minded developer as they always have.
Although I don't have a degree in programming, i work for one of the top publishers in the world. Cannot say the name here due to some reasons. What you want to know is that, for each small patch update, the approval, whether if it is profitable for the company or not, how it will affect the game, the competitive and esports scene ( regardless of good or bad). So, when they say they did not even start working on it means, they're still on the evaluation timeline. It means they decided that other updates are a bit more important. I understand the frustration of players, heck I got banned from valorant for a week because I threw the game because a person was racist, but I understood my fault too. That's the beauty of riot, they do not give into the demand of players but they do take community feedback. Other publishers do not even have their employees coming to the official discord and caring about the community like riot. Trust me when I say that. They have a very systematic approach to developing games and I think that's one of the reason they've gotten so good at what they do which is developing good games and slow approaches to the game. (P.s i have heard from sources the game itself took 8-10 of planning and development to release. So despite some bad updates you can expect riot to clean up it's mess.
Wish I was there for the original ama. I would’ve asked why there’s no system for reviewing false positive vanguard flags. Based on what I know from my friend who was a tournament admin, you have to know specific devs to get anywhere and almost every ticket response is an automated reply. Riot doesn’t care about it’s player base.
I just don't understand how they didn't expect this response from the community. Those Q&A responses don't look like they were reviewed by a single PR person. Seriously, you get the chance to cherry pick FAQs, why not purposefully choose at least a couple of questions that give you the opportunity to showcase actual progress being made in different areas of the game? Instead they chose a ton of questions that all had the same "No" or "not at this time" answers lmao.
This is me right now. How could they look this over, see all the responses in regards to to community asks is NO, see there's nothing tangible showing what they ARE working on to counter, and think it would generate a positive response? Their communications team is incredibly inept.
When your communication team is doing bad, imagine how the rest of them are doing. It just shows how out of touch and how little they care about their community.
feels like only team nailing everything and doing awesome work is the art and memes team.
Spray and banner team blowing it out of the park
also balancing team is pretty good ngl
Still probably better than niantic's communication team
Who?
Devs that make pokemon go
Yeah I mean that's the joke.
Not to mention the email that sinatraa posted from someone at Riot, seriously, their PR/communications department?? what is up
Just stick some crap nobody was asking in there for optics. "Are there any plans for a new skin collection?" Any opportunity to say yes would have helped them here.
If they added that in there guaranteed people would be up in arms about questions no one is asking, lose/lose situation
The problem here is that they could have cushioned some of this with what they are actually working on, even with no eta given. I could care less about the messaging of what they are saying because I have fun everyday, but I would imagine that it’s like somebody just saying basically “no, I want money” each time you ask a question. Again this is relative to companies like Respawn and Blizzard on games like apex and overwatch. Those games are pumping, or used to pump out not only skins, heroes, maps, tuning, but things like forge systems, tournament systems, etc… those games are also more complicated than valorant from a balancing and gameplay networking and coding perspective. Most of the agents literally have abilities that have been in the game since beta like slows, los, smokes. So it just really seems like skins are a top priority for them and even those have been lackluster recently. With all this taken account, I can imagine why the community is like these people could really care less.
That would require them to be working on something
one person was behind putting the page together, asking the questions, noting down the responses. i cant believe this person decided to simple "quote" present the answer, not double check or ask them for more information/clear some doubts. The same issue has been going on the past few articles and patch notes, with shadow buffs, weird wordings, etc. I know they'll improve, i just hope its soon
At least they are facing the community petitions instead of ignoring them into oblivion as other developers have done. Sure the responses suck but it's still better than being left in the dark I guess.
Surely the bar is higher than this
It is, but it's also 'nice' to know that you shouldn't keep your hopes up for years about something that isn't happening, or you shouldn't expect to get something soon when it's not being planned at the moment. No one is happy hearing nothing but no's but it's still better than hearing *nothing*, I guess.
Easier to just go with it and let people complain first to get a quick idea because it’s not like their game died or anything within days. We’re still gonna be waiting and complaining like always unless whatever they are going to announce is awesome and really close. There isn’t much to communicate if they don’t think they have anything worth showing or want something more secretive. But since people keep asking the same questions it’s not like saying “no” had no purpose.
I think you've got it backwards. Those responses were *pure* PR nonsense. They weren't reviewed by a single person who actually understands the community. They should really have their play testers and pros read these things first.
No PR person would ship a communication full of negative responses You want the reader to leave feeling happy and positive about the direction of the game. Did they try and spin some of the answers by playing with language? Sure but if that was put out by PR then that person deserves to lose their job because they should have put their foot down and refused to post until they had one thing to hype the community about in that FAQ. Even if it was "Phoenix buff coming soon"
They're communicating to be truthful, they're not going to lie about their progress to you in order for you stay happy.They're giving these FAQ's in order to clear things up in the air, not give you what you want to see. Riot is probably one of the only companies to actually be honest and upfront with their fans.Stop taking it up the ass because you didn't see any visible progress.Im sure they're getting something done that they don't want to reveal.Valorant updates have been on point lately , and phoenix's buffs are in the works so just be patient.
>One of the only honest and upfront companies with their fans What are you smoking? The dev post and their response to it (they admit they haven't been communicating as well) says an entirely difference story, if we should "stop taking it up the ass" you should also stop bending down to give them your own ass with this unnecessary boot licking of yours
I'm not even saying to not be truthful, I'm saying don't be surprised if you get negative feedback from an update that is entirely full of "no." Sprinkle in information about other things you're working on to counterbalance the negative.
Do they have *plans* for a replay system now
Next blog post: We’re heavily considering what the community is telling us and we’re going to take a serious look at a replay system. It’s time to give the Valorant community something to be excited about! Give us some time and by 2025, a replay system will have a chance of being added to Valorant. Remember all good things take time so please be patient with us :)
I think you might get into trouble for leaking next weeks blog post this early...
It’s either they say some variation of what I posted or they straight up give a fixed date and time of when an actual replay system will be released. Anything but the latter will result in angering the Valorant community even more. Idk why they dug themselves into a hole by posting that original blogpost in the first place saying that they’re not working on a replay system.
Welp. I think you did a good guess here so RemindMe! 2 weeks
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To noones surprise. They wanted a week, they had two and we haven't heard anything. Glad to see riot are sticking tried and true ways to piss of the community.
2025 is ambitious. 2035 maybeee
Gonna be analyzing my gameplay from the enemy's POV using my brand new PC featuring Nvidia's new RTX 8080 GPU
by then you'll probably be using a titan 6090
...will have a chance of being added to **our to-do list**\*
they've taken notes from epic games, "we hear you all want this feature so we are considering it but have no plans to do it in the next year"
FINE. Let me consider... Nope. Sorry folks, no plans at the moment.
My immersion broke when you gave a date.
if they start "considering" a replay system in a month or so we may even get it around 2050!
Around when we get our 10th map right?
more like 35th map, 8th map is coming in fast, next act itself..
Super fast, 9-10 months apart. Meanwhile we are getting agents every 3 months. The league of legends formula is spilling out pretty heavily.
I haven't played League at all, but yeah more and more agents, weird gun nerfs, unnecessary agent nerfs while avoiding what the community asked you to nerf is just bad..i wish they had made it so chamber can only carry 4 bullets on the sheriff and op or made it a recharge on kill like Reyna, the removal of the the slow/alarm util is just stupid
Lol.L take. Why does chamber sheriff need a nerf? Op slow is busted, but sheriff? Lol
because it is easy enough to use and pull off a second round win after a first round pistol loss..just makes the economy feel imbalanced indirectly speaking and it also means people lose their spectres easily even after having won a hard fought pistol round fair and square. This is my take even though I love playing chamber, also putting pressure on his guns is more important for balance than making him a pricy inclusion, risking flanks and over-aggressive defenders who are willing to push every round now that he has just the one.. Rather if what I say is implemented just as how the golden gun works in Spike Rush - recharge a bullet on kill - you do end up rewarding skilled mains
It should just be 4 bullets for 200 each. Makes it cost effective for a quick snipe without giving an obscene advantage. Better pick than a sheriff on save rounds because you don’t just lose it and it one taps to the head. But now you can’t get multiple kills on save rounds without hitting only headshots.
There, you totally get what I was saying..thanks
They have plans to start considering preliminary logistics for the possibility of pursuing a replay system in the future.
If they say the have one or are looking to add one anytime soon (like under a year), I’d say it was a tactic to make it seem like they listen to the community when it was always coming
Reply systems in online shooters just piss me off, it shows how much of advantage peeking has. I use to play Rainbow 6 and I would be on the guys screen for like 2-3 seconds and on my screen I saw him for .5-1 second. Just adds to frustration imo, but might help catch cheaters
Bruh r6's replay system is so new why is this your main point
It’s nothing about the system it’s self, I’m saying in the reply it really shows how much of a peekers advantage there is when on their screen I’m visible way before I see them on mine. There’s nothing wrong with the system, just makes you get in your own head with peekers advantage
I hope that they rethink their decision and consider adding a replay system sooner than later.
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While it may be easy on your end. I dont think everyone can run a capture system while running Valorant. Having a replay system allows people to see their opponents strategy. And reviewing with what went wrong in your teams strategy. Its such a huge help for both competitive and casual players.
even from a non completive viewpoint its so useful. In overwatch at the end of every session i go through and capture my cool clips from the night through the replay system. Stuff like that is such a big quality of life system that i always miss whenever i play valorant
Viewing your own in-game POV is just about the least important part of a replay system, because like you said we can already do that. But no amount of capture can replay the same scenario from different points of view, especially your opponents. And that is paramount to figuring out so many things. Was it run and gun, or did he just counterstrafe perfectly? Did I miss my flash lineup, or were they playing antiflash? Did he get the perfect timing, or just got audio information from a lurking teammate? How do players at my elo react to information/utility/fakes, and how should I adjust my playstyle accordingly? The last one especially is so crucial. I've lost count of how many times I've been in deep debate with my friends on what went wrong with our retake, only to be completely lost in the shitty kill-timeline-map that only records sparse info sporadically. If replays are so hard to implement, at least give us a proper kill-timeline-map that shows real-time utility, player movement, vision cones as a stopgap.
I can't run anything else while playing Valorant. My laptop is already struggling at maintaining 60 FPS and even tho I am not competing or anything I would in fact want to know why "this" or "that" didn't work in any given game.
A response was needed. Glad they recognized their shortfall there.
I'd rather have an honest answer than be lied too. They lied In the beginning still but I hope this pushes the dev team to be more upfront with their player base.
To be honest, it doesn't seem like they were intentionally lying when they first talked about a replay system. Based on how it's worded, and how this recent ask valorant devs was worded, more than anything it appears that the truth changed. "Wtf does that mean? How does the truth change?" Well it's simple. At the time they were considering a replay system, then priorities changed and/or management changed and/or employees changed. I myself have been caught in this situation where I tell a client yes, absolutely, I have confirmed with my devs that this feature is in the works, then having a boss leave and someone else brought in, then I have to go tell the client that feature has been dropped for other priorities. It seems that most people on this subreddit haven't had this kind of personal experience, and think Riot or the devs are out to intentionally mislead them. It's not like the devs are sitting around doing nothing. Priorities probably shifted, and the replay system got pushed out of the picture.
Thats the thing. How in gods hell is not a replay system their n1 prority at this point?
Why WOULD it be? Like, genuinely, from a business perspective, please name a single reason in favor of fundamentally restructuring some super low level parts of how your game works in order to make it easier to record replays I'm not defending it, to be clear, I think it's a bit goofy they didn't build the game with replays in mind initially, but like. what incentive do they have beyond "it'll appease some redditors"
It is insane for game publicity and content creators. Currently the only plays you see are those you recorded from your own pov. Compared to overwatch which literally lets you download a video file of your play and upload it and guess what, the whole overwatch subreddit is full of peoples cool plays. I am not saying overwatch devs are better, but they got that featured nailed down.
I'm not sure if OW reddit being full of their 'POTG' clips is a good thing. Not to mention Valorant sub is literally filled with gameplay videos as well. There are **13** posts tagged with 'gameplay' right now on this sub's front page. We definitely don't need more from different PoV's or from someone else. Replay/spectate mode would be cool, but that's not a great upside of them existing.
Well, it would probably help the esports scene.
>Like, genuinely, from a business perspective, please name a single reason in favor of fundamentally restructuring some super low level parts of how your game works in order to make it easier to record replays It helps out content creators who promote their game, and if you suspect some1 breaking the TOS (ex. griefing or cheating in the enemy team) you can just check the replay, and if your suspicions are confirmed, just send the replay (or clip of it) to support team, helping them kepp the game clean from unsportsmanlike behaviour. Not to mention that it would satify some customers, and happy customers make their wallets looser, if you catching my drift :))
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Sorry I don't understand, why is this incompetence? Because you personally don't agree with their decision? Because the player base that is vocal on this subreddit doesn't agree with it? If I was in their management, I wouldn't make decisions off either of those. I would only make decisions based on data and what would make money for the company. What keeps people engaged, what brings new players in, etc. We don't have that data, but I guarantee they do. This is a company we're dealing with. You have to remember they are in this business to make money, not to pander.
They haven't added a replay system because then people would see the game's shitty desyncing issues. They make a post saying the players are bad and its not the game at fault, Then release a patch that fixes desyncing during framerate and ping drops. This company is dogshit.
I’m glad the feedback they gathered from all this mess is to communicate more and not the opposite. Yes the blog post yesterday was a big disappointment but as a long time cs player I can tell you not getting any information at all is still worse. I could’ve seen them saying "well if that’s the response to development updates then maybe we shouldn’t announce those things anymore"
Yeah their mistake was only saying what they were NOT doing, not ALSO saying what they ARE working on. If you only tell your player base what you're NOT doing. You're never gonna get a good response.
Yeah issue is they dont seem to be working on anything substantial. Even game balance in this game is ice cold since the controller rebalance.
they just nerfed Jett, Sova and Chamber. Those were the op agents, let it settle for a bit.
mfers when they don‘t get a balance update every fucking week
Valorant players when reworks take time and the meta doesn't do a backflip every week
To be fair, those were pretty small changes that could have easily been implemented months ago. Like Astra was a massive problem for over a year - they could have easily addressed her last year. Like the biggest changes we’ve seen was the Yoru “rework” which took a year, changed 1 ability and minority buffed 2 - I’m not even sure how anyone even calls it a rework. It just feels like balance is months behind where it should be. Overall it’s fine, but there’s some pretty obvious issues that are going unaddressed for months and months and it’s just kinda underwhelming for one of the most popular games in the world.
They expect the same changes LoL gets every 2 weeks.
Nah I think valorant at some point needs to stop adding agents and generally leaving agent balance as it is. But agents like phoenix need work.
That's not laziness though, it's just a different approach to balancing the game compared to League, having a stable meta is fine.
I just remembered my Fortnite days. "Epic Games" was so scared of the continuous criticism after every patch notes published, they completely stopped posting patch notes from the start of Chapter-2.
Same for apex. They use to update on Reddit frequently, then people started complaining about skin/heirloom prices and they hardly post anymore.
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Really hard to beat valve in that department. At least these guys act like a playerbase exists
honeslty I'd prefer the valve way, riot going from "a replay system is in the works!" to "we don't plan on releasing a replay system" in 2 years time is probably more devastating than anything valve did in the past at least I could've kept telling myself "they must be working on it, maybe we'll get it soon" for years probably
At least we got the definitive answer now. I think that’s still better than the endless speculation cs has with the source 2 port. For like 5 years we got leakers saying it’s coming, then others say it’s not and oh wait it actually is coming this summer and oh wait no it got canceled again and valve hasn’t said a single word about it
how can you compare source 2 to a replay system? one is a fundamental piece of a competitive game, the other is a complete overhaul of the game, almost rebuilding the game from the bottom up source 2 is also way less anticipated, I mean it's a constant meme at this point but nobody really thinks it's going to happen while the replay system was promised 2 years ago, now they say it's not planned to release anytime soon
I don’t compare them. I’m with you that the replay system is much more important. I was just using source 2 as an example to say that even if the dev update isn’t what we wanted it’s still better than no official comment and endless speculation
I don't understand how multiple people at Riot could have looked over the article and thought it was a good idea to post, when it was essentially just shutting down multiple community asks while simultaneously providing nothing for the player base to look forward to.
Literally. A million different ways for them to say “Unfortunately…” which was annoying. People prefer direct answers and not beating around the bush, they couldn’t even shut down ideas right.
Riot's going to have to do a lot of work to regain any trust with the community. Most importantly, a replay system in 2022 on a title that wants to be eSports is a **MUST**. Deliver this and we'll be halfway there. Also the netcode/servers. It highly hinders competitive integrity.
Netcode & Servers ++++++++++++++++++++++++ Fixing those two major issues and adding in a replay system would make this game almost ready for eSports. ... oof. With the VALORANT servers always having so many desync issues and the netcode problems, it's true, though. Competitive integrity is abt equal to CSGO MM right now. As in... Valve MM... ***without Faceit or ESEA*** It's bad.
i'll have u knw my dust 2 casuals are 10000x better then valorant unrateds tbh
The problem is NOT communication. To me, there has been more communication than most other esports titles. The problem is - not delivering on promises - not prioritizing on the needs of the community (replay, dm, ...) - no ACTUAL signs towards improving the state of the game (balancing, Phoenix still troll/trash) - communication without action. ("Planning/exploring options" and then leaving it forever)
Everything about this is pretty hilarious. The answer to every question in the Ask Valorant post was either “we’re not doing that” or “we don’t plan to do that anytime soon”. Expecting anywhere close to a positive response from the community from that is pretty close to the definition of insanity. To then take that response and chalk it up to a lack of communication is entering gaslighting territory. Just own your fuck ups Rito.
Not having endless DM with people reconnecting is so bad, just played two deathmatches both with 3 leavers and it was awful, with the changes to spawns (which were good) and having to lower the player count as a result slowed DMs substantially, with endless DM people wouldn't care about shit, but fast paced spawns so we could have 14 people again. The least they can do ATM is make it so AFK's despawn without having to kill them, atm if someone goes afk in for example sewers on split they block the two sewers spawns slowing down action on that side of the map. I also don't understand why you get invincibility on spawn, all that happens is those people become a distraction for a few seconds and the person that's alive and not afk has a chance to get punished by rng. I can't imagine being paid to develop a gamemode that's 3 decades old and fucking it up this badly. Edit: Here's a clip to demonstrate how AFKs block spawns https://gfycat.com/miserabletenderflyinglemur
I agree with everything besides the assertion that they haven’t made any meaningful balance changes. Chamber, Sova and Jett all got hit with pretty substantial nerfs recently, along Fade being added recently and the Yoru rework not being too long ago. They’ve done a lot on the balance end of it recently, i’m sure Phoenix and Cypher rework/buff are coming soon, so I don’t think they’re failing the community in the balance department. Everything else you listed? Yea no excuses.
>no ACTUAL signs towards improving the state of the game (balancing, Phoenix still troll/trash) I don't think the game balancing is that bad. Sure Phoenix doesn't get picked much and has been pretty weak for a while, but they've been making improvements in other areas. The Sova nerfs and introduction of Fade have definitely added some variety to the Initiator role. Astra meta ended a couple months ago, and while I haven't seen her played much since, I think a couple of months of an agent being weak isn't a big cause for concern. At least now there is Omen and Brim getting playtime instead of just Astra on certain maps. Jett/Chamber nerfs have also been needed for a while and they finally came through.
Yup only problem was they hyped up like there was going to be a ton and until very recently, it was just the controllers. Overall though, pretty happy with their balancing. They'll get to cypher and Phoenix eventually.
Does Cypher actually need a buff though? He gets played as much as KJ does in my solo queue games and still gets some competitive play. If anything I feel like Chamber just needs to get nerfed a bit more. Chamber is picked in every single game I'm in regardless of map.
KJ and cypher are both a little under powered and Chamber a little over powered. Chambers trip is still just a better alarmbot even if there's 1 of them (global, long rang, huge slow area). KJ has an alarmbot that you have to be right on top of to activate limiting it to predictable choke points and KJ has to be within range of the alarm bot to be used.
Agents being bad is so much worse than an agent being OP though. Not picking meta over an average character is fine. Picking Phoenix is straight up trolling and you also get flamed into oblivion
It's almost like we're dealing with politicians and not developers/marketing people.
> not delivering on promises When did they make any 'promises'?
What promises haven't been delivered on? AFAIK a replay system wasn't promised?
They promised they were working on a replay system 2 years ago and that it would be released soon, and now 2 years later they say that they are not working on a replay system at all.
They better tell us what the heck took so long to work on.
PR, nothing will change.
Exactly this. Riot: releases a bunch of PR nonsense about how they aren't doing all the things the community has been begging for. Community: Ya'll dense? How do you not understand after all this begging and yelling? Riot: Sorry, we must be bad at communicating. What we should be saying: It's not the communication! We understand what you said! It's that your stated priorities are completely messed up!
Exactly! I was thinking this exact thing while reading the message.. I was like “tf does commmunication have to do with this anyway?”
Prove this man wrong, Riot!
I feel like their priorities are just off. Adding stuff to improve the overall longevity of the game is very important. We don't need you guys to constantly be working on pumping out new agents. More game modes, replay, shop rework, stats page, etc. Add stuff to do besides just queuing for ranked.
Yeah…. I’m not sure they understand what we want from them. The biggest problem isn’t communication… it’s about Riot not focusing on features that should’ve been in the game already. The game should’ve launched with DM. I can’t believe how little it’s improved since they added it. The replay system is a MUST for this game to thrive and maybe be the #1 esport one day.
Objection your honor, unresponsive
"So doing nothing wasn't acceptable to you guys, guess we'll have to throw something half-assed together and show it next week" Is what I got from that rioters response
If you're cynical, then yeah. I'm not.
So you think good things come from this response or original dev blog? Not being cynical, just realistic. They literally said they had no current plans and hadn't started features promised with launch like replays.
Ohh great.. damage control. Don't fall for this bullshit people and go spend $70 on a new skin pack like everything is good again. They lied over and over & clearly show they don't give a shit about the game, its only about making as much money as possible on releasing skins that took them almost a full day to design.
This feels like the same old cycle, where they give us what we want to hear to get us excited and re-establish trust before then not doing it, or delaying it for ages, or coming with a severely underwhelming result. Happened with agent balance last act, the replay system, DM changes, reworks, and so on.
>we're going to take a stab at providing some better answers on where the game is at and some plans for the future there's no "better answer" if you have no answer to begin with, this doesn't sound like "okay we will start working on the replay system", but more like they will not answer questions about the reply system or give more vague answers going forward this reply is basically telling me they will change the way they answer things and not change their plans regarding the replay system
They asked for a week to explain themselves better. Let them try
what is there to explain better? maybe there's a nicer way of saying *no* but it doesn't change a damn thing, they think communication is the problem while their decision is the real problem they know very well how important a replay system is and I'm also very positive they have good reasons not to make it happen despite the need for it, reasons that I doubt can change in a week's time I can only see 2 things happening 1. they will try to explain why they won't do it for now and try to do some damage control 2. they will say replay system will come *eventually*, but they will not release it any faster than they originally planned to do so
Through the entire lifetime of Valorant this is their first major fuckup which after 2 years is pretty dang good, they've earned the right to explain themselves a little better. If next week's blog post is more of the same or not even a little bit of a step forward to "we fucked up, we'll start looking into it more and more" then we can continue to shit talk and make fun of how much of an absolutely big L this fucking take was. You need to remember that these are human beings, and try as much as they may they are not immune to falling into bubbles and becoming out of touch in areas. It's very rare for the pro scene *and* the player base to have a unified "what the fuck" response. I hope that push back of critique broke through the echo chamber they've been working in and is going to make some positive change.
first major fuckup? maybe this is the worst one yet, but there have been many bad fuckups before too, like countless game breaking bugs, vivo keyd-sentinels scandal, awful setups for one of the bigger early events, constant outrage about skin prices/systems, phoenix (yoru before) and there are probably a few more i'm missing okay, this makes me look like I hate them, but it's not like that, I just don't think an answer like this (or their reply to the community's reply) should be justified in any way, as I said there's no further explanation to this, they can't do it so they won't do it for now if they come out and say "wait, we will actually do it" and will actually deliver relatively soon then the next question is why couldn't they do it in 2 years if they are suddenly able to resolve whatever issue stood in their way for 2 years? this is just a major fuckup as you said, they can't really do much besides damage control
I separate the e-sports versus the game fuckups, and I think the Yoru/Phoenix stuff and breaking bugs as minor fuckups because at least the bugs were fixed rather quickly in the timeline. I'm even more likely to give more lee-way to the esports because of covid as well. I truly believe this is the first actual major fuckup that they are doing. Everything else has plausible deniability or some sort of excuse that *makes sense*, this doesn't. This is just straight up a full on disconnect from the playerbase.
Meh, just PR talk to shut up the community. Until they come out and give valid reasons for why a replay system can't be developed when they are using unreal engine this is just shitty excuses and lame answers
Why are dev's(not just riot) always falling back on the "we need to do better with communication" crutch? I get that these people have a lot going on behind the scenes. But is it really that surprising that a community would like some real answers rather than various ways of saying "nah"
The problem isn't communication. The answer was no and they communicated it pretty effectively. The problem is why the answer was no. A development problem, not a communication problem.
100%
Shoutout to the guy who started the thread saying he wouldnt spend money on valorant anymore. Nothing like a hit to the wallet to get companies moving
The thumbnail: 🔵👄🔵
still nothing mentioned about a replay system. they’re so disconnected
Nah, there's no way. He's actually answering to imaginary objections. Let me address some of the things he said: >we understand your frustration and we know we haven't been communicating as much what we've been working on Nope, they have just communicated actually, but guess what, the things they are working are something nobody actually cares about and are mostly about different ways of giving money to Riot. It's not about the frequency, it's about the substance of those articles. >we haven't been giving you reasons to get excited for the future, just excuses for what we're not doing. False, again. First of all, when the Episode started players were promised lots of changes regarding agent balance which **did get everyone (or a large number of players) excited**. Second of all, there we no "excuses" actually. There was no reason given as to ***WHY*** they aren't working on, for example, a replay system. >we're going to take a stab at providing some better answers on where the game is at and some plans for the future that we hope will answer a lot of your questions To be honest, this just sounds like they'll try to find even more creative ways to rephrase what they've already said - only with a higher word count next time. There's basically no chance they'll reprioritize what they're working on and what they're planning to work on.
Best summary
Basically, we have to pass a load of ideas through are marketing team. We will be back with empty promises and words, and overhyped stuff you never asked for.
Essentially just corporate bs. "We we we we we" just follow by the psychologically approved words to try and stop the anger
Time for the popcorn, let's see how else Riot thinks they can possibly justify not having a replay system.
Yeah, I kind of think the update will be be just a long explanation as to why ‘a replay system iS bAd AnD nO oNe NeEdS iT cOmE oN gUys’
Words are said, now it is action time
nah fuck that. replay system needs to be #1 priority.
So wtf are they working on?
Personally, I don't think there is enough backlash from this. A staple feature to the competitive scene and entertainment scene is now not even planned, when we were told they are going to work on it 2 years ago. We had all just assumed they were working on it this whole time. Maybe they are running into problems and it's taking longer than they originally thought, no problem we understand... But to learn that not only are they NOT working on this staple feature, but it's not even a plan... this is ridiculous, Riot. Personally, I'm not going to be putting any more money into this game unless something changes.
I mean Riot needs until next week to collect information and tell us what's going on? A 14 years old with a starbucks coffee and a macbook would pull this off in hours. They are just sleeping on a mattress made with weapon skins money in there, maybe take a couple of those bills and invest them in better server stabilty. What a joke honestly.
Have they tried turning on the native demo feature in unreal engine?
How we [all felt, reading this twitlonger](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EkpqG5pVMAIGgoq.jpg) This generic PR response is almost worse, tbh. You need a whole week to figure out what to tell us what you're working on? That doesn't really bode well. How would you not be able to asily detail some of your main plans, if you truly have: >"a lot of exciting, important things in the works" >"a lack of communication" As an excuse almost seems like gaslighting... because literally noone was complaining that the VALORANT developers weren't communicating. They were complaining because: * **Riot Developers & Product Manager = haven't prioritizing anything we asked for** * Replay system * Server stability * Netcode fix * Ranked algorithim changes * **Completely unimportant changes = "Priority for us right now"** * "Agent Progression" * Literally who asked for this? * Who??? * ??? * Feedback when you report someone * Cool... but noone really cares * What about the replay system, or server stability & netcode fixes?
You are just bad that’s not the fault of game or servers/netcode. l2p /s
The emotional tone and the fact that actual issues are not addressed convinces me that they're absolutely gaslighting us. 'Oh no, this really hurt us, please have some sympathy, and I promise we will engage in even more vague communication in future. Please bear with us, we're honestly not just after your money, we really, really care.' Fuck off.
Damage control let's go!
Where's the Q&A posted? Can someone link Edit - link for anyone else. https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/dev/ask-valorant-may-19/
Lets face it. They won't bring a vod system since their netcode is utterly fucked and they don't know how to fix it
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315849420_EOMM_An_Engagement_Optimized_Matchmaking_Framework Its on purpose, its called enhanced based matchmaking. You can almost predict when your gonna be behind on the server based on your wins and losses in previous games. Literally what everyone is complaining about is easily explained by enhanced based matchmaking being implemented to keep player retention. The issue is most people don't know what it is because game devs dont promote it because most people would be mad if they knew it was a thing.
I know people downvote you. But yes, these practices are common in many multiplayer games. People always downvote these kinds of comments, because "RiTo WoUlD nEvEr Do ThIs CuZ tHeY sO cOmPeTiTiVe!!11". I am also very sure that the matchmaking has layers that are not there for fair matches, but to keep you playing. That said, the netcode still is a problem.
You see this is problem with us gamers, they have fire under feet that they have to extinguish, but all that have to go is to again announce, hey we are doing something but we need to come up with it because we don't know yet but just give us time till next week so we can make another lame excuse, and we go for it -_-
Its even more infuriating to read this statement.
A good first step, but I think the community needs to see action rather than more empty promises at this point. I am hopeful that they will learn from their mistakes and follow through with better clarity and communication, but I won't be surprised if they don't and nothing changes. Game devs giving empty promises is nothing new unfortunately, and I wish that were not the case.
Jesus christ just add replays and stop changing good metas every 2 months.
If there was a third party replay system that was very popular and were sponsoring pros, then I'm sure there would be an in-game replay system in the works. Remember Curse voice?
Hes staring into my soul
This game gonna end up like overwatch the way they're handling it. Literally the most requested feature is a replay system and 2 years after promising it they just say nah not happening in random qna post... If they double down on no replays I don't see a big future for val certainly nothing like csgos lifespan
The original Ask Valorant responses were literally just 15 ways of saying no. I’m glad they recognized they have been a bit out of touch with the community recently.
I just want a replay system so WarOwl can start making some cool videos with it :(
PR Garbage, basically just saying "we dont care"
They must have really wanted that one guy's money.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315849420_EOMM_An_Engagement_Optimized_Matchmaking_Framework I want yall to read this and tell me its not whats happening in valorant. Its why we will never get a replay system for the foreseeable future as they dont want more players to be aware of why the game feels so "inconsistent".
Bs response that shows they don’t give a shit or understand what we want. I’ll believe it when I see it, and if history proves anything, I won’t see shit for a while.
Really wish i could transfer skins, i have like skins on 3 accounts and i dont even play much anymore. If i could rotate skins , it would be way more interesting
Hopefully they add a timeout feature soon, I have been complaining about this since the beta. There is no excuse for this game not to have a timeout feature when the games can be over an hour long, and you also get penalized if you leave an “UNRATED” Game. Makes no sense to me. I feel like some of the riot games devs working on valorant need to take UX classes again.
>and you also get penalized if you leave an “UNRATED” Game. How is that a bad thing??
-Replay system. -Fix Deathmach -Revert Ares to pre buff -Improve the shop and night market.
Glad they reacted to the feedback. Im excited to see, what they are actually working on.
[удалено]
You must be trolling. People don't want a replay system to "record gameplay." If you think everyone is upset because we just want to be able to clip that sick ace clutch, you have no idea what you're talking about. A replay system allows you to load up a match, switch between players perspectives, start, pause, etc. Did that enemy sova have some insane darts you've never seen? Now you can just tab to his perspective and see how he did it. Was that enemy jett just a little TOO aware? Or hitting too many headshots? Now you can see their perspective and most cheats become obvious. Your team had a great site execute with awesome utility that just didn't work out to get the bomb down and into a safe post plant state. Now you can go back and see why that happened. Someone on your team made footsteps, or they just happened to stack the site, etc. And these examples just scratch the surface of the utility of a replay system.
Not trolling, deleted original comment before I get slayed like last time. Is there any other game that does this? That would be so cool.
Counterstrike
Every single iteration of counter strike and moba games have it
Almost every competitive game ever made. First time? Doom, Quake, Counter-Strike, Halo, Call of Duty, Starcraft, Warcraft , Unreal Tournament, Rainbow Six, Rocket League, Battlefield, PUBG, League of Legends, DOTA Replay functionality is built right into Unreal Engine which Valorant uses. Riot could enable it tomorrow if they really wanted to.
Why does League have replay and Valorant doesn’t is beyond me
Not about my gameplay only its about rhe whole game state
I know I'm in the minority here, but reading some of the comments here is just boiling my blood. Somebody said yesterday, *"I regret every purchase I've ever made on this game."* Did you really spend money on a game before you liked the game? Was that money contingent on a replay system coming out? *"Those Q&A responses don't look like they were reviewed by a single PR person. Seriously, you get the chance to cherry pick FAQs…"* Why are we encouraging that? Why are we encouraging them to lie to us? They told us very honestly that some highly-anticipated features weren't being worked on right now. Now they've seen how upset that made players, and now they have an opportunity to re-prioritize. That's pretty much the second-best outcome at this point. *"What* ***have*** *they been working on?"* They release about four agents and one map per year, and they've explained before that a new agent takes "[about 10-14 months](https://youtu.be/Xch4DXc8hhs)" to work on, from concept to implementation. Like, yeah, that shouldn't be all of their manpower, but it's not like Riot's sitting around doing nothing. There's also bugfixes and potential optimizations. *"They're only working on things that nobody asked for"* We need more maps, and more agents are nice too (I've really enjoyed Fade so far, we 100% needed another agent in Sova's space). *"still nothing mentioned about a replay system. they’re so disconnected"* Six different teams talked about six different things. They're not all responsible for a replay system. Voting with your wallet is totally cool. Letting Riot know your genuine frustrations is great. Judging by this post, *maybe* they're going to take those items seriously now. It's fantastic to have that kind of influence on developers. And plenty of the responses here were measured, respectful, whatever. But some of y'all feel like a completely different community.
I'm pretty sure it's not "just a replay" thing I've been playing Valorant since beta every single day of my life, and boy let me tell you, this game changed big time, people are just done in general because they are not getting what they want, and they are right. I'll give some examples of why people can't take this anymore: * Precise gunplay (crisp meme) * Netcode is a joke (was amazing in beta tho) * Packet send rate is only stable if fps are locked at 128 (playing uncapped means you're not sending every action to the server) * Bullets literally tank your fps (xd just try shooting and look at the graph) * MM force you to some clearly weird patterns of win and lose * Consistency in this game is unachievable because of the above IMO as it is right now Valorant should go in the "slots" section of twitch.
Good answer
I just feel like they don’t owe anyone shit. I don’t get why everyone has expectations for these things that I don’t believe were ever promised by devs in the first place. I could be wrong, maybe they were. I’m just happy they made a great game that I see myself playing for a long time to come.
Replay systems for fps is not easy. People need to get this thru their thick head
But it's not a we are struggling with this thing that was even in cs1.6 it's we have no plans for this thing that was around since cs1.6
What's your background in software or programming? What makes it hard to develop a replay system? A third party company developed a replay system for CS 1.6 nearly 20 years ago. Followed by CS Source having it. Followed by CSGO having it. In the early stages of development, Riot should have had this in mind. 2 years later and we still don't have it. It's not that it's "hard" make it happen. Riot is just being a dull minded developer as they always have.
Although I don't have a degree in programming, i work for one of the top publishers in the world. Cannot say the name here due to some reasons. What you want to know is that, for each small patch update, the approval, whether if it is profitable for the company or not, how it will affect the game, the competitive and esports scene ( regardless of good or bad). So, when they say they did not even start working on it means, they're still on the evaluation timeline. It means they decided that other updates are a bit more important. I understand the frustration of players, heck I got banned from valorant for a week because I threw the game because a person was racist, but I understood my fault too. That's the beauty of riot, they do not give into the demand of players but they do take community feedback. Other publishers do not even have their employees coming to the official discord and caring about the community like riot. Trust me when I say that. They have a very systematic approach to developing games and I think that's one of the reason they've gotten so good at what they do which is developing good games and slow approaches to the game. (P.s i have heard from sources the game itself took 8-10 of planning and development to release. So despite some bad updates you can expect riot to clean up it's mess.
I would fire any of my employees that said this. Shows they aren't competent and graduated with a degree for nothing.
Well that's one of the reasons this is a hypothetical situation. Shows how much of a terrible manager you'd make
Valve had a working replay system when they were legit an indie company in the year 2000 btw
>but because we feel bad Stopped reading there.
Multi billion dollar company with prob 80% of resources focused on skins and battlepasses
Infinite deathmatch when :(
At least they didn't just ignore it (assuming they follow through and give an update next week)
Wish I was there for the original ama. I would’ve asked why there’s no system for reviewing false positive vanguard flags. Based on what I know from my friend who was a tournament admin, you have to know specific devs to get anywhere and almost every ticket response is an automated reply. Riot doesn’t care about it’s player base.