Valorant Dev Tracker

There's probably some amount of misinterpretation going on there, which is not your fault at all so I can understand how that's confusing. I'd be surprised if he said it was working "exactly as intended", because the Op has been a point of discussion internally for quite some time, but the Op has been "doing its job" quite well in terms of holding down angles. We think the Op is overperforming in areas that it doesn't need to, which is leading to this nerf - its ability to lock down angles is working as intended, but its ability to peek into them, secure back to back kills, and be purchased as often as it is is more problematic.

Also, it's worth calling out that Morello is a member of the balance team and obviously a hugely influential designer in our org structure, but he is not the voice of the balance team and not everything he says on his stream should be taken as absolute gospel. We can and do disagree on different subjects, and y'all should take the patch notes as the...

Will pass this on!

I totally agree; it's a weird state right now where our 3rd party API resources aren't spun up yet or accurate, but we haven't shared any of our internal data. It's something I'd like to do, even if it's just a snapshot of a patch for visibility.

It got talked about, but the scoping sound just doesn't address a lot of the pain points around the Op. Even in situations where you know an Opper is in an area (via a scope sound or some other utility), the gun in its current state can feel oppressive due to how effective it is at peeking angles and securing multikills, which makes fighting against it difficult. We want to encourage players to combat Operators with utility and coordination, while also making an Operator more of an investment and rare purchase, which is what these changes set out to do - a scope in sound doesn't really help us accomplish any of that, and also doesn't address many of the pain points players were feeling around the Op (feeling like even if you play around it effectively/force them out with utility, they can punish you anyway)

Because players have been learning the game this entire time and we've been watching game data as it progresses. Now that it's become more stable and the pro scene has solidified more, it's easier for us to be confident in our analysis.

These 5 changes are focused around a specific vision for the Op and how it should fit into our game - shipping balance changes is about the impact you want to make, not the number of tweaks that get bundled together to get there. This is one change with a goal in terms of how it should effect behavior and usage of the Operator. In games like this, it's very rare that you can just make a single change and accomplish all of your goals, because content interacts with other content and systems in a complex way.

This will still punish defensive players as long as you force them off the angle with utility. Dry-peeking defensive oppers will still get you killed (and we want to maintain this - it's what the weapon is for), but it'll be much harder for them to peek back into you if you take the angle with a flash or daze. The refire rate also makes it easier for allies to trade on Ops, and the equip time makes it harder for Ops to be combat ready after using counter-utility to slow a push.

As was mentioned in the last patch notes...

While these major Agent changes settle, we have turned our eye on a more pressing issue: the Operator. We know that this weapon can feel very oppressive to play against, often leaving players feeling like there is no hope when attacking. We agree that the Operator is likely having an outsized impact on match outcomes and are testing a suite of changes to address this issue.

For how important the Operator is to the game, we want to make sure we are making the right call, so we’re giving these changes a bit more time to soak internally to make sure we get them just right.

C'mon...

I don't think the general stance of the balance team has been that the Op is "fine", but rather that we've been taking our time to make methodical changes that we're confident in.

Here's a twitter thread from two weeks ago where I say that the Operator needs changes, both from a balance perspective and a sentiment perspective. We also called out that we've been working on changes in the last set of patch notes, and have been for some time - we identified the opportunity awhile back, but wanted to make sure that we were making the right changes, for the right reasons.

Here ya go!

• 43.229.65.1
• 151.106.248.1

So for example we had a different axe - some viking sort of inspired thing (not saying we're working on a viking skin just an example :P) - even though the model is distinct from the Prime axe, that would be more apparent that they share the same animset, and you'd likely want to see a different anim to further differentiate the two, correct?

If thats what you're after I completely get it, and for us what we have to find is a fine balance between reinventing the wheel like ive mentioned. Some of our animators may work to make things feel different but on a similar enough type of weapon, youd have to go pretty far for it to be noticeable. So its a fine balance of how much of this are we able to modify, vs completely restart. The more unique things we do, the longer they take, and the longer players may have to wait for it. By no means does that mean its not worth doing but its definitely something we consider when working on new skinlines. For some thematics we find that t...

Totally agree about the inspects. We're definitely looking into ways for these to feel better in the future since its the most unrelated to gameplay and offers a unique opportunity space

Thoughts and prayers

Thanks! I know it probably doesn’t seem like it but we honestly do read and listen to a lot of what we hear. Changes just take time and Reddit isn’t always representative of all players around the world.

I can weigh in a bit here. For context, I'm the tech lead and project manager for our Gameplay Integrity team which focuses on game client and server performance. I am Plat1 and primarily play on a 144hz 2k monitor. So I'm not a top tier player. I can't give firsthand advice on how to get to that next level; cause if I knew I'd do it.

So first off I want to address the "do I need X hardware to reach Y skill level". I would say hard NO. I believe that pros and high level players typically having great hardware is more correlation than causation. High level players are willing to dedicate an immense amount of time and effort to get to that level. It makes sense that they'd also be willing invest monetarily. The hardware isn't making them good it's the dedication, the dedication is the thing leading them towards getting the best hardware.

Does hardware/ping/etc matter all? Hard YES. I've seen plenty of research that shows the same player on better hardware will perform...

This is amaziiing!

they do!

Hehe well we've talked about before that if players like a skinline we can always revisit later with new weapons. You're right that the Elderflame Vandal caused a lot of that early on confusion and internally we always said that was as far as we wanted to go in terms of something feeling different. When we were in the early phases of the G.U.N development, we had lots of comments and concerns that the Phantom we were making was just way too far out of the expectation. The classic also got a lot of this feedback but was salvageable.

A huge part of it was us not catching it early enough to make the change, so if we do revisit its definitely something we know to look out for now.

so when you think about those examples, particularly prime and sovereign, do those having the same equip and attack animations bother you? or is their model change enough to still be appealing?

Im curious to hear your thoughts on how different of an animation you'd want to see for something like this? we get this feedback a lot and in a hopes to understand a bit more, im going to pick you to begin helping us with that. Say you had a regular knife, similar to the Ego or Smite ones. Would a new equip animation on that be exciting? or for you is it more of the animations with a new type of weapon?
We always try to find opportunities to add to melee weapons where we can without completely reinventing the wheel, so id love to hear from your perspective what amount of change would be exciting for you?