[2020] VALORANT Premium Content Team, AMA on past and future cosmetic content

over 3 years ago - /u/oniram177 - Direct link

EDIT: Thanks everyone for joining us in this AMA!! We're signing off for the night!

Hey everyone!

We’re the Premium Content team on VALORANT (this is Sean Marino writing), responsible for the base weapons, skins lines, Battlepass content, and Agent contracts. Basically, if it’s a cosmetic in the game, then our team made it! For the sake of this AMA, you’ll notice we didn’t say pricing—we don’t decide on this, so we won’t have answers for you on that front!

This is your time to chat about the guns, skinlines, and every piece of content used to personalize your time in VALORANT.

We’re currently working on stuff for Episode 2 and beyond, so we’ll do our best to answer Episode 2 questions without spoiling all the goods. We’ll be here from now until 5pm Pacific Time, and we will edit this post to indicate when we’re signing off!

This is us:

Sean Marino, Art Lead - oniram177

Preeti Khanolkar, Producer - Riot_Preeti

Sammi Pedregon, Art Outsource Manager - heyyousam

Samantha Russo, Art Outsource Manager - samazonprim3

Stefan Jevremovic, VFX Artist - Riot_R4kiya

Lea Hughes, Researcher - aeneia

Isaac Kikawa, Audio Designer - RiotKarateMonkey

Sean Bigham, Concept Artist - Gutterworks

^ This isn’t our entire team. Some of us are shy (but we’re lurking)!

External link →

over 3 years ago - /u/oniram177 - Direct link

EDIT: Thanks everyone for joining us in this AMA!! We're signing off for the night!

Hey everyone!

We’re the Premium Content team on VALORANT (this is Sean Marino writing), responsible for the base weapons, skins lines, Battlepass content, and Agent contracts. Basically, if it’s a cosmetic in the game, then our team made it! For the sake of this AMA, you’ll notice we didn’t say pricing—we don’t decide on this, so we won’t have answers for you on that front!

This is your time to chat about the guns, skinlines, and every piece of content used to personalize your time in VALORANT.

We’re currently working on stuff for Episode 2 and beyond, so we’ll do our best to answer Episode 2 questions without spoiling all the goods. We’ll be here from now until 5pm Pacific Time, and we will edit this post to indicate when we’re signing off!

This is us:

Sean Marino, Art Lead - oniram177

Preeti Khanolkar, Producer - Riot_Preeti

Sammi Pedregon, Art Outsource Manager - heyyousam

Samantha Russo, Art Outsource Manager - samazonprim3

Stefan Jevremovic, VFX Artist - Riot_R4kiya

Lea Hughes, Researcher - aeneia

Isaac Kikawa, Audio Designer - RiotKarateMonkey

Sean Bigham, Concept Artist - Gutterworks

^ This isn’t our entire team. Some of us are shy (but we’re lurking)!

External link →

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by Rumblemike

Do you guys like ValorLeaks on Twitter? Also any hints on future skins?

Sometimes I go to check what is going to be in the next patch on ValorantLeaks :)

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by According-Movie-8796

How do you guys go about coming up with a theme/concept for a skin set, also love your guys' work its amazing to see :D

We get locked in the room! Then we brainstorm. And we can only exit with unanimous decision that we have great ideas for skins. :)

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by SilverPrincev

Ability skins? are they in the works? Ranked sprays? Like an animated spray that celebrates a certain rank reached for each episode? Gun buddy for tournament winners? or ranked spray for tournament winners? I think exclusive content is really cool and a great addition to games like this. Can we have votable skin lines? Similar to dota 2, you guys can give us skin concepts and community votes. Or better yet, community has a platform for skin concepts and we can vote on them to be made? Crossover skins? i would love to see a bundle from naruto or something

We are thinking about Ability skins but we need keep competitive integrity. This means it would be hard to create visual effects that would still read as clear as their default skin. Imagine seeing Omen Smoke as something else but you do not recognize is, would you go in, or not? So we have to be careful about how to do this. The current idea that might work is that Ability skins would only be visible to the person who have those skins, where everyone else would see them as default skins.

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by taintedPurple

Will agent weapons ever consider getting finishers?

no, sorry!

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by Fireball9782

What's your favorite skin line that you've released so far and why?

Prime has a special place in my hearth because it was the first Weapon skin I worked on. And the first Finisher I did. But I also like Singularity and Ion the most.

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by pixel_5

Do you guys have any plans of adding finishers/vfx to battle pass skins? I really love the skins in the battlepasses and the battlepass in general.

No, sorry!

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by Fersk93

Will you be going back to add variants to previously released melees?

Will you have finisher VFX match for variants (e.g. Prime finisher wolf matching the variant gun tracers)? If yes, same as #1, would you add them to past sets?

Will you be releasing skin sets more grounded in reality? I know some people here were interested in vintage style skins with wood furniture. Would that cause real world problems (wooden Vandal/Guardian looks too much like AKM/Garand)?

Excellent work btw, keep it up!

We are currently not thinking about Variants for Finishers but that doesn't mean we will not have them in future.

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by aloopy

I'm curious about the effects pipeline, is it mostly done in engine? Or do you use other DCCs like Houdini?

Our game needs to run on a 10y/o laptop so we need to create skins to be a cheep as possible for processing power. We create all particle systems inside Unreal4 but we do use other software and scripts for faster pipeline. I personally use Maya/Unreal/Photoshop the most.

over 3 years ago - /u/Riot_R4kiya - Direct link

Originally posted by TheVCurry30

Hello Valorant Premium Team! Thank you for all the hard work and effort in provising us amazing content from bundles to battlepasses and etc.

Speaking of bundles, will there every be a chance where a bundle is done for every single weapon? Like everyone weapon has the same skin as opposed to here and there.

As acts goes by, how do you guys prepare for upcoming content? Do you guys have like a set theme going or picking what looks to be done efficiently?

Will there ever be customized vfx to select and add/remove to weapons? Or vfx for us players to earn in the future?

Thank you for your time in answering these questions!

If you are talking about effects for the current upgraded skins to be turned off/on. We are not currently supporting this but we might in the future.

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by iPlayOnlyViper

Sorry to include myself to this specific post but I am pretty much same as OP post in this, I also like collecting gun buddies and was wondering if its possible to get one too? (Upéx#000)

Also if you see this I was wondering if some gun bundles like this xmas one, if they are staying in the rotating shop or are they up for 2 weeks and then gone from the shop/rotating shop forever or maybe coming next winter again etc?

Sorry for my bad english.

Aww! I also am a gun buddy collector so I appreciate other players who also have a love for gun buddies! There you go! You should have it now!

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by Beelzebubflies

I like how everyone says Ba-Bam! after sending the gun buddy. are there any other ways to unlock the buddy or you just need to get ba-bammed by you guys?

I honestly am not sure what everyone else says, but I just say it because I thought it was funny lol. You dont need to say it to get it. xD

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by GinjaNinjaYT

Three words: Nerf. Gun. Skins.

One word: BlastX

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by DevanshuAnada

Hey, at the outset I would like to tell you that I am completely in love with all the gun skins that are already out and I really appreciate the level of detail in each one of them. I would like to ask you that whether designing these skins is a super fun task to do or does it get hectic and difficult sometimes? Also, do you all also actually play the game regularly or you get enough of it by just designing the skins xD?

Personally, I dont ever find brainstorming new skinlines boring. It's always fun to figure out "What would players want to see next? What can we improve on?" We really do love our job and want the best in this game. We do actively play the game as well because, how are we supposed to be good at our job if we don't play the game enough to know what players want out of this game too? :)

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by Fourt-Nuyt

How is your day going?

The past few weeks were extremely busy for me, but today I had a bit more of a break thankfully. :) Thanks for asking!! Hope your day is going well!

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by GimmeTheZoppety

First of all, great job so far. I especially loved the singularity skin pack. Now onwards to the Qs:

1 is there a plan for every gun to have an approximately even amount of skins (e.g. i sadly cannot flaunt my poor lil stinger in a similarly fashionable way as my phantom) ?

2 where from does one acquire the neat riot gun buddy i saw in the first strike tournament? Did i miss something there along the way?

Edit: stopped screaming

*notices the size of the font* okay calm down

over 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by roaringsquid_69

Rush Phantom or Winter Wonderland. Which one do y'all like more?

"Walking in a winter wonderland" 🎵

about 3 years ago - /u/heyyousam - Direct link

Originally posted by N04Hr

nononono dont tempt me.... I want to wait for the gravitational baton as I like being different ;) The candy cane is looking at me funny though... P.S. I suck with the frenzy I just think it looks cool with that gun skin

Wanted to follow up with you, THIS is my favorite gun skin. :)

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