Map Rotations, Replays, and More // Dev Updates - VALORANT

Hey, everyone!

I'm Anna.

And I'm Andy.

And it's been a while since we've had a chance to talk like this.

And since then, we've shared some pretty incredible moments together.

We ended 2023 on the highest of notes

with Potter and EG winning it all at Champs LA.

And, of course, Shopify Rebellion, grabbing that Game Changers crown.

Earlier this year,

we added some additional firepower to the VALORANT arsenal with the Outlaw.

We welcomed our death-defying (literally) Scottish Controller Clove into the game,

Sentinels took the Masters Madrid win,

oh, and a couple of weeks ago,

we launched Act 3 with lots of pink awesomeness with Mystbloom.

So yeah, a lot has happened and honestly, we've got a lot more planned.

We're working on a ton of cool stuff for the rest of year

and we'll touch on some of that in just a bit.

Beyond today, you can expect more Dev [Updates] from us

when we have something to share,

and regular communication from devs across the game

when topics bubble up from the community.

Since the beginning, we've been fortunate enough to serve this incredible,

passionate, and engaged global community around VALORANT.

And look, you're never shy to share what's on your mind.

And we love it! Sincerely.

We're grateful for the feedback. We see you, we hear you,

and we appreciate you.

We want to keep the conversation going,

so be sure to tell us what you think of our chat today

and share what's on your mind.

Okay, first topic.

VALORANT is continuing to grow rapidly as a game and a sport and a community.

It's an entire ecosystem of experiences now.

And we have these huge dreams for the future.

So, we're leveling up our leadership team a bit.

I'm excited to announce that VALORANT is getting a new Executive Producer.

And... we really didn't have to look very far.

It’s him, it’s Andy!

I'm not going anywhere,

I'll still be leading VALORANT,

but now at the Studio level,

thinking about the entire player experience throughout the whole ecosystem.

And I've asked Andy to focus on what's going on in the game itself.

So I'm handing over the dev team to Andy...

but we still get to be partners. And I love that.

Yeah.

Thanks so much, Anna,

and thank you all for making VALORANT such an incredible game.

We're still committed as ever to keeping the core game healthy

while evolving it with new updates.

And we want to introduce you

to more of the dev teams who bring these updates to life.

With that, here are Coleman and Dan to talk about the map rotation,

overall game health, and some gameplay changes to expect through the rest of the year.

Hey, all. I'm Coleman.

I’m a Product Manager on VALORANT gameplay.

And I'm Dan.

I work with Coleman as a Game Designer on Agents and Live Balance.

We're here to discuss some of the work we've been doing this year

and give you our thoughts on additional changes coming down the road.

But first, we've heard a lot of feedback from you all about map rotations lately,

and we've been talking as a team

about how we can make this experience better overall.

Rest assured that your feedback has been heard loud and clear.

As a starting point, we're going to be more transparent

around map rotations going forward

so you all know when they're happening ahead of time.

In the spirit of this,

we want to confirm

that the map pool will be rotating with Patch 8.11 in early June—

Breeze and Split will be rotating out,

and Haven will be rotating back in.

Now, let’s dive into our main topic for today—role diversity.

For context, the live game team’s top priority for 2024

has been to increase intra-role diversity across the roster—

basically, looking at each role

and ensuring more Agents are viable in each one.

And promoting role diversity sometimes means toning down the power

of an Agent whose dominance prevents other agents in that role

or even other roles entirely from getting picked.

That was the reasoning behind our changes to Skye and Viper earlier this year.

On the other side of things, often this can mean we also have to give

a little power back to weaker Agents within a role— like Chamber, Deadlock, or Gekko.

With changes like these, we often see players ask—

why not just buff our weaker agents to match our most powerful ones?

And we hear you. Buffs are fun!

But, there are two main reasons why we don’t focus

on buffing weaker agents as a primary balancing approach.

The first, VALORANT, as a game, is more than just Agents;

it’s a tactical shooter.

The VALORANT experience is a balancing act between Agent utility,

lethal gunplay, and tactical map design.

If we buffed all of our Agents to match our strongest ones in terms of power,

we’d run the risk of Agent abilities overshadowing everything else.

Instead, we strive to maintain a healthy power level for our Agents

and then tune our roster accordingly.

Second, as you all keep playing the game,

your aim, creativity, and teamwork keep getting better.

So we have to constantly reevaluate the game.

For example, Jett from the Open Beta would be an absolute terror

if she was unleashed on VALORANT in 2024.

And back then, she was widely considered underpowered.

So we have to ensure we're maintaining that balance

while also keeping up with the community.

None of this is to say we won't ever buff Agents.

In fact, we'll talk about some buffs in a minute.

But nerfing agents is also a very important responsibility of ours

and ensures that VALORANT will feel like VALORANT for years to come.

Okay, let's talk about some balance changes that you'll be seeing very soon.

In early June, with Patch 8.11,

we’re shifting our focus to the Duelist role.

Over time, we’ve seen pick diversity decline among Duelists,

especially in higher-skill and pro play brackets.

So we’ll be shipping some nerfs to Raze focused on her satchel mobility,

as she’s been an overly dominant pick in this space.

And as for buffs,

we see several candidates who have an opportunity

to be more relevant in the current meta—

Iso, Neon, and Reyna.

Don't worry.

We'll explain that last one.

Yeah.

For Iso and Neon, we’re leaning into strengthening what makes them unique.

Namely, we’ll be adjusting Iso’s shield paradigm

and Neon’s slide, as well as some other small tweaks.

And for Reyna, we know she’s quite strong in ranked,

but she actually struggles in more coordinated team play.

So, her changes aim to improve her viability in those team environments like Premier and Pro,

while also reducing some of her current ranked strength.

These balance changes in 8.11 will most likely be

the last significant ones you see from us until after champs.

We want to make sure pro teams have plenty of time to get used to

these changes after Masters Shanghai and adjust accordingly.

Of course, you'll still see smaller patches roll out during this time.

We'll just only adjust balance if something major bubbles up.

Also, we're working on some pretty exciting stuff

for after Champs that you’ll get to play closer to the end of the year,

like larger balance updates and modes changes.

We'll be back to chat with you more about all that after Champs.

Also, keep an eye out for more comms from the Maps team coming this summer.

Now we'll toss it over to Preeti and Sean.

Hi everyone.

I’m Preeti, Product Manager on VALORANT cosmetics.

And I’m Sean, Art Director on VALORANT cosmetics.

We’re here to talk to you about weapon skins!

When we launched VALORANT back in 2020,

Sean and I were in charge of figuring out skins for the game.

It was really, really intimidating.

Tac shooters were a completely new genre for Riot

and we sort of had to guess what kind of skins you’d all like.

Yeah, we had our own ideas about what types of skins would be popular or well-received,

but we also knew we had to serve different types of tastes, styles, and vibes.

We felt like there was a really unique opportunity

to push the boundaries of what skins could do in the tac shooter landscape.

Over time—lots of surveys, reading all those spicy hot takes,

looking at what people actually buy in-game— we started to learn your tastes.

And they are so much more diverse than we originally thought!

For many of you, gun skins are basically fashion —

our Collections page is an extension of your own closet

kinda like Tenz and his all-red Collection.

- You think all his shirts are red too? - Probably.

Ah, Sentinels.

So, one of our design goals

is to make sure there’s at least one skin out there for everyone—

something that feels like it was made just for you.

And something we've been hearing over and over again is “where are the pink skins?!”

I said on stream probably what, like a year ago or something like that,

that we were working on “non-edgy pink skins.”

At the time we were, and we still are today.

But we don’t just take any skin and recolor it pink.

It needs to make sense for the theme, otherwise it’ll just fall flat

and it seems like we're just trying to check a box.

And I wanna be clear here.

We’ve also been making efforts to understand

what you mean when you say you want pink skins.

Because “pink skin” means something different to every one of you.

Some mean cute or whimsical, some mean elegant and high-end, some mean feminine,

and no one can agree on which shade of pink is the “right” shade.

Sometimes even you, Preeti, get the distinction wrong between pink and purple.

Yeah. I don't know what color Reaver is. Is it pink or purple?

Once upon a time it was both.

For our first real attempt in this space,

we took your feedback about what you enjoy most from high-tier skins—

hype finishers, satisfying aimbot audio,

unique animations, stunning visual effects and

...sorry about the wall hacks. That was not intentional.

We’ve put all of that into Mystbloom.

Speaking of feedback, we heard you last year on the Champions Kunai.

We know one of the most important parts about a melee skin

is the inspect animation and how good it feels to spam.

With Mystbloom, we kept the super clean,

Jett-style equip you all love,

and we really leaned into what makes Mystbloom special as a theme.

We added a brand new inspect animation and mystical musical loop

that’s perfectly zen and BM at the same time.

After you get that 4K clutch, you're super hype,

your team is screaming in chat telling you to clip it -

we know that you want to add a little bit of style to that play.

And we know that the inspect should be really satisfying for that.

So we really hope we've made something you'll love with these skins.

And I swear we'll continue to work hard on making more skins for all of you,

no matter your tastes.

Mystbloom is just our first take on “pink skins,”

but we promise, it won’t be the last!

[mysterious magical sound]

Anyway...

next up is Outlaw.

We know you've all been waiting for a sick Outlaw skin.

And with every new hype bundle you’re asking “Where’s the Outlaw?”

“Is Riot trolling?”

“Why doesn't Mystbloom have an Outlaw?”

No, we're not trolling.

Making high-tier skins just takes time.

A really long time.

It's going to be a few more months,

but I'm not going to say anything else about that.

We can say something.

I'll say something.

Fine, I guess.

One of your favorite high-tier skinlines of all time

is gonna be expanding to include a CLEAN, new Outlaw skin.

I felt like it’s really worth sharing.

That's right.

We're bringing a Smite Outlaw to you.

[record scratch]

No, Sean. We scrapped that idea.

We're actually doing the other one.

The one that people actually want.

Not the Night Market meme.

Not the one that you bought just to troll me.

Okay, okay.

I mean, but some people do like Smite though, right?

Yeah, the other one's cool and everything, but...

Yes, all right. Either way,

we are working on really good Outlaw skins.

We promise it'll be worth the wait. Just let us cook.

Yeah, Chef.

We've got a lot cooking, and it can’t all fit into this video.

So we’ll be back later this year

to give you another update on skins, accessories, and more.

Now back to Andy and Anna.

All right, thanks so much for watching.

- We’re so g— - Wait.

There was something else we wanted to talk about,

and I cannot remember what it was.

Oh.

Replays.

Yeah, it seems there's been some increased chat in the community about Replays lately.

Seems as though some folks want an update.

Yeah we've seen some really creative inquiries about Replays,

and I actually want to hand it over to Marcus, VALORANT’s Technical Lead,

to talk about where we’re at with Replays in more detail.

Hi, everyone!

I’m happy to be able to stop by and nerd out a little bit with you all on Replays.

First off, we have been working on Replays.

You’re actually looking at a freecam view

from a prototype build of our Replay system right now.

But I want to emphasize the word prototype here,

as this is nowhere near launch

and you’re about to see one of the types of challenges that we need to solve.

From the beginning, VALORANT was designed from the ground up

to maximize performance, stability, and competitive integrity online.

We built gameplay logic and in-game assets around a multiplayer session.

Player does a thing,

their game client relays that thing to the server,

other players in the game see that thing in real time.

Replays, though,

introduce new requirements that aren't present in normal games.

For example, when viewing a Replay, time might be paused,

or you might want to review a specific round in a match.

Unreal gives us a lot for free on Replays,

but we didn't plan for these scenarios upfront.

There are a plethora of issues with maps, abilities, weapons, as well as visual

and audio effects that we need to work through to make them Replay ready.

Otherwise, defects show up when viewing moments out of the game and in a Replay.

Some of these defects are pretty funny.

For example,

here’s a side-by-side clip that shows me interacting with a door switch in a custom game

beside that same interaction when viewed in a replay.

Not sure that door in the replay is very good at being a door.

Other defects are more subtle,

but for replays to be valuable to all of you, they need to be accurate.

In this clip, we see another side-by-side of a moment

in a custom game vs. that same moment in a Replay.

Notice the game clock in each frame.

As Brim takes the corner in the Replay frame,

we see the smoke deploying from the start of the ability’s animation—

but it should have already been active

as it was deployed before Brim rounded the corner.

Then when the smoke timer ends,

the replay smoke disappears without the dispersion animation.

These clips only show a of couple defects with a couple of individual assets.

VALORANT’s gameplay is built from thousands of these

individual assets that all need to be audited for correctness

and possibly adjusted to be correct in Replay scenarios.

And we need to do all of that work without breaking anything in the live game.

So yes, we're taking our time to make sure that we get it right.

Now back to Anna and Andy.

Oh hey, we’re back!

Thanks for taking that one Marcus.

VALORANT community, please trust me when I say,

we are right there with you

and we’re committed to building this Replay system.

We’ll give you all another update on Replays

when there’s more to share in the future.

We know you’ve all been more than patient with us on this issue,

and we thank you for that. We will get there!

Alright, that’s it for today. Thanks again for watching.

And we'll be back a bit later this year.

Thanks, everyone!