[2022] VALORANT Characters Team AMA on Fade, balance, and most things Agents (2PM PT–3PM PT)

Yup! Sova was bringing a lot of unique value and we wanted someone else to help bring a similar value to a team

Yes! It was. We didn't want the new dash activation to get in the way of Jett playing aggressively if it didn't have to. In future balance updates it is possible for us to remove it if it's needed. In 4.0.8 our goal with the Jett changes was to limit how much Jett could take space for free, and reduce her strength on defense.

You probably saw it, but we did a deep dive on the Jett changes if you're curious: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-jett-changes-for-patch-4-08/

Early on we knew we wanted to explore the recon space within the VALORANT Tac Loop. Once we were all aligned on that u/Nickwu drafted up a paper kit (A paper kit is just a document with potential abilities and goals written out for us to discuss), from there he started building the agent in game.

From there once we start playtesting the Agent we are experimenting with abilities trying to find the core mechanic or "hook" for an Agent. For Fade this became her trails and how to gather information around them.

Once a "hook" is locked in we brought Concept Art and Narrative into the loop to start exploring the thematic wrapper for Fade. Early on when playing against Fade, we discovered it was a very anxiety/fear inducing experience, and looked to double down on that with a spooky darker theme. This thematic exploration process takes a few months of the team throwing out ideas, and trying to narrow down to an idea that working within the world of VALORANT, and meets our constraints.

Though the main reason was to reduce disruption for Neon and her allies during the execute phase, what we've found over time was that the damage on Neon's wall became fairly trivial when it came to the decision making of peeking into the wall, unless enemies were already low. We also wanted to keep consistent rules with other walls that did permanent damage (versus decay), such as Phoenix's wall. We'll be keeping an eye on how this affects Neon in the future, though, and will find a solution that helps Neon feel safer in her Fast Lane.

I DONT THINK IM ALLOWED TO ANSWER THIS ONE

Upfront, yes we are working on Phoenix, but it is too early for us to talk about details of what it may entail. Right now we want to take the time to explore everything between number tweaks to to something more, unfortunately we do not have a solid eta on that, and we want to take the time to find the right long term place for Phoenix.

Right now we plan for 12-14 months of development from first conversation to ship.

We often look into what it feels like the play the agent before starting on a theme. When playing as Fade there was a feeling of marking a target, tracking them down, and executing them. While for the people playing against, once you were marked it filled the player with fear and anxiety. So we looking to re enforce both of those feelings with what you see today.

I feel like every agent had their own unique problems we needed to solve that made it hard in the moment. The ones that stood out to me, during my time on design, has been Yoru and Astra since there were some tighter timelines on some on the more complex problems. I'm sure other disciplines have other reasons as to why one or another were harder, I'm sure I made some agents harder than they needed to be on engineering hahaha

From the engineering perspective, of the post-launch agents it's probably KAY/O or Astra.

KAY/O's suppression involves unique interactions with every other ability. And his Ultimate requiring a player to avoid death, but still be killable, AND be resurrected involved a bunch of fiddling.

Also, Astra possesses an astral projection in another plane of existence, sooo yeah.

Do you plan to make a new character class?

We're definitely open to finding new classes in Valorant, but we want to make sure that those classes are both healthy for the game and contribute to the tactical space in unique and meaningful ways. If / when we find an Agent that expands what's possible and checks those boxes, we wouldn't want them to be restricted to fit into the classes they currently exists. What classes do you think would be interesting to explore in the game?

Yes, the plan is still to remove one of the traps for 4.09. We'll still be monitoring how he performs on Defense to make sure he's still a powerful defensive agent, and will adjust if necessary in the future.

We believe there are many ways sentinels can control and defend space, whether it is through the use of reactive slow abilities like Sage, flank watching gadgets like Cypher or defensively oriented movement abilities and weapons like Chamber. We specifically wanted to keep the unique parts of Chamber strong (as the high-tech weapons-guy, he's probably supposed to be uniquely powerful with his Headhunter and Tour De Force) while sharpening Chamber's weaknesses compared to the other trap-oriented Sentinels.

There are a few things we keep in mind:

- Where have we made an Agent from before, we want each release to fell varied and diverse.
- These Agents represent the best of the best in their field/capabilities, and there wouldn't be all that many of them.
- Where in the world do we have players playing VALORANT, that does not have agent representation.
- Is there anything in the culture that ties into the character.

Often we pick a country/culture super early on so we can do our research and incorporate all the small details into the agent.

Cause toebeans are cute uWu

We always try to plan ahead about how we could add or remove power from a character over time if needed. To do that, we look for tuning levers. What is a 'tuning lever'?

As game designers, we can tune a lot of things, almost too many things. Technically we can tune the length of Chamber's pants, even though it doesn't matter. What makes something we can change a "tuning lever", is that we can rely on changing it to meaningfully balance power.

Sometimes post-launch that balance plan is wrong, or we identify unresolved needs that require changes. In those cases, we have to go back and change mechanics. We try to avoid it because we know players love characters the way they are already, but ultimately it happens to almost every game.

We started out wanting to make a character that would bring similar value to Sova and that naturally lead us to creating an Initiator from the very start!

While I can't answer this concretely at the moment, we are always thinking of what a healthy roster/role make up looks like in the long term for the game.

We need to be thinking a year + in advance we locking stuff like the role in.

Yo! I worked on the Jett changes. We're still learning from how players are adjusting but things are good so far.

I feel ya on wanting to tune the dash instead of changing it fundamentally. We actually tried both of those things (and a bunch more). It's hard to share all the context on why we didn't do those, but here's a little TLDR:

If we made the dash slower, it makes Jett not successfully get out when she dashes which feels really bad. It also makes Jett a lot like Neon rather than her own special self.

If we made the dash go less far, it actually doesn't move the needle on the problems we identified. For example, Jett can still infinitely hold with a (smaller) off angle with an OP and get out for free.

I hope that helps a bit, and there's more context in the Jett deep dive article if you're curious: https://playvalorant.com/en-us/news/game-updates/valorant-jett-changes-for-patch-4-08/

It was no one thing, when working on her the team is always taking in reference and inspiration from everywhere. Let's just say it got dark.

Viper left the meta?

We're much happier with the state of controllers after the 4.04 adjustments. Astra was a polarizing pick that overly limited composition diversity and heavily dictated the pace that attackers could play at. Even before the nerfs, Astra was an underplayed and underpowered agent in competitive queue unless you're looking at higher MMR bands. A lot of her power is locked behind strong communication, where she needs her teammates to constantly deliver information so she can make the right decisions around star usage. This is why we see her best utilized at the high ends of pro play.

We accept that she may be less accessible to users across the board, but do want to ensure she exists in a healthy place. There should be compositions and maps where she is powerful compared to other controllers, so we'll continue to monitor her spot in the game across various skill levels.

1 damage ??? he would be so OP

We have no set number at the moment, as a team we are always evaluating and gathering information on the state of the game and general sentiment. If at some point there is an overwhelming amount of agents then we will assess, but as a team we still believe there is a ton of space to grow and expand the possibilities within VALORANT.

why don't you buff Yoru's Tp knowing that the chamber is faster and can't get out of a place as fast as any other duelist? Jett's dash, Raze's satchel, Reyna's dismiss, Neon's slide

We have always loved the idea of making Yoru's teleport feel more unique by giving it different strengths, such as the fake TP, that feel more in line with his gameplay promise and thematic. We want to make sure we have room to build different styles of mobility and/or displacement on our duelists that aren't forever restricted to being a combat escape.

Fade's introduction to the game is so far really interesting and one of the comments that was made about her was the fact that she is very "non lineup" unlike Sova. Is this a step forward that you guys will be carrying out for newer agents or is it that Fade is unique in her kit being set up this way?

We specifically wanted Fade to not be as line-up dependent as her counterpart (Sova) is more line-up dependent. This isn't to say specifically that more agents will trend toward one way or the other though, and we want to support all kinds of playstyles and players. Fade and Sova have their strengths and weaknesses, and we want to continue to expand the roster in this way.

Inspiration can and has come from all over the place! Viper originated from an amazing piece of concept art, Reyna from the orb mechanic we thought could resonate with duelist players, and part of Fade's initial inspiration came from wanting to create an Agent to compete in Sova's space and building from there. No matter where the idea comes from, we always step back to make sure from a design perspective that we can find something unique that Agent can bring to the play space to ensure they have their own strategic possibilities to unlock.

Phoenix's wall will stay in tact and will still do damage in the same way it currently does

We're totally ok with some agents being better at using the OP than others. In the long term we want that strength to come with tradeoffs in your team composition.

We do something similar in our "State of the Agents" articles. I used to work with "reav3" on Champion team and the "State of the Agents" articles are meant to emulate that feeling somewhat. I don't think we will ever go as far out as they do when it comes to agents, but always be on the look out in game for teasers :)

We did not nerf Shock Darts to make lineups less effective, but to sharpen Sovas identity for the long term health of Valorant. Ability damage vs. Gun damage is something that we will have to closely monitor over the course of the games life, and we want to be very explicit with when and how an ability will kill.

Sova is a premier intel agent, and we want to keep his strengths primarily focused on those outputs. We felt Shock Darts were too forgiving for Sova compared to the limited counterplay that opponents had. That's not to say that shock darts should not generate value, but we're being very explicit in moving these to be chip damage tools or utility breakage as a basic ability.

We talked about Phoenix in this thread below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/uhpubl/valorant_characters_team_ama_on_fade_balance_and/i77ll68?context=3

Cypher is in a similar situation. We aren't prepared to share details or dates but he is definitely on our radar.

Joey, the Romeo to my Juliet,
How art thou?
No Viper buffs yet

Is Omen a cat?