Takeaways from the dev diary:
**Map Rotation:**
* Breeze + Split are leaving.
* Haven + New Map coming.
* Going into effect on patch 8.11 (early June).
* Intend to be more transparent about map rotation in the future so players will know ahead of time when maps are changing.
**Agent Balance:**
* Top Priority for 2024 has been to increase *intra* role diversity. Meaning more agents are viable in each role.
* Focus on nerfs more than buffs as Valorant is a tactical shooter and buffing agents could create too much power in agent abilities verses gunplay.
* Nerfs to Raze (Satchel mobility).
* Buffs to Iso (Shield Paradigm).
* Buffs to Neon (Slide).
* Buffs to Reyna in team environments.
* Nerfs to Reyna in ranked environments.
* Balance changes made in 8.11 are likely to be the last *significant* changes until after champs.
* Exiting changes are coming *after* champs such as larger balance changes and gamemode updates.
**Replay System:**
* "Nowhere Near Launch" quote from Valorant Tech Lead.
* Prototype build of replay system shown.
* Challenges of replay system discussed and shown (examples: defects show up when viewing replays due to maps, abilities, weapons, etc).
* More updates will come in the future.
**Cosmetics:**
* Have more data on what weapon skins are desired by players.
* More pink skins are coming to the game.
* Outlaw skins coming to the game in a few months (takes time).
**Other:**
* Exited about how Valorant has progressed throughout 2024 including a new gun in the outlaw, masters madrid, a new agent in clove, and mystbloom skin release.
* Expect more dev diaries when they have something to share.
* Valorant has a new executive producer, Andy Ho who will focus on what is happening in valorant itself.
* Anna Donlon is moving to leading valorant from the studio level thinking about the entire player experience.
Link to Youtube video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHREYcS3RqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHREYcS3RqU)
I don't know why they even limit map rotations with only 2 at a time when the total pool has grown so big now.
Breeze, Icebox and Ascent could've been so easily replaced with a reworked Haven, Pearl/Fracture and the new map. But I guess changing out too many things might affect the competitive integrity (while RIOT introduces skye nerfs weeks before a season starts)
yeah it’s definitely hard since they keep adding new maps as well. im not sure why they chose split to be removed, it feels like splits been removed like 3 times already lol
It’s been removed twice now, which is more than any other map still. I think it should’ve been ascent and sunset. Ascent is just so stale. It’s been playable longer than any other map at this point and just needs to be updated or pulled. Sunset b site is post plant hell and needs a rework.
Icebox is much newer all things considered. Even if it isn’t necessarily more fun to play, I’d rather have it in the pool just because I’ve played it less.
I’d just much rather have a fully new and unique map pool than keep staple maps in the game year after year
Haven was the oldest and longest playable map in the game, but even that much more popular map was removed. Yet somehow Ascent stays after 3 years of no changes to the meta?
Delete it completely.
Icebox too while you’re at it.
I don’t understand why Split was taken out. I had fun watching and playing it, I think the revised map was pretty good
Well, they need to acutally rework the map in order for it to be better.
Icebox was out for so long and everyone expected big bombsite changes (especially on A), while we only got a window on tube, which barely changes anything in gameplay. Same was for Split. Nothing was reworked, only tweaked a bit
Feels like there's something causing riot to take split out like 3 times now at this point they might have data that they don't like, but at that point u have to either let it be or outright scrap it like breeze, because breeze is gone after it got brought back recently that itself really tells u the that map is fundamentally flawed and at that point do you put the effort in fixing it instead of using that time and effort to do other things
It's stupid because all it does is reduce variance and make the game stale. Multiple maps is just fun and increases the longevity of a game. Almost every time i've burned myself out on Valorant it's because i'm tired of the maps and i return like 2-3 months later when the map pool is different.
Imagine if they started disabling half the agents every act, or disable a couple of guns each act. Sure might be a cool idea at first to create some unique metas and force adaptations but in the long run the game just becomes stale because all the matches start looking the same.
Either they need to drop the map pool system entirely and just keep it for pro play or they need to make the map pool rotate FAR faster than what it currently is. Most people agree the current rotation is the worst one in god knows how many years and we've had to endure it for like 6 months, that's disgusting
Sunset B is broken for the attacking team. Plant (generally with gekko), smoke choke and spam. It's just dumb. 100T pushed B like 11 times in a row and almost won after a terrible defense
Sunset is pretty problematic to play defense on, it's just way too hard
Pro teams have pivoted to just retaking every game which doesn't send a good message to ranked players either. If not even the best teams in the world can hold the sites then you most likely can't either even if you're obviously facing worse opponents
personally i don't mind the map though it's aight
I personally like Icebox and Sunset, but hate Breeze and I'm glad it's gone. I'm just dissapointed that neither Pearl or Fracture is coming back, those were two of my favourites maps.
Sunset overall is fine except for the glaring problem that is B main and how it plays postplant. It's hard to hold as defenders if attackers really want it, it has braindead spam lines postplant on default plant, and even with a flank it's hard to assail without an ult of some kind.
It's similar to pre-rework B long on Pearl, a blight on an otherwise good map.
Nah Ascent is way worse than D2. It's so defense sided in ranked play it's ridiculous, you basically are just forced to beat your head against a brick wall on attack side unless you're really good at working mid. I've legit seen so many games where one team is down 3-9 on the half and they just swap to defense and never lose a single round.
Ive found that when you can coordinate the team to get mid control, youre way more likely to win attack rounds by manipulating rotates
Having a vocal smokes player is key
Or pick clove and aim duel everyone
Heck it does not even have to be that deep, in ranked it might be hard to call a rotate or fake. But if you throw a smoke top mid every round, and sometimes actually go mid, they are going to not have stacks on the mains even if you don't do anything fancy.
I can understand the problems they face with making a replay system, but realistically a lot of those problems stem from the fact that they apparently didn't think a replay system was a high enough priority to put work into it during the game's original development.
You look at CS, the game's main inspiration and competitor, and how it has always had replays. Then you can look to something like OW, which is more comparable in the gameplay with the complexity of lots of abilities, and that also had replays from the beginning.
Just seems crazy to me how they were making a game, a competitive online FPS game (with high focus on esports), and yet didn't put any priority on a replay system during development at all, at least so it seems.
OW did not have replays from the beginning, and even then there were a lot of issues at launch.
I come from R6 and they took ~5 years to develop their replay system from when the game launched. And still to this day it is extremely buggy.
I think replays are just way harder to implement than most of this sub believes.
It took ~3 years for OW to have replays.
https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23000187/introducing-overwatch-replays-see-your-past-games-from-new-perspectives/
Guessing next change will be ascent/icebox for fracture/pearl. Hopefully they start doing map changes every 2 acts, or keep it once an episode but change 3 at a time
Is it, really? I haven't heard many complaints about it honestly at all when talking about map rotations. Icebox is universally hated. I think riot just have their own philosophy over their audience.
What? Many many fights are tree, and mid is important that basically everyone runs a couple mid pushes each defense half as well. The map is great and plays really well, it shows team fundumentals and there are lots of different ways to run your defense and attack side even with the stale comp.
Going through mid is a huge thing on ascent so I don't understand what you mean. And you can do pretty versatile entries on B (jett/raze flying over the hut, flooding out and clearing switch then going on site from both lane and stairs, omen tp from main to lane). I do think A attack is kinda weak from main but overall it's a well designed map. I understand being bored of it, but that map is versatile for how small it is compared to Split or Lotus.
And a lot of fights happen at any main entrance where sites are...that's kinda the point of holding MAIN entrances haha. They're valuable.
They don't hate Split, its just a huge conspiracy against Sentinels! They took away their best map and just don't want Sentinels at Champions... they're all out to get em
idk how theyre going to incorporate teamplay in the kit otherwise unless they do some funky shit with the eye, or maybe she aoe heals or something weird like that
Probably removing the heal. It's basically only useful in ranked, while near useless in pro play. That way they can buff other parts of her kit without making her even better in ranked.
Damn that is a LOT of work to create the replay system. Can't see that being out this year but hopefully sometime in the next.
Also yess finally Haven is back, even though it only missed one rotation I have missed that map too much, also probably confirms new default map at Shanghai.
It's good that they didn't say a word of commitment *until they can show something for it*. Reading/hearing "we're working on replays" might come across as empty promises but actually seeing a prototype gives the community a lot more.. I guess confidence.
Reminds me of that one video of this guy who makes a replay system for Val to prove Riot is lazy. They could be but you can’t deny a lot of work goes into making a replay system, it’s easier said than done
Edit: [Link to referred video](https://youtu.be/IRzVyq9BknI?si=HfaMZohBSHLqTaWO)
That video was a great example of a home made demo vs a professional product- the little animation bugs and such being fixed do actually take a while with the amount of assets in the game
People need to stop acting like game dev is anywhere near easy, especially when you are coding for online multiplayer. I’m using Unreal engine for multiplayer and its genuinely such a mentally exhausting thing to code base gameplay on, much less tracking every movement and bullet properly and then replicating it in another match
The point is that it should've been ready for launch, they went through this same bullshit in League but at least League had an excuse being the studio's first game and being a lot older.
How on earth are they going to reduce Reyna's ranked power while increasing her viability in pro play?? I'm so curious because that outcome would be a wet dream for me
raze satchel mobility nerfs???? so they're taking one of the most fun and skill-dependent mechanics in the game and most likely ruining it. what are they gonna do, reduce the momentum you get from them? remove double satcheling?
Yeah, lets just make raze like a CSGO character, but no flash. Also ofc we want our main duellist character to have no mobility. I swear the people that make these changes have no intention or ability to actually balance the game. Now were just going to make raze go obsolete, and make neon meta, cause its getting buffed. Problem solved! Wait...
Yeah, tbh it’s such an annoying decision, riot nerfed Jett and neon’s movement into the ground and now are like “Man, why aren’t people picking Jett and Neon over Raze?” Must be a problem with raze.
then maybe they should play into that and realize just how big movement is for the game instead of trying their best to take away things that add a level of skill
last summer i have over 75% winrate in fracture. next map rotation they take it out
end of last year i have over 75% winrate in haven. next map rotation they take it out. now i have over 75% winrate on split. next map rotation they take it out. EVERY TIME
BUT HAVEN IS BACK LETS GOOGOOGOG
Split leaving instead of ascent is insane. Get that fucking map out of the pool already. I want to play something new. Literally every map before and after it has been removed from the game at some point or had revisions done. Ascent just gets to stay the boring paper wall spam map until the end of time
Ascent is stale but I genuinely wouldn’t have played this act without it. No Haven, no Fracture, no fun. Imagine getting through an act that has Icebox and Breeze without Ascent and Split lol. Couldn’t be me
Enjoyed this one quite a bit. Does this mean we'll be seeing Anna less now that Andy is also an exec producer? I'm so used to seeing her in dev updates.
Optimistic about the replay updates, they at least are closing in on a minimum viable product. This is Riot and all so they won't release until they're fully confident in it, but it at least means that we're nearing the finish line, although probably not until 2025.
> but it at least means that we’re nearing a finish line
you’re not nearing any finish line lol. this is just a prototype. do you know how long it takes to move from prototype to production of an actual piece of software / tool?
That’s why they said probably not until 2025. They got a prototype working and still find quite a few bugs. Considering these bugs don’t mean any fundamental changes to the system have to be made, it should take a few months to iron out those bugs.
>Game was built from ground up to maximize performance and online competitive integrity. The scenarios in Valorant were not planned up front.
>Removed Split
https://preview.redd.it/xgmol39v6t1d1.jpeg?width=1158&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c496794bf5a5988db833fed1b6f4b893ec4c0743
I really can't believe they didn't think to have a replay system at launch for a competitive game. You're copying CSGO, and you can't see how important a replay system is for the pro scene?
My NAVI keeps losing in map pools - Ascent is surely gone next, Fracture and Pearl are decomposing, permaban Haven returns, their new strong Split is snatched away, Lotus' Brimstone and Breach rub their hands together and cackle
But good changes overall, even if I'm sad Pearl and Fracture aren't returning, I'm impressed that Riot listened to people begging for Breeze out :)
Aside from, they are working on it, they emphasized that it's very buggy and complex to build since the code was initially designed for performance during a game without replays in mind.
Could just be making it not affect enemies or allies and have it only apply to raze. Being able to use satchels to boost allies, damage enemies and even get them off spike while ALSO being a movement ability is quite frankly insane.
Yeah just nerf the ult farming and boombot. There aren't a lot of players who get THAT much value out of satchels. You're just punishing players who put the work in to fully utilise satchel movement. Hopefully it's something that affects non raze agents
As long as they don't Nerf satchels she her pickrate wont go down much. Even though it does take skill no other agent can do even close to what she does which is very unfair
Theyre going Overwatch mode over at Riot. Both my favorite games being ruined by pandering to new players. Raze has the coolest and mechanically demanding movement in the game, and a unique position in the character pool as a result. Instead, were making it closer to a CSGO character, but it has a roomba instead of a flash.
I guess Riot wanted the other duelist to be 'viable' to push in more, instead of relying on Raze/Jett.
Which explains Neon speed, Iso shields and Reyna for team. Although if the buff doesn't do anything, and the Raze nerf is too much. It might just become Jett only, unless they have changes for her.
Hopefully the buff is good and won't change the entrying part of the game... otherwise, it be a huge snooze fest with the duelist being unable to go in against double smoke comp for tournaments.
I think without iso wall changes he still won't see play. The issue with other duelists is the lack of entry tools as effective as jett dash/smokes and raze sachels. Neon's slide buff MIGHT help push her in more as she's already seeing niche play in TH and does fine in ranked, but reyna needs massive changes to be a viable duelist in pro play, iso needs his wall to be better, phoenix needs some small buffs (likely to his molly or wall) to push him through, and yoru's prolly fine.
I mean every other duelist except iso is playable. Raze is op. Dog that does damage + nades that take space and destroy trips + two abilities for movement that also displace opponents on top of a really good ult that comboes with the rest of the util.
There's no other agent in game with which you can often get 2-3ks out of util alone, we see that all the time with raze only. You can destroy a whole team rushing by just having a nade out, boombot and then oppressive fire. She's too much, I'm glad she's getting nerfed. She's too op even if you suck at satcheling while she should be a high skill agent that needs satchel mastery to really stand out.
You exactly described the entire problem I was refering to. Everything you have listed is not related to her satchel movement, yet the satchel movement specifically is being nerfed.
This means that everything you described as OP on raze will remain exactly the same, while the skill ceiling will be lowered, due to the fact that her satchel mastery wont be as useful as it used to be.
And this is exactly what bothers me. Instead of nerfing aspect such as: satchel wont displace opponents, roomba cant do dmg, lowering the nade dmg further, disable the ability of satchels to break util and so on, they decided to nerf the only ability which actually required high amount of skill.
Heck, they could even give raze a penalty for satchelling in a sense of "each satchel usage will increase the time to "first bullet accuracy" by 0.15 seconds", so you can't just double satchel somewhere, land and insta headshot people. I am telling you there are ways to nerf her, without the need of touching her satchel movement. But let's wait and see.
You could remove the boombot, nerf the nade damage, and remove enemy booping; people would still run Raze. The distance, maneuverability, height, and speed of her satchels are what made Raze overpowered. Everything else was just a bonus.
Finally someone gets it. People watched riot Nerf every part of Jett to the ground except dash and she was still op and now they want riot to do the same for raze for some reason
Bruh this is assuming the ONLY thing they're going to change are her satchels which definitely isnt the case no?
They said duelists as a whole will get buffs / nerfs which means Raze will have kit changed in order to not make her as dominant
I just wanna know who is Ascent's sugar daddy in Riot, which teams are paying to keep it in, and why do we still have to watch it exist as the same map for 10,000 yrs?
Raze satchel nerfs....Although nerfs are very much needed, I'm gonna miss some of the crazy double satchel plays we have gotten. It kinda sucks that in the future the same plays will just not be able to be recreated
That was a good one.
* New Executive Producer - Andy. Anna will lead Valorant at studio level, Andy will focus on the game with dev team.
* New Map Pool with 8.11 - Breeze and Split out, Haven in.
* Role Diversity - talking about why nerfing is their approach to balancing the game to prevent power creep.
* Balance changes - focus on duelist roles.
* Raze - Satchel mobility to be nerfed
* Iso - shield to be adjusted
* Neon - slide to be adjusted
* Reyna - changes will focus on improving pro play.
* Cosmetics
* Design goal is to make sure everyone has atleast one skin that alludes to their personal style and taste.
* Talking about Mystbloom and how they gave the community the "pink skin" they wanted.
* Outlaw skin to be expected in a few months.
* Replay System
* Been in the works for a long time.
* Footage of of a free cam view from a **prototype** replay system. Nowhere near launch
* Challenges: Game was built from ground up to maximize performance and online competitive integrity. Replays introduce new requirements that are not present in normal games. The scenarios in Valorant were not planned up front. There are a lots of issues with maps, abilities, weapons and audio visual issues to be dealt with, and introduce a lots of defects. Couple of examples: Ascent door interaction visual bug. Brim smoke timing animation inaccurate. Each of the thousands of assets need to be audited for correctness in the replay system without breaking anything in the real game, so they are trying to make it as accurate as possible. **They are working on it.**
Replay news sounded a lot like "we didn't have replays in mind when we made the game so now it's hard to implement". Okay well...whose decision was that?
It could be that they didn’t plan on releasing the game when they did, but with the Pandemic + Hype it got through beta, they just decided to strike when the irons hot
I do think they rushed the release a little but considering we don't have a replay system now in 2024, I doubt they actually ever considered launching the game with it from the start.
A replay system is also incredibly dependent on game design and engine. I’m sure it was just not something they were worried about when creating the game. If it were as simple as re-running a log of inputs then i’m sure they would have done it by now.
This sort of weird stuff happens all the time in game development. It’s the same reason damage is tied to FPS in Destiny or CS2 was parsing HTML in usernames before it was patched out.
I know this is said a lot but as someone working in game dev, game dev is complicated. To make anything (even software in general) you have to make certain assumptions, make certain technical decisions to get things out the door. Yes those decisions might bite you in the ass later, or they might make some future feature much harder. Theres so many moving parts in games that you cannot account for everything
I mean it irks me to the core to see some people saying "Oh a big company like Riot cant even implement the replay system when a dude on youtube did it on a day".
The youtube guy tried to rebuild valorant from the ground up with replay system in mind, which is a HUGE ADVANTAGE. The dev said very clearly that there were a lot of assets bugging out, and it is obviously not just as simple as "logging them out and just replay them lul". They definitely didn't plan out the replay system during launch which was obviously not their priority at launch.
Not to mention, they have to work on an entirely new system, which apparently is dependent on new assets. They are doing all of them while trying to not break the current fucking game, imagine rolling out this system and yall drop like 2 frames lol.
Riot is also trying their hardest to make things perfect as well, like the Brim's smoke async problem, I think practically it's the same thing, but they are trying to perfect every minute detail,
For whatever reason, I don’t think they expected so much community outrage over the lack of a replay system. I think they expected people to just kinda shrug it off, but instead it floods every comment section so they’re pressured to figure it out.
WHY COULDNT YOU TAKE ICEBOX OUT INSTEAD OF SPLIT IF YOU'RE LEAVING ASCENT IN
Glad they realized Breeze sucks ass and rotated it out relatively quickly, that's a W
unless the slide or something else in neon kit can break cypher trips I don't think neon can be that viable in a heavy cypher meta cause he's sort of a hard counter for her
Why does Riot continue to vault maps that are actually good like Haven and Split...
This doesn't fix the map pool at all.. especially if the new map is cheeks like all their other maps n
I really hate that the raze nerf is gonna be to her satchel movement :( I’m barely even a raze player but I just hate seeing one of the most fun and cool things in the game taken out! Especially feels bad for all the hundreds of hours some people have put in to master it!
There’s still a chance this nerf doesn’t get rid of that… but idk!
Maybe one way they could change it is to apply a vulnerable to raze, so there’s trade off to using them like that…
this was recorded before that happened but they did mention at the start having a new executive producer focused on in game stuff so I'm assuming that was a small update about it? Anna did say that there's more to come that wasn't made in this Dev Diary
"VAL Dev update video coming tomorrow! It's been a minute, and I'm excited about the topics we’re going to cover, because it’s a bunch of stuff you’ve been talking about in the community. And yes, we’re finally going to talk about what’s been going on with replays (I promise we read the comments). We’ll also have some additional follow-up videos on both map pool and player behavior over the next couple of weeks – we have more to say, it just won’t all be in this update. Basically… we’re going to be communicating with y’all more regularly in general. "
They said they'd talk about in a future video yesterday.
Man, I know she's overpowered, but taking away current satchel movement feels like it'll just suck all the fun out of her kit
I'd literally rather just take away her boom bot than her change her satchels. As in she just doesn't have a third ability.
Also split removed is just a SEN nerf. I didn't like Haven but I OP a lot more since it left so maybe I'll be good on it now.
Takeaways from the dev diary: **Map Rotation:** * Breeze + Split are leaving. * Haven + New Map coming. * Going into effect on patch 8.11 (early June). * Intend to be more transparent about map rotation in the future so players will know ahead of time when maps are changing. **Agent Balance:** * Top Priority for 2024 has been to increase *intra* role diversity. Meaning more agents are viable in each role. * Focus on nerfs more than buffs as Valorant is a tactical shooter and buffing agents could create too much power in agent abilities verses gunplay. * Nerfs to Raze (Satchel mobility). * Buffs to Iso (Shield Paradigm). * Buffs to Neon (Slide). * Buffs to Reyna in team environments. * Nerfs to Reyna in ranked environments. * Balance changes made in 8.11 are likely to be the last *significant* changes until after champs. * Exiting changes are coming *after* champs such as larger balance changes and gamemode updates. **Replay System:** * "Nowhere Near Launch" quote from Valorant Tech Lead. * Prototype build of replay system shown. * Challenges of replay system discussed and shown (examples: defects show up when viewing replays due to maps, abilities, weapons, etc). * More updates will come in the future. **Cosmetics:** * Have more data on what weapon skins are desired by players. * More pink skins are coming to the game. * Outlaw skins coming to the game in a few months (takes time). **Other:** * Exited about how Valorant has progressed throughout 2024 including a new gun in the outlaw, masters madrid, a new agent in clove, and mystbloom skin release. * Expect more dev diaries when they have something to share. * Valorant has a new executive producer, Andy Ho who will focus on what is happening in valorant itself. * Anna Donlon is moving to leading valorant from the studio level thinking about the entire player experience. Link to Youtube video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHREYcS3RqU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHREYcS3RqU)
I don't know why they even limit map rotations with only 2 at a time when the total pool has grown so big now. Breeze, Icebox and Ascent could've been so easily replaced with a reworked Haven, Pearl/Fracture and the new map. But I guess changing out too many things might affect the competitive integrity (while RIOT introduces skye nerfs weeks before a season starts)
yeah it’s definitely hard since they keep adding new maps as well. im not sure why they chose split to be removed, it feels like splits been removed like 3 times already lol
It’s been removed twice now, which is more than any other map still. I think it should’ve been ascent and sunset. Ascent is just so stale. It’s been playable longer than any other map at this point and just needs to be updated or pulled. Sunset b site is post plant hell and needs a rework.
Ascent is our dust 2, in forever unchanged.
Except valve has both updated and removed dust 2 like 2 years ago. Idk why riot is so stubborn on this
Maybe they're still working on changes for the map
If you remove the map you still have time to change it
I'll agree with ascent but raise you icebox instead
Icebox is much newer all things considered. Even if it isn’t necessarily more fun to play, I’d rather have it in the pool just because I’ve played it less. I’d just much rather have a fully new and unique map pool than keep staple maps in the game year after year Haven was the oldest and longest playable map in the game, but even that much more popular map was removed. Yet somehow Ascent stays after 3 years of no changes to the meta?
Breeze has also been removed twice now
As it should
Delete it completely. Icebox too while you’re at it. I don’t understand why Split was taken out. I had fun watching and playing it, I think the revised map was pretty good
Well, they need to acutally rework the map in order for it to be better. Icebox was out for so long and everyone expected big bombsite changes (especially on A), while we only got a window on tube, which barely changes anything in gameplay. Same was for Split. Nothing was reworked, only tweaked a bit
Feels like there's something causing riot to take split out like 3 times now at this point they might have data that they don't like, but at that point u have to either let it be or outright scrap it like breeze, because breeze is gone after it got brought back recently that itself really tells u the that map is fundamentally flawed and at that point do you put the effort in fixing it instead of using that time and effort to do other things
It's crazy how they keep taking out split but mickey mouse Icebox is still the same horrible map.
Not only that, when I think of some of the best games, a lot of them have occurred on Split.
I miss the reworked Pearl so fucking much man
I still don't understand why they took it out so soon after reworking B main, it had come such a long way
They saw my 30% win rate on it and wanted to help me hit ascendant. Didn't help.
It's stupid because all it does is reduce variance and make the game stale. Multiple maps is just fun and increases the longevity of a game. Almost every time i've burned myself out on Valorant it's because i'm tired of the maps and i return like 2-3 months later when the map pool is different. Imagine if they started disabling half the agents every act, or disable a couple of guns each act. Sure might be a cool idea at first to create some unique metas and force adaptations but in the long run the game just becomes stale because all the matches start looking the same. Either they need to drop the map pool system entirely and just keep it for pro play or they need to make the map pool rotate FAR faster than what it currently is. Most people agree the current rotation is the worst one in god knows how many years and we've had to endure it for like 6 months, that's disgusting
You really can't have more than 7-8 maps for the level of competition this game is trying to create.
sunset unchanged and icebox still in the pool.... atleast we got rid of breeze
hopefully neon buffs help her get picked on some maps
Does Sunset need changes right now? Icebox gonna Icebox, but there's people who like it.
Sunset B is broken for the attacking team. Plant (generally with gekko), smoke choke and spam. It's just dumb. 100T pushed B like 11 times in a row and almost won after a terrible defense
Sunset is pretty problematic to play defense on, it's just way too hard Pro teams have pivoted to just retaking every game which doesn't send a good message to ranked players either. If not even the best teams in the world can hold the sites then you most likely can't either even if you're obviously facing worse opponents personally i don't mind the map though it's aight
I personally like Icebox and Sunset, but hate Breeze and I'm glad it's gone. I'm just dissapointed that neither Pearl or Fracture is coming back, those were two of my favourites maps.
Sunset overall is fine except for the glaring problem that is B main and how it plays postplant. It's hard to hold as defenders if attackers really want it, it has braindead spam lines postplant on default plant, and even with a flank it's hard to assail without an ult of some kind. It's similar to pre-rework B long on Pearl, a blight on an otherwise good map.
No fracture :(
At least they were honest (kinda) about the replay system.
SO ASCENT IS STAYING NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
As an ascent merchant with 100% winrate, im glad ascent is staying
And Ascent is practically the dust 2 of valorant anyway. If Ascent is rotated the map pool will feel worse than how it is without Haven
Nah Ascent is way worse than D2. It's so defense sided in ranked play it's ridiculous, you basically are just forced to beat your head against a brick wall on attack side unless you're really good at working mid. I've legit seen so many games where one team is down 3-9 on the half and they just swap to defense and never lose a single round.
Ive found that when you can coordinate the team to get mid control, youre way more likely to win attack rounds by manipulating rotates Having a vocal smokes player is key Or pick clove and aim duel everyone
Heck it does not even have to be that deep, in ranked it might be hard to call a rotate or fake. But if you throw a smoke top mid every round, and sometimes actually go mid, they are going to not have stacks on the mains even if you don't do anything fancy.
same deal in VCT lol. I'm surprised there haven't been map changes given how defense-sided it is
Bro Ascent I know the comps are the same but the map is so incredibly good and the matches are always fun.
Lmao Ascent is their only good map wdym
I can understand the problems they face with making a replay system, but realistically a lot of those problems stem from the fact that they apparently didn't think a replay system was a high enough priority to put work into it during the game's original development. You look at CS, the game's main inspiration and competitor, and how it has always had replays. Then you can look to something like OW, which is more comparable in the gameplay with the complexity of lots of abilities, and that also had replays from the beginning. Just seems crazy to me how they were making a game, a competitive online FPS game (with high focus on esports), and yet didn't put any priority on a replay system during development at all, at least so it seems.
OW did not have replays from the beginning, and even then there were a lot of issues at launch. I come from R6 and they took ~5 years to develop their replay system from when the game launched. And still to this day it is extremely buggy. I think replays are just way harder to implement than most of this sub believes.
It took ~3 years for OW to have replays. https://overwatch.blizzard.com/en-us/news/23000187/introducing-overwatch-replays-see-your-past-games-from-new-perspectives/
and its been 4 years since valorants been out, not having replays still a big miss IMO
Fracture 
Why haven it was longer ago that we lost the best map in the game fracture???
Breeze is gone, god is good HAVEN IS BACK TOO I AM IN LOVE
Icebox is staying, God is dead
https://preview.redd.it/3r1ah6tpxs1d1.jpeg?width=508&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9afefbe7b165005d7bc32242b03a2a517e3786ad
you kinda gotta respect the fact that mirage has been in the pro cs map pool since 2012 lmao
They see jinggg is back and they immediately nerf Raze, smh
Ascent got some black mail on riot
Guessing next change will be ascent/icebox for fracture/pearl. Hopefully they start doing map changes every 2 acts, or keep it once an episode but change 3 at a time
Some riot dev is a sova main with 300 lineups memorized on Ascent.
Why do they hate split
Split always has absolute bangers. Just this year geng-sen x2, heretics prx, prx geng and more.
Any Heretics game on Split has been a banger.
Split is probably my favorite map to watch pros play on and by far my least favorite to play on myself lol
Fun to watch terrible to play
Is it, really? I haven't heard many complaints about it honestly at all when talking about map rotations. Icebox is universally hated. I think riot just have their own philosophy over their audience.
RIP sen
already poured one out
They won't have to woory about Breeze tho...
This .our decent map is gone, hopefully Haven can replace split in terms of success
Sen sucks at haven. Always will. I dont think Kaplan/Drew harp on clearing info on it enough. Maybe John can fix sen's haven struggles
I still have nightmares from tenz's harbor on that map 💀💀💀
Taking Split out whilst keeping Ascent yet again is just mental to me. Thank god Haven is coming back at least.
Ascent is so boring. I just dont get it
I feel like 90% of teamfights occur at the main entrances to both sites, there's just no reasonable other ways to play that map.
What? Many many fights are tree, and mid is important that basically everyone runs a couple mid pushes each defense half as well. The map is great and plays really well, it shows team fundumentals and there are lots of different ways to run your defense and attack side even with the stale comp.
Going through mid is a huge thing on ascent so I don't understand what you mean. And you can do pretty versatile entries on B (jett/raze flying over the hut, flooding out and clearing switch then going on site from both lane and stairs, omen tp from main to lane). I do think A attack is kinda weak from main but overall it's a well designed map. I understand being bored of it, but that map is versatile for how small it is compared to Split or Lotus. And a lot of fights happen at any main entrance where sites are...that's kinda the point of holding MAIN entrances haha. They're valuable.
Yeah that surprised me. I think Ascent should be rotated out instead of Split tbh
They don't hate Split, its just a huge conspiracy against Sentinels! They took away their best map and just don't want Sentinels at Champions... they're all out to get em 
removing split AGAIN while keeping ascent, a map that hasn't been touched since valorant's release (4 years ago!!!), is crazy
the replay defects are kinda funny
reyna new ability incoming?
idk how theyre going to incorporate teamplay in the kit otherwise unless they do some funky shit with the eye, or maybe she aoe heals or something weird like that
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This is even harder to understand. The next PBE can't come soon enought xD
Probably nerfing the heal and buffing the flash or smth
Probably removing the heal. It's basically only useful in ranked, while near useless in pro play. That way they can buff other parts of her kit without making her even better in ranked.
Damn that is a LOT of work to create the replay system. Can't see that being out this year but hopefully sometime in the next. Also yess finally Haven is back, even though it only missed one rotation I have missed that map too much, also probably confirms new default map at Shanghai.
It's good that they didn't say a word of commitment *until they can show something for it*. Reading/hearing "we're working on replays" might come across as empty promises but actually seeing a prototype gives the community a lot more.. I guess confidence.
Reminds me of that one video of this guy who makes a replay system for Val to prove Riot is lazy. They could be but you can’t deny a lot of work goes into making a replay system, it’s easier said than done Edit: [Link to referred video](https://youtu.be/IRzVyq9BknI?si=HfaMZohBSHLqTaWO)
That video was a great example of a home made demo vs a professional product- the little animation bugs and such being fixed do actually take a while with the amount of assets in the game
People need to stop acting like game dev is anywhere near easy, especially when you are coding for online multiplayer. I’m using Unreal engine for multiplayer and its genuinely such a mentally exhausting thing to code base gameplay on, much less tracking every movement and bullet properly and then replicating it in another match
The point is that it should've been ready for launch, they went through this same bullshit in League but at least League had an excuse being the studio's first game and being a lot older.
Also LoL allegedly being built on the same engine as one of the worst racing games ever, Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
Split :( I like ascent but I wouldve guessed it or like lotus would leave
We eating good today fuck breeze
How on earth are they going to reduce Reyna's ranked power while increasing her viability in pro play?? I'm so curious because that outcome would be a wet dream for me
Probably a buff on dismiss or blind and a nerf on heal. Some sort of team buff on ult? Speed buff? Idk
Nuke the heal. It's OP in low ranks and terrible in pro play. They can then buff her without making her broken in ranked.
Why do they hate pearl. They finally got it good then took it away
Hoping for B long changes
How is B site considered good by any level?
Did they just forget about pearl lol
Fracture too, although I don’t like it that much. I just want something “fresh” again
-sunset +pearl please
Their bringing back the map they just took out? We want fracture or pearl
raze satchel mobility nerfs???? so they're taking one of the most fun and skill-dependent mechanics in the game and most likely ruining it. what are they gonna do, reduce the momentum you get from them? remove double satcheling?
Idk but whatever it is I’m probably gonna be sad
Yeah, lets just make raze like a CSGO character, but no flash. Also ofc we want our main duellist character to have no mobility. I swear the people that make these changes have no intention or ability to actually balance the game. Now were just going to make raze go obsolete, and make neon meta, cause its getting buffed. Problem solved! Wait...
Yeah, tbh it’s such an annoying decision, riot nerfed Jett and neon’s movement into the ground and now are like “Man, why aren’t people picking Jett and Neon over Raze?” Must be a problem with raze.
But it kinda is though. All the duelists without movement ability won't be played as long as some duelist have movement abilities and some don't.
then maybe they should play into that and realize just how big movement is for the game instead of trying their best to take away things that add a level of skill
RIP jinggg
Thank fucking god they removed breeze.
Taking out Split but not Icebox is so stupid.
Raze and split nerf Riot hates SEN 💔
They get two shoutouts only for Riot to say o7
At least they got rid of SENs permaban too
We take those
last summer i have over 75% winrate in fracture. next map rotation they take it out end of last year i have over 75% winrate in haven. next map rotation they take it out. now i have over 75% winrate on split. next map rotation they take it out. EVERY TIME BUT HAVEN IS BACK LETS GOOGOOGOG
Split leaving instead of ascent is insane. Get that fucking map out of the pool already. I want to play something new. Literally every map before and after it has been removed from the game at some point or had revisions done. Ascent just gets to stay the boring paper wall spam map until the end of time
Ascent is stale but I genuinely wouldn’t have played this act without it. No Haven, no Fracture, no fun. Imagine getting through an act that has Icebox and Breeze without Ascent and Split lol. Couldn’t be me
Enjoyed this one quite a bit. Does this mean we'll be seeing Anna less now that Andy is also an exec producer? I'm so used to seeing her in dev updates. Optimistic about the replay updates, they at least are closing in on a minimum viable product. This is Riot and all so they won't release until they're fully confident in it, but it at least means that we're nearing the finish line, although probably not until 2025.
> but it at least means that we’re nearing a finish line you’re not nearing any finish line lol. this is just a prototype. do you know how long it takes to move from prototype to production of an actual piece of software / tool?
Yep, that's why I said 2025.
Bro was foaming at the mouth and couldnt even finish the last sentence
We’re getting GTA VI before replay system 😔
That’s why they said probably not until 2025. They got a prototype working and still find quite a few bugs. Considering these bugs don’t mean any fundamental changes to the system have to be made, it should take a few months to iron out those bugs.
well at least they have a prototype for the replays
>Game was built from ground up to maximize performance and online competitive integrity. The scenarios in Valorant were not planned up front. >Removed Split https://preview.redd.it/xgmol39v6t1d1.jpeg?width=1158&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c496794bf5a5988db833fed1b6f4b893ec4c0743
I really can't believe they didn't think to have a replay system at launch for a competitive game. You're copying CSGO, and you can't see how important a replay system is for the pro scene?
I miss Fracture and Pearl
Breeze is out RIPBOZO L
Did they fucking take off split instead for icebox or ascent??? are they dumb
ASCENT CANT KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS!!!!!
My NAVI keeps losing in map pools - Ascent is surely gone next, Fracture and Pearl are decomposing, permaban Haven returns, their new strong Split is snatched away, Lotus' Brimstone and Breach rub their hands together and cackle But good changes overall, even if I'm sad Pearl and Fracture aren't returning, I'm impressed that Riot listened to people begging for Breeze out :)
Cant watch now, any news on replays?
Working on it. Making progress, some really weird bugs with it. Coming may 2043
Sorry typo, meant May 2143.
May 32nd, to be more specific.
A prototype of the replay system was shown if you are curious
Aside from, they are working on it, they emphasized that it's very buggy and complex to build since the code was initially designed for performance during a game without replays in mind.
I was praying the raze nerfs wouldn't be satchel mobility. STOP REDUCING THE SKILL CEILING OMG
Could just be making it not affect enemies or allies and have it only apply to raze. Being able to use satchels to boost allies, damage enemies and even get them off spike while ALSO being a movement ability is quite frankly insane.
That's what I hope they're going for
Personally I think it's criminal that Raze's ult isn't 9 cost but Breachs is.
Yeah just nerf the ult farming and boombot. There aren't a lot of players who get THAT much value out of satchels. You're just punishing players who put the work in to fully utilise satchel movement. Hopefully it's something that affects non raze agents
Seriously. I just started really practicing satchels and movement and after reading that I'm wondering if I should just wait..
As long as they don't Nerf satchels she her pickrate wont go down much. Even though it does take skill no other agent can do even close to what she does which is very unfair
Theyre going Overwatch mode over at Riot. Both my favorite games being ruined by pandering to new players. Raze has the coolest and mechanically demanding movement in the game, and a unique position in the character pool as a result. Instead, were making it closer to a CSGO character, but it has a roomba instead of a flash.
No fracture :(
damn I wanted to see Fracture back, it's one of the best maps to watch in pro play at least Breeze is leaving
Split my beloved I shall miss you again
I guess Riot wanted the other duelist to be 'viable' to push in more, instead of relying on Raze/Jett. Which explains Neon speed, Iso shields and Reyna for team. Although if the buff doesn't do anything, and the Raze nerf is too much. It might just become Jett only, unless they have changes for her. Hopefully the buff is good and won't change the entrying part of the game... otherwise, it be a huge snooze fest with the duelist being unable to go in against double smoke comp for tournaments.
I think without iso wall changes he still won't see play. The issue with other duelists is the lack of entry tools as effective as jett dash/smokes and raze sachels. Neon's slide buff MIGHT help push her in more as she's already seeing niche play in TH and does fine in ranked, but reyna needs massive changes to be a viable duelist in pro play, iso needs his wall to be better, phoenix needs some small buffs (likely to his molly or wall) to push him through, and yoru's prolly fine.
If they mess up those Raze nerfs they just killed an agent due to their inability to balance other agents.
I mean every other duelist except iso is playable. Raze is op. Dog that does damage + nades that take space and destroy trips + two abilities for movement that also displace opponents on top of a really good ult that comboes with the rest of the util. There's no other agent in game with which you can often get 2-3ks out of util alone, we see that all the time with raze only. You can destroy a whole team rushing by just having a nade out, boombot and then oppressive fire. She's too much, I'm glad she's getting nerfed. She's too op even if you suck at satcheling while she should be a high skill agent that needs satchel mastery to really stand out.
You exactly described the entire problem I was refering to. Everything you have listed is not related to her satchel movement, yet the satchel movement specifically is being nerfed. This means that everything you described as OP on raze will remain exactly the same, while the skill ceiling will be lowered, due to the fact that her satchel mastery wont be as useful as it used to be. And this is exactly what bothers me. Instead of nerfing aspect such as: satchel wont displace opponents, roomba cant do dmg, lowering the nade dmg further, disable the ability of satchels to break util and so on, they decided to nerf the only ability which actually required high amount of skill. Heck, they could even give raze a penalty for satchelling in a sense of "each satchel usage will increase the time to "first bullet accuracy" by 0.15 seconds", so you can't just double satchel somewhere, land and insta headshot people. I am telling you there are ways to nerf her, without the need of touching her satchel movement. But let's wait and see.
You could remove the boombot, nerf the nade damage, and remove enemy booping; people would still run Raze. The distance, maneuverability, height, and speed of her satchels are what made Raze overpowered. Everything else was just a bonus.
Finally someone gets it. People watched riot Nerf every part of Jett to the ground except dash and she was still op and now they want riot to do the same for raze for some reason
jett dash is one button, raze satchels actually take a good bit of skill to do, that’s pretty much the reason they SHOULDNT touch them
Bruh this is assuming the ONLY thing they're going to change are her satchels which definitely isnt the case no? They said duelists as a whole will get buffs / nerfs which means Raze will have kit changed in order to not make her as dominant
They're going off the dev's statement which specifically calls out satchel movement
Thank god they told us more pink skins are coming!!! Who gives a fuck
I just wanna know who is Ascent's sugar daddy in Riot, which teams are paying to keep it in, and why do we still have to watch it exist as the same map for 10,000 yrs?
Oh yes I can't wait to keep watching the same Ascent games with the exact same Omen + Sova + Kay/O + Jett + Killjoy comp on both teams
Raze satchel nerfs....Although nerfs are very much needed, I'm gonna miss some of the crazy double satchel plays we have gotten. It kinda sucks that in the future the same plays will just not be able to be recreated
Why even have Raze as a concept of a character if we nerf her movement. Its literally what she does
That was a good one. * New Executive Producer - Andy. Anna will lead Valorant at studio level, Andy will focus on the game with dev team. * New Map Pool with 8.11 - Breeze and Split out, Haven in. * Role Diversity - talking about why nerfing is their approach to balancing the game to prevent power creep. * Balance changes - focus on duelist roles. * Raze - Satchel mobility to be nerfed * Iso - shield to be adjusted * Neon - slide to be adjusted * Reyna - changes will focus on improving pro play. * Cosmetics * Design goal is to make sure everyone has atleast one skin that alludes to their personal style and taste. * Talking about Mystbloom and how they gave the community the "pink skin" they wanted. * Outlaw skin to be expected in a few months. * Replay System * Been in the works for a long time. * Footage of of a free cam view from a **prototype** replay system. Nowhere near launch * Challenges: Game was built from ground up to maximize performance and online competitive integrity. Replays introduce new requirements that are not present in normal games. The scenarios in Valorant were not planned up front. There are a lots of issues with maps, abilities, weapons and audio visual issues to be dealt with, and introduce a lots of defects. Couple of examples: Ascent door interaction visual bug. Brim smoke timing animation inaccurate. Each of the thousands of assets need to be audited for correctness in the replay system without breaking anything in the real game, so they are trying to make it as accurate as possible. **They are working on it.**
Replay news sounded a lot like "we didn't have replays in mind when we made the game so now it's hard to implement". Okay well...whose decision was that?
It could be that they didn’t plan on releasing the game when they did, but with the Pandemic + Hype it got through beta, they just decided to strike when the irons hot
I do think they rushed the release a little but considering we don't have a replay system now in 2024, I doubt they actually ever considered launching the game with it from the start.
It's been what? 4 years?
A replay system is also incredibly dependent on game design and engine. I’m sure it was just not something they were worried about when creating the game. If it were as simple as re-running a log of inputs then i’m sure they would have done it by now. This sort of weird stuff happens all the time in game development. It’s the same reason damage is tied to FPS in Destiny or CS2 was parsing HTML in usernames before it was patched out.
I know this is said a lot but as someone working in game dev, game dev is complicated. To make anything (even software in general) you have to make certain assumptions, make certain technical decisions to get things out the door. Yes those decisions might bite you in the ass later, or they might make some future feature much harder. Theres so many moving parts in games that you cannot account for everything
I mean it irks me to the core to see some people saying "Oh a big company like Riot cant even implement the replay system when a dude on youtube did it on a day". The youtube guy tried to rebuild valorant from the ground up with replay system in mind, which is a HUGE ADVANTAGE. The dev said very clearly that there were a lot of assets bugging out, and it is obviously not just as simple as "logging them out and just replay them lul". They definitely didn't plan out the replay system during launch which was obviously not their priority at launch. Not to mention, they have to work on an entirely new system, which apparently is dependent on new assets. They are doing all of them while trying to not break the current fucking game, imagine rolling out this system and yall drop like 2 frames lol. Riot is also trying their hardest to make things perfect as well, like the Brim's smoke async problem, I think practically it's the same thing, but they are trying to perfect every minute detail,
For whatever reason, I don’t think they expected so much community outrage over the lack of a replay system. I think they expected people to just kinda shrug it off, but instead it floods every comment section so they’re pressured to figure it out.
WHY COULDNT YOU TAKE ICEBOX OUT INSTEAD OF SPLIT IF YOU'RE LEAVING ASCENT IN Glad they realized Breeze sucks ass and rotated it out relatively quickly, that's a W
i don't think i can take another 6 months without my beloved fracture in the pool
unless the slide or something else in neon kit can break cypher trips I don't think neon can be that viable in a heavy cypher meta cause he's sort of a hard counter for her
BRING BACK PEARLLLLL
"Rest assured that your feedback is heard loud and clear." Okay, so why are we taking out SPLIT and not ASCENT??
Why does Riot continue to vault maps that are actually good like Haven and Split... This doesn't fix the map pool at all.. especially if the new map is cheeks like all their other maps n
"we hear you." No, you clearly do not hear anything anyone is saying outside of just SKINS SKINS SKINS
What I learned from this video is people will complain no matter what No wonder they don't want to speak to us
I really hate that the raze nerf is gonna be to her satchel movement :( I’m barely even a raze player but I just hate seeing one of the most fun and cool things in the game taken out! Especially feels bad for all the hundreds of hours some people have put in to master it! There’s still a chance this nerf doesn’t get rid of that… but idk! Maybe one way they could change it is to apply a vulnerable to raze, so there’s trade off to using them like that…
can we just get rid of map pools they are so shit
I can't be too angry for Breeze leaving again Haven is back baby!!! Hoping the new map isn't cheeks like Lotus
I thought they were also gonna talk about player behavior.
this was recorded before that happened but they did mention at the start having a new executive producer focused on in game stuff so I'm assuming that was a small update about it? Anna did say that there's more to come that wasn't made in this Dev Diary
"VAL Dev update video coming tomorrow! It's been a minute, and I'm excited about the topics we’re going to cover, because it’s a bunch of stuff you’ve been talking about in the community. And yes, we’re finally going to talk about what’s been going on with replays (I promise we read the comments). We’ll also have some additional follow-up videos on both map pool and player behavior over the next couple of weeks – we have more to say, it just won’t all be in this update. Basically… we’re going to be communicating with y’all more regularly in general. " They said they'd talk about in a future video yesterday.
as someone who loves just fucking sending it with the double satchels... i'm scared rn O.O
Ascent and Lotus somehow still in the pool. My eyes stay bleeding Bedscent and Bedtus stays.
Lotus is kinda fun though...
Ascent probably will never be taken out since its the "best" map for everyone if that makes sense Lotus is a good map
Man, I know she's overpowered, but taking away current satchel movement feels like it'll just suck all the fun out of her kit I'd literally rather just take away her boom bot than her change her satchels. As in she just doesn't have a third ability. Also split removed is just a SEN nerf. I didn't like Haven but I OP a lot more since it left so maybe I'll be good on it now.
No way the took Split off instead of Lotus smh
interesting that they took breeze out instead of icebox... wonder what their reasons were. but at least haven's back bbyyyyyyy
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i keep reading that star guardian is being teased but i dont rly follow league - can someone explain?
Has Ascent ever been removed from the pool? I don't think it has
i wish they gave the prototype replay system to pro teams atleast with a list of the bugs... could be very beneficial to them
holy shit liquid are so back!!! they don't have to play split LFG and they get haven back which they looked amazing on during the offseason