Valorant Developer Q&A: discuss peeker’s advantage, tagging, ragdolls, Omen buff, left-hand models & more

Since Valorant has entered closed beta the developers have taken the opportunity to get in front of fans and answer questions about the game.

No more so than Valorant's Lead Character developer Ryan "Morello" Scott, who last week dropped into a player's stream and revealed that Raze was set to receive a nerf, this time he was joined by a group of developers on his own Twitch channel, just as ranked was being enabled in North America and there was only one rule - "don't ask about ranked".

The questions were opened up with one viewer asking if Omen would be receiving buff as his ult and paranoia feel “a little weak”.

• Read more: Valorant v0.49 Patch Notes: Ranked play, Omen tweaks, Map updates and Observer mode changes

The developers said he might receive a “tiny buff” but that Omen, as one of the first Agents to be completed, from an art perspective Omen will receive a “second pass on a lot of his abilities, he’ll get a decent art update.” 

Further changes could be coming to the Omen Agent. (Credit: Riot Games)

Morello later clarified that Omen’s smoke would be “receiving a big ‘punch up’ on the usability. No details, but it should be a lot better.”

Peaker’s advantage was also brought up and it is something Morello feels is being misunderstood by some parts of the community.

“It is something we are talking about and looking at a lot. We think it’s an important thing to pick apart, but I think that view, that it’s worse than CS:GO, is overly simplified. I do think there are situations where it is, and we are working on that, but I think there are situations where I don’t think it is.” 

He then listed a number of issues that affect this troublesome “mechanic” of online games, ranging from animations to netcode - an answer that suggests eliminating peeker's advantage will be a process rather than a simple fix.

Morello also revealed that ragdoll animations were initially in the game but in a tongue-in-cheek manner confessed he “ruined them”.

They were ultimately removed for “gameplay purity and competitive integrity” giving the example of Sage being unable to revive a fallen agent if they fell or were inaccessible due to their death animation.

Tagging came up, which refers to the movement penalty you take when you get hit, Morello confesses it has been something they have talked about “a bunch” going on to say: ”the only hill we’ll die on is that when you get shot you will be slowed and it needs to be punitive. That doesn’t mean the tuning we have today needs to be the final tuning.”

The developers also discussed left-handed models and suggested that in the future agents “will be ambidextrous” with the play free to choose what side the gun will appear.

With a number of developers involved in the character and story side of the game taking part in the Q and A, questions relating to the lore of Valorant were asked and we discovered that Raze's abilities are made in a "homebrew" fashion, that Phoenix and Jett may be more than just friends and that the Spikes and Ult orbs are inextricably linked.

“They are the same energy - they are radianite.” The mysterious power source that runs through the game and I guess the Agents too? We also learned that the Spike "isn't exploding at all." Could have fooled me.

The character select screen was also mentioned with the developers confirming that they “looking at the character select screen, we want to make it as cool as possible.”

The character select screen will look "cooler" in the future. (Credit: Riot Games)

The naming of the maps was also asked about with viewers learning that they were named so players could easily identify them, “an example being bind, is bound together by those teleporters, Split because there is an obvious environment split between one side and another, Haven because it feels like this secluded temple area.”

Valorant is only into his third week of closed beta but has already received two patches and a number of hotfixes and with the amount of communication coming from the developers on all issues big and small, it is clear that community feedback and transparency is a central tenant of their development cycle. Long may it continue.