Valorant Dev Tracker

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?

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

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.

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

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.

I DONT THINK IM ALLOWED TO ANSWER THIS ONE

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.

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...

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/

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

Hello Reddit

We’re members of the Characters Team that together create New Agents and balance Agents. Now that you’ve spent some time with Fade, digested recent Jett/Sova/Neon changes, and learned to play against reworked Controllers and Yoru—we thought it's a really great time to connect on MOST things Agents.

You can still ask about all our Agents, but we are top heavy on team members who worked on Fade, so expect the bulk of our answers to go to her. FYI, we have plans for Agent lore discussions from the Narrative team in the future, so you may not get too much of that here.

There’s always work in progress—but don’t expect any new Agent spoilers from us today. Also, we likely can’t answer your questions on competitive, esports, maps, etc. We’re here to answer questions from now until 3pm Pacific Time, and we’ll update this post to say when we’re heading out!

John Goscicki, Character Producer - ...

Even got the SpongeBob jokes in your video

And you even included a Spongebob meme

It is true! :D Conor did an amazing job on both Pig and Pink gun!

Happy accidents like this are also how we ended up with glitchpop. A different artist back in 2019 misread the word "magepunk" for "megapunk."