It’s been a while since we, Sean and Preeti from the Premium Content team, have written an article on our cosmetics (but have you read Sammi’s story on Nunca Olvidados?), so we’re thrilled to again deep dive into how we make weapon skins in VALORANT.
Today’s topic is not only a throwback to the past but also one of our personal favorites: Reaver!
John “zt0l” Lotz, 18, has hit Radiant every Act since Act 2 and made the NA leaderboard top 10 for the entirety of Episode 4—all because he couldn’t go swimming at the height of COVID.
In early 2020, zt0l was ready to return to practice with his competitive swim team. A new facility and a new coach even meant a possible shot at Nationals. For safety reasons, coaches were eventually no longer allowed to train with the team and the structure soon fell apart. That’s when zt0l decided it was time to place his competitive drive elsewhere.
“It was demotivating to keep swimming,” zt0l said. “I’ll just figure something else out. Anything to fill that athletic space.”
Like clockwork, zt0l now streams nearly every morning and is a mainstay in the Radiant NA lobbies as Sova and Fade main.
To be clear, years of playing other FPS games made it an easier transition to VALORANT. As a teenager, zt0l had already found idols in Yassine "Subroza...
Read moreThe recent cinematic sent our community lore detectives scrambling for answers. Yeah you’re not going to find those below. Instead, we asked the dedicated lore Discord servers and Twitter to send us the wildest lore theories possible and collected a few here.
These theories are about as real as your chances in a 1v1 against TenZ.. But we love them, because they are yours.
“The younger Agents decided to make a tier list based on what Agents referred to themselves as. After going through the individual references, such as Cypher being Prometheus, Sage a mountain, KAY/O a toaster, etc. they moved on to how Agents roasted others…Neon brought up the excellent point of ‘If Chamber gets Brimstone ulted, doesn't that make him a french fry?’ The VALORANT Protocol now eats Chamber Fries every Friday.” —riptide30125
“Tactibear is a rampant alcoholic and his Tactifriends attempted to intervene, but failed. They instead cast him out to live a lonely, drunke...
Read moreShare your Pride in VALORANT with the latest Pride Bundle—a collection of 8 Player Cards and Gun Buddy that let you wave the colors you wear. The bundle and items are only available between June 1–20, but you can use them to show your Pride in-game all year long.
We’re making it easier for you to collect this time. Just find the bundle in the Store and select “purchase” at 0VP. You can also “purchase” the items individually at 0VP. Keep in mind, these are not automatically added to your collections, so you’ll have to unlock them from the Store!
Read moreOMEN
HAVEN
Hello again! We are the VALORANT Gameplay Technology team and we are here to give you part two of our investigation findings and actions for gameplay consistency.
If you need a refresher on a general overview of what we’ve heard, see our previous post last month. There we covered the general themes of what we’ve heard from players, an overview of what spaces we were digging into (latency, correctness, and high ping player performance).
With the previous post covering most of the “what” and “why,” we wanted to give details today on one of the main areas we improved: Latency and Buffering. We'll share the impo...
Read moreHopefully you’ve seen Fade’s reveal trailer where she torments Agents with their own nightmares. But there’s more to that story.
Before becoming an ally, Fade was the aggressor, blackmailing VALORANT over crimes for which she believed them guilty (don’t worry, they weren’t—it turns out interpreting nightmare-visions can be tricky). In Patch 4.07, tucked away on the Shooting Range map, keen-eyed players found this radio communications recording: an audio log of VALORANT’s mission in Istanbul to capture Fade and bring her in.
If you missed it while it was in-game, check it out! Evidence of Agent activity is always popping up on the range, in Cypher’s surveillance station or downstairs in Brimstone’s field office. After your next bout against the range’s bots, consider taking a look around. You never know what you might find.
Q: Now that there are 7 maps in the rotation, will you be adding a map pick/ban system?
This is not something we're currently planning for regular Competitive queue play, because at this time we really want to reinforce learning how to play all maps (instead of always avoiding specific ones). That being said, we do believe a map pick/ban system is worth exploring in an environment fit for complex team strategizing like our planned tournament mode. It's still a work-in-progress, but we see its potential in a space where teams will have planned plays and Agent compositions for various maps—or maybe they just want to avoid yay's Chamber on Bind.
—Jon Walker, Competitive Designer
Q: Are you still working on a Gifting system?
We are definitely as excited about this idea as we were...
Read moreGreetings all, I’m Alexander Mistakidis, Agent designer on VALORANT, here with Agent Designer Jay Watford and Game Designer Sal Garozzo to talk about upcoming changes to Jett.
When we promised more Agent updates than ever and patches have rolled in, many of you have wondered about Jett. Truth is that we have been working on Jett’s update for a while and took extra steps to make sure we were approaching the update in the best way possible. We wanted to do right for the game’s health and for Jett players. This article will share more context on why we are making these changes.
It’s crazy to think of how perception of Jett’s power has evolved from once being considered one of the weakest Agents in Beta to becoming a mainstay in most compositions. The team’s always loved what Jett brings to the roster: breaking through defenses on executions and making highlight plays with impressive mechanical skills. But...
Read moreHey folks, VALORANT Gameplay team here with a quick update on the investigation we’re running on game-to-game inconsistencies that some of our community has reported. TL;DR, We’re still actively working on this, and it remains one of our top priorities for the team. In the meantime, here’s an update on the approach we’re taking and findings so far.
When it comes to reports of inconsistent combat, these are the main themes that we’ve heard from some of you:
The VALORANT Agents have been busy with a pretty frightening problem. Explore around the Shooting Range to find out what they're up to.
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We’ve been collecting player feedback on DM these past few months and are introducing a few changes to address some of the main points of frustration around the spawning system:
This article is a part of a series of deep dives on topics in the Competitive/Social & Player Dynamics space of VALORANT. Learn more about the series here.
Hi again! Sara and Brian, members of the Social and Player Dynamics team on VALORANT, back with another update to chat about some incoming work on our pipeline. This is a tough one, so let’s jump right into it. Today, we’re going to talk about comms abuse in VALORANT and our strategy on tackling it.
Comms toxicity covers ...
Read moreHeyo all!
Welcome back into 2022. This is the Characters Team’s Part 2 of the Yoru Update article from last year. Right upfront, we are aiming to launch the Yoru rework during Episode 4 Act II.
Before we get there, we want to show which way the design direction is headed, our concept explorations to pair with the gameplay changes, and work-in-progress art in-game. Our time as of writing this is focused on bringing these changes to life—these always take quite a bit of time!
The loop of creating art to match gameplay, playtest, and iterate based on feedback always takes a bit of time, but ultimately, it’s what leads to VALOR...
Read moreIt is with a heart full of gratitude and a deep excitement that I come to you today with news. After 8 years of working on VALORANT, building it from the ground up with a team of dedicated and passionate developers who’ve worked tirelessly to serve you all with the respect and admiration that you deserve, I am giving up the mantle of game director of the VALORANT tac-shooter to my good friend, Andy Ho.
Andy is someone who I am proud to say has put many years of his own into VALORANT, and whose personal dedication to deliver to the highest standards inspires all who work with him. He has my full faith and trust that he will continue to grow and evolve VALORANT year-over-year to become even better than what I could imagine it to be. As for me, I’ll be starting something new (*wink, secrets…) in the hopes that we can even scratch the surface of the amazing impact VALORANT has already had so far.
That said, I’ll not be far from the game and the team and they’ll alway...
Read moreHey all!
With 2021 wrapping ( ;_; where did the year go?) I wanted to send out one more update and give some insight into next year. But first, thank you to everyone who has played VALORANT over this past year. It’s been a wild ride, the fan art, cosplay, memes, hype af plays—all have been more than we could have ever imagined.
I mean we hoped for it, but to actually have it happen blew us away. Hopping into a match and getting to frag out with y’all has been a blast, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and we’re looking forward to making more dope stuff next year.
Consider this: Within one hour of launching an Agent, they get more total hours of play than all the months of internal playtesting combined.
Yoru tore his way into games, but for some of you, he fell flat on his promise (...
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