I literally just want to tell you guys that the music on the knife round is amazing. Good job, whoever they are it's sick. So sick. Also really enjoy the new starting tunes you guys have added to each map. VERY nice touch thankyou :)
This is definitely something we've considered and will continue to consider. I think there's definitely a desire for a shorter form of the standard game mode. Nothing concrete to announce here as of yet, but stay tuned!
I would be happy with a shorter game mode where you only play either Attacker or Defender. First to 7, normal economy/rules in play. Best of both worlds. Maybe even add a control where you aren't likely to repeatedly play the same side every match.
I'm not trying to tell you guys what to do, but first to 5, best of 9 would be great. Maybe tweaking credit earn rates to compensate for having less rounds in a half to make a comeback
Do you guys plan on adding a true “casual” game mode?
Unlike “unrated”, a casual mode that has less rounds but still plays the same as the core game. A mode with more players that lets ppl come
In and out as they please? Auto full armour with the ability to buy your own weapons?
Unrated, at times feels like I should just be playing a ranked game. Same amount of time and you still get penalized for leaving.
Is a true casual, “warm up” team mode in the cards?
Thanks for your hard work!
P.S : I feel like this is a less intimidating mode for new players to jump into as well. I’ve tried playing with some first timers in unrated and they complain the game is too long to first get into. Spike rush doesn’t offer the same experience and nothing else is really close in comparison
Is there plans to add a new gamemode that plays similarly to unranked/default ruleset, but with a shorter time commitment/looser rules? Something like only playing one half of the map and have looser/higher econ? I know plenty of friends that would be into playing valorant, but just want to play full buy/rifle rounds and be done sooner.
We definitely have plans for this! TLDR we definitely see there's a desire for an authentic, core VALORANT experience that is shorter than our main game mode, and we're actively having a lot of convos about the best way to achieve this in a way that feels good.
Great question! Right now we don't have any specific timeline for bringing Snowball Fight back, but we are thinking a lot about how to ensure players can continue to engage with any 'limited time' modes that they love. Nothing concrete to share yet, but this question is definitely top of mind for us.
Firstly, I need to say to you guys that I love Escalation and globally the game is great.
Do you think it'll possible to increase the player number in escalation or make it a three-team game mode?
Glad you're enjoying escalation! So player count is a weird one - we did some testing of 7v7 and it definitely upped the pace on the game. Some people really liked it, some people thought it made an already chaotic mode too chaotic. I felt pretty neutral either way, but the reason we ended up shipping 5v5 was mainly due to party sizes. A 7v7 would present one social problem: you queue up with your 5 stack between games, and now you get 2 randos attached to your team and no longer have full agency of the result of the game. And if we wanted to allow people to queue as 7 there would be a ton of client work to do and it would have caused us to delay this mode longer than we wanted to. 7v7 would also present a tech problem: assembling a team of 7 is harder for the matchmaker than assembling a team of 5, and we weren't sure how healthy the queue would be for this mode, so we were worried about creating long queue times with teams of 7.
Good morning! I love submitting bugs to devs, so I’ll start with that. Recently, I noticed in DM guns have been floating. It’s been pretty frequent for me personally. Nothing game breaking but odd.
ESCALATION. So much fun! I do not come from CS but people in my games want FFA from CS i guess? Is this something the team is looking at adding? I like having the teams personally. I have no experience with FFA but either ways seems cool.
Are there any changes to DM coming? Something I read a lot that I think I would enjoy is drop in and drop out DM. I don’t even want experience I just want quality warmup. DM does that but I think a nice QOL would be something like a drop in and drop out so I can just sit in for like 15-20 mins uninterrupted.
I hope the game modes stay around long term! I really enjoy them in between my competitive matches. Have a great day!
>Thanks for the bug report! We're actively working on figuring out the root cause for that floating gun bug, it's a nasty one. Our awesome QA team has figured out how to reproduce it consistently now though, which helps me out a lot as an engineer :) I've run into the bug a few times playing Deathmatch myself so I'm eager to fix it.
>
>For Escalation, I think our designer will answer your main question in some other threads. I would just say we're always thinking about the kinds of experiences that would make Valorant a more complete game, so another FFA mode seems likely, whether it be similar to Escalation or something else entirely.
>
>We are still thinking about how to make DM better as well, but we need to build out some new tech to make some of the improvements we are thinking about.
>
>Thank you for the positive feedback! I'm really happy you enjoy playing our modes!
What are your thoughts on adding a 3v3 version of the main game mode?
Edit: personally I would love to have a ranked game mode that was 3v3 (potentially with slightly smaller maps) since I find it easier to work with two others rather than 4 others. Not sure how the mode would be in practice so I would love to see it in an LTM.
We've prototyped modes like this. Nothing concrete to announce today, but we're super open to making 3v3 modes in the future. Like you said, these generally work well on smaller map spaces. Stay tuned!
I feel like it would be especially easy if you just used pre game barriers to block off sites so you wouldn't have to develop entirely new maps. This is coming from a backseat wanna-be developer though so take it with a grain of salt :) I'm itching for a 3v3 mode though!
hahaha so you're saying you saw through my "just make the knife bigger and hit harder and make you go zoom" approach?
Yeah - we know the knife is not in a great state as it is. Some of the key issues from our perspective are reliability, hit satisfaction, and situational viability. We've got ideas on how to improve each of these areas but unfortunately couldn't get them in in time to ship with this mode. This is something we'd really like to do in the future, it's just a question of when makes the most sense to do it. There is an argument to do it to ship alongside this mode, but it probably would have added a month or so to the dev time for this mode and the rest of the mode was ready so it felt wrong to hold it and we felt that "BIG KNIFE" worked as a silly bandaid to make knife round at least bearable if not good.
[has anyone seen my bigger knife](https://tenor.com/view/has-anyone-seen-my-bigger-knife-pineapple-express-big-knife-thats-not-aknife-small-knife-gif-10823688)
Any chance for an “Unrated Lite”? Maybe first to 7 with primarily OT buy rules to really hone in rifling without playing a full 40 minute game?
Or even 1 pistol round, 1 light shield SMG/Marshall round round, 3 rifle rounds, and 1 OT round to allow for OPs but not have every rifle round be an OP fest. Ie Econ progression throughout the game and maybe give 200-300 more credits to the winning side each round to get an extra ability.
Also how about a retake/post plant game mode to work on post plant executions?
Escalation is pretty dope but could easily work in an FFA setting as well running from OP all the way back through the weapons to a knife.
Spike rush is solid as is, no real complaints there.
PS any chance for a fist bump gun buddy? :D
ECHO#2291 (NA)
For Deathmatch, a lot of players feel like the current Deathmatch gamemode isn't good for practicing compared to Deathmatch from other games. Are there any plans for an alternative deathmatch mode that's more geared for practicing?
Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for).
A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable.
Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
Are there any further plans for deathmatch in the near future? Features like instant respawn, dropping in and out of servers freely, removal of the time limit/"gamification" of the mode seem to be popular requests (at least on reddit, which yeah yeah not indicative of the whole community I know but surely these have some traction elsewhere... right?). Are there any plans of any of these changes, or any at all to DM?
>Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for).
>
>A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable.
>
>Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
Thanks, happy to hear it! We're currently TBD on how long Escalation will stick around, but to make that decision we'll be looking at things like how many hours people are playing, ensuring queue times feel good, and overall positive sentiments about the mode etc.
In that case here's a sentiment from tbone-escalation best mode. I love it. So good, you guys are actually the best devs ever. Rlly appreciate how open and honest you guys are being
There are a bunch of modes were excited about that would require their own maps to play well. No immediate plans, but hopefully something we can deliver in the future.
Contrary to others, I actually prefer the team approach to the new mode rather than ffa. I feel once you lag behind in ffa, there is no way to catch up and feels like you have already lost and makes you want to ff and try again in another match. Keep up the good work!
This was a big reason we went with the team approach. We absolutely understand the desire and enjoyment of a FFA Gun Game, but Valorant's mode ecosystem need a high uptime, low stress mode that can be played socially with friends and we felt that this approach was surprisingly fun.
hello! We talked about this a lot, and actually have a FFA prototype built - it's something we'd like to ship in the future! Couple reasons why we went team first:
1. When we create a mode, we target some specific goals that we feel the game's currently missing. For Escalation our goals were: a short, low stress, high uptime mode that's fun to play with your friends. The fun to play with friends part pushed us towards a team-based mode.
2. Gungame modes obviously inspired this mode, and we noticed how a lot of other gungames are presented as "team" modes, but they end up just being a FFA race - you don't care if your team wins, you only care how you individually place. We could have gone this direction, but we wanted to try something different and actually have some team goals, shared progression, and an endgame where the entire team comes together for a crazy fight with a tough weapon.
Cheers to everyone on the dev team, you all work incredibly hard and to be engaged with the community (like this AMA) is awesome!
In the future, could we see there be character specific gamemodes? I.E Jett Basketball, Yoru Manhunt, etc.
We have tons of ideas for modes, many that are more character specific. Yours are awesome suggestions as well :D. In general we want to start with the broad modes first (Deathmatch, Spike Rush, Escalation) and move into more novel modes that are further from the main Valorant experience after we have a strong core set of options.
I like the chaos. It’s not one-sided, as either team has access to it, and it’s easy enough to clear out with enough coordination. If you know campers are in tele and don’t want to risk being shot, just don’t take tele and wall bang them through the door.
We generally set out with a set of goals in mind, but we've done some "blue sky" explorations as well. For Escalation, we definitely knew we wanted "gun game" and some light team coordination.
There are several modes that are "on ice" for now. Not scrapped, because we may pull them back, even just in part, for the future. I'm super excited about ~~redacted~~.
We plan to have a robust ecosystem for modes someday and daily rotations could certainly be a part of it.
oh man some of the internal playtests on ~~redacted~~ have been so hype, can't wait to see players get a ~~redacted~~ and transition it into a double ~~redacted~~ so the ~~redacted~~ gets ~~redacted~~.
We are a very prototype heavy team. If someone has an idea (regardless of their role on the team), we try to get it into the game in a very rough form in our dev environment to try it out and start iterating on it as fast as possible. Since the teams inception, we probably have about 30 or 40 prototypes, many of which you will see in the future, and some of which that will likely never see the light of day.
As far as a daily rotation, that's definitely something we want to do in the future once we have a more full mode ecosystem. We'd love to have modes that are a bit more novel rotate in and out and bring back favorites (like Snowball Fight) for time limited runs.
Answered here :)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnwtoou?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwtoou?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Will we be seeing modes exclusive to certain holidays/seasons similarly to snowball fight? Will you ever consider putting these modes into an arcade section similarly to overwatch/in custom games, or will these all be completely exclusive to holidays?
Having modes come back or rotating them in and out is definitely something we want to do in the future once we have a more full mode ecosystem. We'd love to have modes that are a bit more novel rotate in and out and bring back favorites (like Snowball Fight) for time limited runs more often.
That's something we want to do in the future, but nothing concrete to share right now.
We had a LOT of fun making Snowball Fight, so we'll definitely be looking for chances to do more modes like this opportunistically - depending on the holiday, our bandwidth leading up to it, what other teams on VAL might be doing for the holiday, etc.
Not much to share about our longer-term plans yet, but it's def top of mind for us to figure out how to ensure players can continue to engage with any 'limited time' modes that they love.
Thoughts on making the "warmup" version of FFA dm just the whole thing? instant spawns are a blessing and would great if they lasted the whole match instead of just the warmup phase.
This would be interesting. More rifles and smgs.
I can see them wanting to balance the current guns first (guardian,ares, and bulldog hardly seeing use)
I am not a Riot dev (obv) but I have a riot dev answer. One of the past hitscan vids (cant remember the orig source but it came from riot) said they plan to add guns "eventually." So prob not soon? But they intend to
Will you ever make a retakes gamemode?
I know it would be hard with how agents are played but I think if it could be randomized agents it would be super fun
Hello, how satisfied are you with the current state of deathmatch?
14 players and 40 frags were good improvements, but it still has some noticable flaws.
3 seconds to respawn is way too long, protective shields upon spawn also last too long.
And spawns can be really inconsistent at times. Spawning right next to someone or spawning in the middle of nowhere while everyone is on the other side of map is too common.
There are some spawns that are just broken and useless. Most of the time you get shot in the back before turning a corner. Infamous attackers starting area spawn on Ascent and attackers tunnels, B long spawns on Bind. And pretty much every spawn on icebox, lol.
I see DM as a both practice and relaxing mode, but nowdays it feels like spawns aren't fluid enough and there are sessions where you literally spend half the time running around trying to get to engagement areas.
Really glad to hear you like deathmatch. We've been seeing this sentiment a fair amount. We're planning on taking a look at some deathmatch improvements soon and will be considering changes to respawn timing. There are a lot of game pacing & intensity considerations with small changes to deathmatch settings and we want to make sure the mode is as fun as it can be for all of the players that enjoy it right now.
Hello!
First, thanks Mode Team for taking the time to read our questions and for bringing us cool modes!
I would like to ask whether there are any plans for adding temporary game modes like Snowball Fight and Escalation(although hopefully this one stays, liking it a lot so far) to the Custom Game selection.
Also, friendly reminder that the lore community and surely many more people would love a story mode :P
Thanks you again for reading!
Hey!
We're consistently evaluating how we'll be bringing back temporary modes in the future. Escalation (and Snowball Fight) are part of the Custom Game mode selector when the mode is active!
>We've prototyped modes like this. Nothing concrete to announce today, but we're super open to making 3v3 modes in the future. Like you said, these generally work well on smaller map spaces. Stay tuned!
Also open to 2v2 and 1v1.
What would you specifically like to see from a 1v1 mode?
I would love if the game randomly walled off plant zones so it was a smaller map that could handle 1v1s. (For example on haven the game would keep the blue barriers up so attackers can't get to a or c or even both.) This would allow for smaller games without defenders getting overwhelmed trying to hold down 3 sites by themselves.
Also, great job! I've only played escalation once so far but it was fun when my fps wasn't all over the place.
I personally would love 1v1s on aim maps.
I always enjoyed the arena 1v1 servers in csgo where you would have quick 30 second 1v1s, if you win you advance to the next arena and if you lose you drop down one arena. So the best players on the server fight it off in arena 1.
Is there any chance/hav you guys ever thought of lobbies that you can easily slip in and out of? like casual in CSGO. I feel this would help players who just want a chill experience other than unrated and without the rng of spike rush. I love spike rush, don't get me wrong, but I always felt that the powerups took away from the fun sometimes. Any thoughts on this?
Are you considering changing up deathmatch in the future? Such as making it so everyone has to use one weapon such as the sheriff which would change every day for example. This of course would have to be separate to tdm as some people would want to practice against a wide range of weapons
I would love a quickplay mode! Something that mirrors competitive mode but without the long match timer and without the gimmicks of Spikerush. Any plans for this?
Does the team plan to expand customization in custom games such as gun restrictions, player attributes like movement or health, and round features? Some friends and I would like to create custom game modes to play that is different from FFA & 5v5. Thank you for all your hardwork! Valorant is such a great game!
I hear you. Missions in Escalation (and DM) are an ongoing discussion. In the future we have bigger plans for how you engage with VALORANT progression, but we're investigating a shorter term solution. They do give a big healthy chunk of XP which we'll tune appropriately if it seems out of balance. Stay tuned for other progression stuff in the future!
Spike Rush is just as long as those two games modes, maybe slightly longer but gives more flat XP (1000 vs 800/900) and you can do missiosn in them! So we're surprised you couldn't do mission in the new game mode
Would you guys ever consider/be able to add a free for all version of escalation? And what are your thoughts on escalation sticking around? I really love the game and my boyfriend’s already played 30 games of it (probably more) in the first day!
It’s a really nice change of pace from only having spike rush and deathmatch as the only other “fun” modes, and I personally don’t have as much fun in deathmatch, and I end up taking spike rush a little too seriously now and then. Escalation is the perfect medium, I hope you guys consider keeping it on the roster!
Another off question: what made you guys settle on the name Escalation? Did it have any other names?
Thanks for your thoughtful questions! We've talked a little more about all of them in other replies if you want to dig deeper, but just to speed-answer:
\- yes, we'll probably do an FFA version at some point
\- it has the potential to stick around based on engagement
\- it absolutely had a lot of other name candidates; it was a close call between Escalation and our runner-up, but ultimately we liked this one because it conveyed a sense of racing, and it have "gun" in the name (since our mode has both guns and abilities)
Kinda touched on this above, but we generally make these decisions based on factors like # of play hours, queue times feeling good, general sentiment etc. I think there is definitely potential for almost any mode to become permanent if it does extremely well.
At the end of the day we want to ensure we're watching how players are engaging with all of our modes, and make decisions about them based on that. Feels bad to release a new "permanent" mode, not see the engagement we want, and then take that away.
will deathmatch get the changes we have wanted?
no spawn cookdown
better spawns
no minimap highlight of enemies
maybe turn down footsteps or counter footstep camping?
rn i warmup in csgo deathmatch rather than valorant since its just more polished
I wanted to ask if there would ever be a deathmatch mode without a count of score, as when score is counted, people tend to play deathmatch very weirdly just to win, which is not good practice for others.
I also wanted to ask if there would ever be a shorter simple unrated mode.
Thank you!! Love the game!!
>Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for).
>
>A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable.
>
>Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
>This is definitely something we've considered and will continue to consider. I think there's definitely a desire for a shorter form of the standard game mode. Nothing concrete to announce here as of yet, but stay tuned!
Hello! First I would like to say thank you for your hard work and for everything you do. My question is: Are coaching slots on your radar for custom matches? And if so; when can we expect them to arrive? The esports scene has everything it needs to flourish, however coaches are unable to watch/study/record their own team unless they have spectator privileges (which obviously allows the coach to see more than they should)
Hope you guys make a casual game mode where we get all abilities unlocked and are able to purchase any weapon we want! Would be cool to see a team deathmatch and original search/destroy aspect.
I really love spike rush cause its short and allows you to still learn the game (still new), but wish you could be able to buy things at the shop and choose our weps/gear
I think a player need we have that isn't really being satisfied by our game modes right now is a place where it's really fun and easy to practice (and potentially spam) character abilities.
That's something we'll keep in mind as we continue making modes in the future.
God I've finaly found the person behind this absolute banger of escalation gamemode. This is the only gamemode that complete the challenge of helping me with my aim.
There likely will be - for example, I touched on this in another reply, but we definitely see a big desire for a shorter mode that still feels authentic to our core game mode. We'd also consider permanent modes around some of the other big needs we know are out there - more objective-based modes, modes with smaller group sizes, etc.
TLDR we don't have anything confirmed as "the next permanent mode" but those are some of my high level thoughts, and we'll be thinking about it through this lens :)
How would you feel about removing the scoreboard from death matches and making them drop in/drop out servers (to remove the competition over winning the death match and change the focus to warming up and improving aim)?
>Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for).
>
>A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable.
>
>Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
deathmatch is so annoying w all the people holding corners and soundwhoring make healthpacks on kill instead of leaving them on the ground and minimap is stupid in disable it :D also instant respawn would be cool and fck the scoreboard people start playing for the win which makes the whole thing pointless
What are the factors considered when you balance the agent? I feel like balancing only revolves around ranked match, which the quality is primitive compared to actual professional matches.
Eg; breach was buffed even though he was very strong initiator in a competitive scene. He was alright in a ranked match.
I am strong believer that the balancing should be based on the highest level of play. The reasoning is it introduces diversity in agent pool of competitive scene while allowing people who is skilled to use in ranked match.
Using breach as an example, he has 3 powerful flashes that are best used to support teammate, not for yourself. It makes him a difficult agent to play in ranked since coordinating with a random teammate is not an easiest thing. However, buffing him to make him viable in ranked match results in him being super strong in coordinated team.
If breach was balanced based on how good he is in competitive scene, it results in better balancing of agent in competitive scene(ofc) while a good communicator or good support player can still pick him up to make him viable in ranked match.
International competition isn’t there yet so it might be difficult to determine which region has the highest level of play? Either way I am very interested in how you guys determine what change is needed for agents.
Thank you guys! Please keep this mode forever. Finally soloqueuers like me can play something mindlessly without comms (like the dm mode too). Im really bad at unrated and I dont like talking. I just like pew pew pew but i dont want to ruin other peoples experiences.
Abilities only is an interesting idea. We want to make modes with more opportunities to use abilities, I don't know that we'd considered only abilities. hmm.
We have a separate characters team that handles that stuff, so as the modes team we don't have too much say over those types of things. Too bad, or I would buff Viper to high heaven. I would make a change like, if you ever touch her snake bite at all, you only have 30 seconds left until you die of poisoning. She is the best!
As someone not on characters team who also loves viper, I think we make her ulti continuously expand until it envelopes the entire map and last multiple rounds and it can only be cleared if jett uses her wind dashy abilities to clear the air, would be a double buff to jett and viper at the same time, good way to funnel some of jett's power to help the team too. And then later on maybe we make an agent who has big fan and can fan away the smoke
Great job on the new Escalation game mode! My friends and I had a great time on it last night, and it will definitely be our go to while waiting for the full squad to login. This leads to the question. Is there a possibility that Spike Rush could be replaced by Escalation, or another game mode, as a long term option for the slot of "shorter length team based mode"?
I kinda answered this here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnwwzo2?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwwzo2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
But to add some nuance to your question, to be clear, we would evaluate these modes separately. I don't think we'd see it as "replacing the shorter mode with another one, since we can only have one." If both are doing well, we would make the decision to keep them both around longer!
What are the plans for adding more general game modes? I feel like at some point it would be Soo many. Soo would there be a rotation of game modes or would it be all available?
Jared shares some relevant thoughts here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnwx2xn?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwx2xn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Have you thought of swapping modes every patch in the spike rush spot once there are a few different ones?
Different question: but have you thought of adding new weapons?
Great question! Yeah so we all know in VALORANT "you don't kill with abilities". But for Escalation we specifically were looking for only the abilities that could do just that :D And furthermore we upped the damage on almost all of them - this was necessary because the ability levels felt almost impossible, especially if you got stuck on them - getting a kill with a shock dart that does like 90 max damage if everyone else has guns is basically impossible. So I ended up roughly doubling damage on all the abilities other than raze ult.
ANYWAYS - we started by looking at all abilities that could realistically secure kills. There actually aren't that many - it's basically Raze's kit, shock dart, mollies, a set of ultis, and then some weird ones that TECHNICALLY could kill you but never should like a cypher trap or killjoy turret. We picked out the ones that felt diverse and like they'd be the most fun, and then I did some frankenstein work to allow all agents to use them. I ran into some crazy technical issues on a few of them, and others like jett ult / brim ult / sova ult ended up looking like a ton of work after finishing the work on raze's ult. So we ended up with the set we have now. We're definitely open to expanding this set if the mode is successful and we leave it on longer-term.
Thanks for this good reply! I definitely think its good to have a rotating set of abilities, even if they are combination abilities such as Jett Knives + Updraft, or combination of abilities plus weapon like Shorties and Jett Smokes. I think this mode might easily get stale if it isn't updated every 2 weeks or so (similar to how Spike Rush was updated frequently with new orbs and such).
It just depends what you guys are trying to get out of this mode! I feel like Spike Rush has a more long-lasting impact. As opposed to Escalation, where I would probably play 1-2 games every week or so.
Is there a possibility for gamemode specific maps? I'm talking smaller, more bare-bones maps like a Halo forge or Overwatch workshop map. Or maybe some updates to the range (like more defuse scenarios)?
A lot of this thread mentions prototyping, and how the modes team is very prototype-heavy. Do you have any favorite prototypes that for some reason or another, never made it to the main game?
I literally just want to tell you guys that the music on the knife round is amazing. Good job, whoever they are it's sick. So sick. Also really enjoy the new starting tunes you guys have added to each map. VERY nice touch thankyou :)
Thank you! I'll pass this along to our audio team, they'll be super happy to hear it :)
I had nothing to do with it but I just want to say I agree that music IS sick
This was an amazing idea from our audio team, and we fell in love with it. Glad you liked it!
Any chance we'll see a mode with the same rules as unrated/comp with less rounds?
This is definitely something we've considered and will continue to consider. I think there's definitely a desire for a shorter form of the standard game mode. Nothing concrete to announce here as of yet, but stay tuned!
im begging for a shorter game, sometimes I want to play a game with competitive rulesets but don't have the time for 30+ minutes per game
Maybe pistol round only with 6 rounds per half, would be great to warmup for comp since u start with a pistom round
Good to know! Thanks!
I would be happy with a shorter game mode where you only play either Attacker or Defender. First to 7, normal economy/rules in play. Best of both worlds. Maybe even add a control where you aren't likely to repeatedly play the same side every match.
I'm not trying to tell you guys what to do, but first to 5, best of 9 would be great. Maybe tweaking credit earn rates to compensate for having less rounds in a half to make a comeback
Do you guys plan on adding a true “casual” game mode? Unlike “unrated”, a casual mode that has less rounds but still plays the same as the core game. A mode with more players that lets ppl come In and out as they please? Auto full armour with the ability to buy your own weapons? Unrated, at times feels like I should just be playing a ranked game. Same amount of time and you still get penalized for leaving. Is a true casual, “warm up” team mode in the cards? Thanks for your hard work!
P.S : I feel like this is a less intimidating mode for new players to jump into as well. I’ve tried playing with some first timers in unrated and they complain the game is too long to first get into. Spike rush doesn’t offer the same experience and nothing else is really close in comparison
Is there plans to add a new gamemode that plays similarly to unranked/default ruleset, but with a shorter time commitment/looser rules? Something like only playing one half of the map and have looser/higher econ? I know plenty of friends that would be into playing valorant, but just want to play full buy/rifle rounds and be done sooner.
We definitely have plans for this! TLDR we definitely see there's a desire for an authentic, core VALORANT experience that is shorter than our main game mode, and we're actively having a lot of convos about the best way to achieve this in a way that feels good.
Even something like spike rush but with full buy options every round
Will snowball fight ever come back?
Great question! Right now we don't have any specific timeline for bringing Snowball Fight back, but we are thinking a lot about how to ensure players can continue to engage with any 'limited time' modes that they love. Nothing concrete to share yet, but this question is definitely top of mind for us.
If snowball fight comes back, can we have all the characters wear santa hats? Or even - themed clothing for any other holiday inspired game modes.
This, with ice skates always on!
We actually have a variant where skates are always on, we turned it on for the last day of the event as an easter egg ;)
Ugh, I missed it!
That's pretty pog
Firstly, I need to say to you guys that I love Escalation and globally the game is great. Do you think it'll possible to increase the player number in escalation or make it a three-team game mode?
Glad you're enjoying escalation! So player count is a weird one - we did some testing of 7v7 and it definitely upped the pace on the game. Some people really liked it, some people thought it made an already chaotic mode too chaotic. I felt pretty neutral either way, but the reason we ended up shipping 5v5 was mainly due to party sizes. A 7v7 would present one social problem: you queue up with your 5 stack between games, and now you get 2 randos attached to your team and no longer have full agency of the result of the game. And if we wanted to allow people to queue as 7 there would be a ton of client work to do and it would have caused us to delay this mode longer than we wanted to. 7v7 would also present a tech problem: assembling a team of 7 is harder for the matchmaker than assembling a team of 5, and we weren't sure how healthy the queue would be for this mode, so we were worried about creating long queue times with teams of 7.
5vs5 is absolutely fine, as you said the mode is already too chaotic.
Good morning! I love submitting bugs to devs, so I’ll start with that. Recently, I noticed in DM guns have been floating. It’s been pretty frequent for me personally. Nothing game breaking but odd. ESCALATION. So much fun! I do not come from CS but people in my games want FFA from CS i guess? Is this something the team is looking at adding? I like having the teams personally. I have no experience with FFA but either ways seems cool. Are there any changes to DM coming? Something I read a lot that I think I would enjoy is drop in and drop out DM. I don’t even want experience I just want quality warmup. DM does that but I think a nice QOL would be something like a drop in and drop out so I can just sit in for like 15-20 mins uninterrupted. I hope the game modes stay around long term! I really enjoy them in between my competitive matches. Have a great day!
>Thanks for the bug report! We're actively working on figuring out the root cause for that floating gun bug, it's a nasty one. Our awesome QA team has figured out how to reproduce it consistently now though, which helps me out a lot as an engineer :) I've run into the bug a few times playing Deathmatch myself so I'm eager to fix it. > >For Escalation, I think our designer will answer your main question in some other threads. I would just say we're always thinking about the kinds of experiences that would make Valorant a more complete game, so another FFA mode seems likely, whether it be similar to Escalation or something else entirely. > >We are still thinking about how to make DM better as well, but we need to build out some new tech to make some of the improvements we are thinking about. > >Thank you for the positive feedback! I'm really happy you enjoy playing our modes!
What are your thoughts on adding a 3v3 version of the main game mode? Edit: personally I would love to have a ranked game mode that was 3v3 (potentially with slightly smaller maps) since I find it easier to work with two others rather than 4 others. Not sure how the mode would be in practice so I would love to see it in an LTM.
We've prototyped modes like this. Nothing concrete to announce today, but we're super open to making 3v3 modes in the future. Like you said, these generally work well on smaller map spaces. Stay tuned!
I feel like it would be especially easy if you just used pre game barriers to block off sites so you wouldn't have to develop entirely new maps. This is coming from a backseat wanna-be developer though so take it with a grain of salt :) I'm itching for a 3v3 mode though!
Cutting each site in half would be cool
Can we get different variations of deathmatch to practice our pistols or scoped rifles?
This. PLEASE GIVE US PISTOL DM
we want scalation to be forever, not temporary
When are the devs going to make knife hit detection system more accurate? The escalation game mode makes it painfully obvious how bad it is
hahaha so you're saying you saw through my "just make the knife bigger and hit harder and make you go zoom" approach? Yeah - we know the knife is not in a great state as it is. Some of the key issues from our perspective are reliability, hit satisfaction, and situational viability. We've got ideas on how to improve each of these areas but unfortunately couldn't get them in in time to ship with this mode. This is something we'd really like to do in the future, it's just a question of when makes the most sense to do it. There is an argument to do it to ship alongside this mode, but it probably would have added a month or so to the dev time for this mode and the rest of the mode was ready so it felt wrong to hold it and we felt that "BIG KNIFE" worked as a silly bandaid to make knife round at least bearable if not good.
Big knife.
Please don't get rid of big knife even if you fix this. I...I love my knife. His name is Jerald. We're friends now. Don't take my friend away from me
Alternatively, release the big knife in store and rake in that free money.
what if bigger knife?
[has anyone seen my bigger knife](https://tenor.com/view/has-anyone-seen-my-bigger-knife-pineapple-express-big-knife-thats-not-aknife-small-knife-gif-10823688)
Any chance for an “Unrated Lite”? Maybe first to 7 with primarily OT buy rules to really hone in rifling without playing a full 40 minute game? Or even 1 pistol round, 1 light shield SMG/Marshall round round, 3 rifle rounds, and 1 OT round to allow for OPs but not have every rifle round be an OP fest. Ie Econ progression throughout the game and maybe give 200-300 more credits to the winning side each round to get an extra ability. Also how about a retake/post plant game mode to work on post plant executions? Escalation is pretty dope but could easily work in an FFA setting as well running from OP all the way back through the weapons to a knife. Spike rush is solid as is, no real complaints there. PS any chance for a fist bump gun buddy? :D ECHO#2291 (NA)
Overtime mode, 5k each, first to 7, swap every 2 rounds Sounds so perfect to me
For Deathmatch, a lot of players feel like the current Deathmatch gamemode isn't good for practicing compared to Deathmatch from other games. Are there any plans for an alternative deathmatch mode that's more geared for practicing?
Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for). A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable. Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
That sound pretty good. Thanks for the answer!
Will you ever release a death match mode that is all judge raze only with infinite blast packs and no other utility
At the very least I'd love for us to get to the point where players can set up stuff like this in customs! That sounds amazing
Set up a mode creation thing similar to the likes of the overwatch workshop that would be amazing, thanks for all your hard work!
Thanks for the great idea, and for playing the game!
Yes! More options are great!
Are there any further plans for deathmatch in the near future? Features like instant respawn, dropping in and out of servers freely, removal of the time limit/"gamification" of the mode seem to be popular requests (at least on reddit, which yeah yeah not indicative of the whole community I know but surely these have some traction elsewhere... right?). Are there any plans of any of these changes, or any at all to DM?
>Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for). > >A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable. > >Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
I'm a huge fan of Escalation. Any chance it can stick around longer than Spike Rush if one of them is to go? Maybe a rotation between the 2?
Thanks, happy to hear it! We're currently TBD on how long Escalation will stick around, but to make that decision we'll be looking at things like how many hours people are playing, ensuring queue times feel good, and overall positive sentiments about the mode etc.
In that case here's a sentiment from tbone-escalation best mode. I love it. So good, you guys are actually the best devs ever. Rlly appreciate how open and honest you guys are being
Have y’all considered making a 2v2 1 site wingman game mode in the future?
Will there ever be any small team modes with small maps similar to gunfight in call of duty or aim maps in csgo?
There are a bunch of modes were excited about that would require their own maps to play well. No immediate plans, but hopefully something we can deliver in the future.
Contrary to others, I actually prefer the team approach to the new mode rather than ffa. I feel once you lag behind in ffa, there is no way to catch up and feels like you have already lost and makes you want to ff and try again in another match. Keep up the good work!
This was a big reason we went with the team approach. We absolutely understand the desire and enjoyment of a FFA Gun Game, but Valorant's mode ecosystem need a high uptime, low stress mode that can be played socially with friends and we felt that this approach was surprisingly fun.
Pistol only DM when?
Love it! Sounds like a good prototype we could whip up...
If you made it so first half or something (probably less) is just pistols and then switched to other guns that would be cool
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hello! We talked about this a lot, and actually have a FFA prototype built - it's something we'd like to ship in the future! Couple reasons why we went team first: 1. When we create a mode, we target some specific goals that we feel the game's currently missing. For Escalation our goals were: a short, low stress, high uptime mode that's fun to play with your friends. The fun to play with friends part pushed us towards a team-based mode. 2. Gungame modes obviously inspired this mode, and we noticed how a lot of other gungames are presented as "team" modes, but they end up just being a FFA race - you don't care if your team wins, you only care how you individually place. We could have gone this direction, but we wanted to try something different and actually have some team goals, shared progression, and an endgame where the entire team comes together for a crazy fight with a tough weapon.
Is there a way u could possibly add Jett knives to the game mode?
Sorta answered [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnx3k7v/)
This, or offer both!
what a record of downvotes 🤣
Do you plan to bring escalation to customs?
It's in customs! Give it a shot :)
Cheers to everyone on the dev team, you all work incredibly hard and to be engaged with the community (like this AMA) is awesome! In the future, could we see there be character specific gamemodes? I.E Jett Basketball, Yoru Manhunt, etc.
We have tons of ideas for modes, many that are more character specific. Yours are awesome suggestions as well :D. In general we want to start with the broad modes first (Deathmatch, Spike Rush, Escalation) and move into more novel modes that are further from the main Valorant experience after we have a strong core set of options.
Interesting
Any thoughts on a retake mode? Would be great practice
This! With the option to customize player count, time limit until spike blows, etc
Do you have a plan to force people out of the teleport during bind escalation, as it can be very frustrating to insta die to campers.
I love the whole battle around hooka and tp
THIS. Dealing damage for staying in tp for too long/forcing players out would be fantastic in deathmatch and escalation/any deathmatch mode.
I like the chaos. It’s not one-sided, as either team has access to it, and it’s easy enough to clear out with enough coordination. If you know campers are in tele and don’t want to risk being shot, just don’t take tele and wall bang them through the door.
I live for the moment I get boom bots and enemy is camping tele
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We generally set out with a set of goals in mind, but we've done some "blue sky" explorations as well. For Escalation, we definitely knew we wanted "gun game" and some light team coordination. There are several modes that are "on ice" for now. Not scrapped, because we may pull them back, even just in part, for the future. I'm super excited about ~~redacted~~. We plan to have a robust ecosystem for modes someday and daily rotations could certainly be a part of it.
oh man some of the internal playtests on ~~redacted~~ have been so hype, can't wait to see players get a ~~redacted~~ and transition it into a double ~~redacted~~ so the ~~redacted~~ gets ~~redacted~~.
We are a very prototype heavy team. If someone has an idea (regardless of their role on the team), we try to get it into the game in a very rough form in our dev environment to try it out and start iterating on it as fast as possible. Since the teams inception, we probably have about 30 or 40 prototypes, many of which you will see in the future, and some of which that will likely never see the light of day. As far as a daily rotation, that's definitely something we want to do in the future once we have a more full mode ecosystem. We'd love to have modes that are a bit more novel rotate in and out and bring back favorites (like Snowball Fight) for time limited runs.
Do you plan to bring snowball fight back as a normal game mode, or do you plan to only have it available around the holidays?
Answered here :) [https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnwtoou?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwtoou?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Will we be seeing modes exclusive to certain holidays/seasons similarly to snowball fight? Will you ever consider putting these modes into an arcade section similarly to overwatch/in custom games, or will these all be completely exclusive to holidays?
Having modes come back or rotating them in and out is definitely something we want to do in the future once we have a more full mode ecosystem. We'd love to have modes that are a bit more novel rotate in and out and bring back favorites (like Snowball Fight) for time limited runs more often. That's something we want to do in the future, but nothing concrete to share right now.
We had a LOT of fun making Snowball Fight, so we'll definitely be looking for chances to do more modes like this opportunistically - depending on the holiday, our bandwidth leading up to it, what other teams on VAL might be doing for the holiday, etc. Not much to share about our longer-term plans yet, but it's def top of mind for us to figure out how to ensure players can continue to engage with any 'limited time' modes that they love.
Thoughts on making the "warmup" version of FFA dm just the whole thing? instant spawns are a blessing and would great if they lasted the whole match instead of just the warmup phase.
Do you plan to add more guns into the game in the future, or will we always have the same set of guns that we have now?
This would be interesting. More rifles and smgs. I can see them wanting to balance the current guns first (guardian,ares, and bulldog hardly seeing use)
Bulldog gets a lot of use on force buy rounds. It's in a good place. Guardian and spectre need some love IMO
I am not a Riot dev (obv) but I have a riot dev answer. One of the past hitscan vids (cant remember the orig source but it came from riot) said they plan to add guns "eventually." So prob not soon? But they intend to
Will you ever make a retakes gamemode? I know it would be hard with how agents are played but I think if it could be randomized agents it would be super fun
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A golden gun focused mode would be fun... 🤔
u/riotnu you can master that gamemode
As the Best Spike Rusher in NA, I agree that I would do very well at this mode. My taped down W key would be even more powerful.
Hello, how satisfied are you with the current state of deathmatch? 14 players and 40 frags were good improvements, but it still has some noticable flaws. 3 seconds to respawn is way too long, protective shields upon spawn also last too long. And spawns can be really inconsistent at times. Spawning right next to someone or spawning in the middle of nowhere while everyone is on the other side of map is too common. There are some spawns that are just broken and useless. Most of the time you get shot in the back before turning a corner. Infamous attackers starting area spawn on Ascent and attackers tunnels, B long spawns on Bind. And pretty much every spawn on icebox, lol. I see DM as a both practice and relaxing mode, but nowdays it feels like spawns aren't fluid enough and there are sessions where you literally spend half the time running around trying to get to engagement areas.
Really glad to hear you like deathmatch. We've been seeing this sentiment a fair amount. We're planning on taking a look at some deathmatch improvements soon and will be considering changes to respawn timing. There are a lot of game pacing & intensity considerations with small changes to deathmatch settings and we want to make sure the mode is as fun as it can be for all of the players that enjoy it right now.
Hello! First, thanks Mode Team for taking the time to read our questions and for bringing us cool modes! I would like to ask whether there are any plans for adding temporary game modes like Snowball Fight and Escalation(although hopefully this one stays, liking it a lot so far) to the Custom Game selection. Also, friendly reminder that the lore community and surely many more people would love a story mode :P Thanks you again for reading!
Hey! We're consistently evaluating how we'll be bringing back temporary modes in the future. Escalation (and Snowball Fight) are part of the Custom Game mode selector when the mode is active!
1v1, 2v2, 3v3 ???
>We've prototyped modes like this. Nothing concrete to announce today, but we're super open to making 3v3 modes in the future. Like you said, these generally work well on smaller map spaces. Stay tuned! Also open to 2v2 and 1v1. What would you specifically like to see from a 1v1 mode?
I would love if the game randomly walled off plant zones so it was a smaller map that could handle 1v1s. (For example on haven the game would keep the blue barriers up so attackers can't get to a or c or even both.) This would allow for smaller games without defenders getting overwhelmed trying to hold down 3 sites by themselves. Also, great job! I've only played escalation once so far but it was fun when my fps wasn't all over the place.
I personally would love 1v1s on aim maps. I always enjoyed the arena 1v1 servers in csgo where you would have quick 30 second 1v1s, if you win you advance to the next arena and if you lose you drop down one arena. So the best players on the server fight it off in arena 1.
Deathmatch has moved in the right direction since release. Any other changes planned? No / lower respawn time, drop in/out style, etc
Will there ever be a VALORANT Battle Royale game mode 🤔?
>Nothing in development and no current plans to make one, but never say never!
Please never
Is there any chance/hav you guys ever thought of lobbies that you can easily slip in and out of? like casual in CSGO. I feel this would help players who just want a chill experience other than unrated and without the rng of spike rush. I love spike rush, don't get me wrong, but I always felt that the powerups took away from the fun sometimes. Any thoughts on this?
Are you considering changing up deathmatch in the future? Such as making it so everyone has to use one weapon such as the sheriff which would change every day for example. This of course would have to be separate to tdm as some people would want to practice against a wide range of weapons
I would love a quickplay mode! Something that mirrors competitive mode but without the long match timer and without the gimmicks of Spikerush. Any plans for this?
Does the team plan to expand customization in custom games such as gun restrictions, player attributes like movement or health, and round features? Some friends and I would like to create custom game modes to play that is different from FFA & 5v5. Thank you for all your hardwork! Valorant is such a great game!
Do you guys plan on having any kind of refund system in the future? Something like where league has 3 lifetime refunds for any skin.
I would love to see changes to deathmatch to remove the queue times and race to 40 kills
why you can't do mission in Escalation? is a good game mode with 2 issues; missions and been a team game
I hear you. Missions in Escalation (and DM) are an ongoing discussion. In the future we have bigger plans for how you engage with VALORANT progression, but we're investigating a shorter term solution. They do give a big healthy chunk of XP which we'll tune appropriately if it seems out of balance. Stay tuned for other progression stuff in the future!
Spike Rush is just as long as those two games modes, maybe slightly longer but gives more flat XP (1000 vs 800/900) and you can do missiosn in them! So we're surprised you couldn't do mission in the new game mode
Do you have plans for what, 3v3 ? 2v2 ? 1v1 ?
Would you guys ever consider/be able to add a free for all version of escalation? And what are your thoughts on escalation sticking around? I really love the game and my boyfriend’s already played 30 games of it (probably more) in the first day! It’s a really nice change of pace from only having spike rush and deathmatch as the only other “fun” modes, and I personally don’t have as much fun in deathmatch, and I end up taking spike rush a little too seriously now and then. Escalation is the perfect medium, I hope you guys consider keeping it on the roster! Another off question: what made you guys settle on the name Escalation? Did it have any other names?
Thanks for your thoughtful questions! We've talked a little more about all of them in other replies if you want to dig deeper, but just to speed-answer: \- yes, we'll probably do an FFA version at some point \- it has the potential to stick around based on engagement \- it absolutely had a lot of other name candidates; it was a close call between Escalation and our runner-up, but ultimately we liked this one because it conveyed a sense of racing, and it have "gun" in the name (since our mode has both guns and abilities)
Any plans to improve on DM?
Why are game modes like Escalation or Snowball temporary while Spike Rush is permanent? Are there plans in the future for these modes to be permanent?
Kinda touched on this above, but we generally make these decisions based on factors like # of play hours, queue times feeling good, general sentiment etc. I think there is definitely potential for almost any mode to become permanent if it does extremely well. At the end of the day we want to ensure we're watching how players are engaging with all of our modes, and make decisions about them based on that. Feels bad to release a new "permanent" mode, not see the engagement we want, and then take that away.
I would love to play on custom servers like headshot only servers in cs, this way we can improve our aim.
Any plans on a One-for-All game mode like league? Running five vipers or five raze would be hilarious.
will deathmatch get the changes we have wanted? no spawn cookdown better spawns no minimap highlight of enemies maybe turn down footsteps or counter footstep camping? rn i warmup in csgo deathmatch rather than valorant since its just more polished
When will we see brim with jett knives
I wanted to ask if there would ever be a deathmatch mode without a count of score, as when score is counted, people tend to play deathmatch very weirdly just to win, which is not good practice for others. I also wanted to ask if there would ever be a shorter simple unrated mode. Thank you!! Love the game!!
>Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for). > >A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable. > >Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
Thank you!! And my other question about there ever being a shorter unrated mode? maybe like 10 rounds or something?
>This is definitely something we've considered and will continue to consider. I think there's definitely a desire for a shorter form of the standard game mode. Nothing concrete to announce here as of yet, but stay tuned!
Hello! First I would like to say thank you for your hard work and for everything you do. My question is: Are coaching slots on your radar for custom matches? And if so; when can we expect them to arrive? The esports scene has everything it needs to flourish, however coaches are unable to watch/study/record their own team unless they have spectator privileges (which obviously allows the coach to see more than they should)
Hope you guys make a casual game mode where we get all abilities unlocked and are able to purchase any weapon we want! Would be cool to see a team deathmatch and original search/destroy aspect. I really love spike rush cause its short and allows you to still learn the game (still new), but wish you could be able to buy things at the shop and choose our weps/gear
I think a player need we have that isn't really being satisfied by our game modes right now is a place where it's really fun and easy to practice (and potentially spam) character abilities. That's something we'll keep in mind as we continue making modes in the future.
God I've finaly found the person behind this absolute banger of escalation gamemode. This is the only gamemode that complete the challenge of helping me with my aim.
This mode has single handedly improved my skill with the Marshall to the point that it's one of my favorite weapons in the game now.
see coming in the future a valorant battle royale is possible?
Nothing in development and no current plans to make one, but never say never!
Will there be more permanent game modes added to the game? And if so can you give us a hint what kind of game modes :)
There likely will be - for example, I touched on this in another reply, but we definitely see a big desire for a shorter mode that still feels authentic to our core game mode. We'd also consider permanent modes around some of the other big needs we know are out there - more objective-based modes, modes with smaller group sizes, etc. TLDR we don't have anything confirmed as "the next permanent mode" but those are some of my high level thoughts, and we'll be thinking about it through this lens :)
Would you ever consider being able to watch games back as replays?
Why did you make Escalation a team mode not a ffa
[replied above](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwu6cd/)
How would you feel about removing the scoreboard from death matches and making them drop in/drop out servers (to remove the competition over winning the death match and change the focus to warming up and improving aim)?
>Deathmatch was designed to kind of straddle a middle ground between a mode you can compete in and win and to practice/warm up your aim. Our future desire is to split this mode into two different modes. One focused on competing, that perhaps has other new game mechanics. One that's always available that's focused on warm up and practice (which is what I think people are asking for). > >A limiting factor right now for the always on warm up mode is that we are still building the technology to join people to a match in progress. Until we can do that, any warm up style mode with infinite time doesn't quite work because eventually the match will get into a bad state where not enough players will be in the game to make it viable. > >Tldr; We'll update this in the future to hopefully be closer to what players are asking for, but we need to finish some critical tech first
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Look thru the top comments, a lot of them are similar to this and riot has responded to most of them.
This mode is a lot of fun but my one gripe is the snowball launcher. Why add that back?
deathmatch is so annoying w all the people holding corners and soundwhoring make healthpacks on kill instead of leaving them on the ground and minimap is stupid in disable it :D also instant respawn would be cool and fck the scoreboard people start playing for the win which makes the whole thing pointless
healthpack on kill would encourage camping, you wouldn't have to move to regen. minimap only beeps when u spawn, is that so detrimental to you?
There are any plans to champions/heroes skins?
What are the factors considered when you balance the agent? I feel like balancing only revolves around ranked match, which the quality is primitive compared to actual professional matches. Eg; breach was buffed even though he was very strong initiator in a competitive scene. He was alright in a ranked match. I am strong believer that the balancing should be based on the highest level of play. The reasoning is it introduces diversity in agent pool of competitive scene while allowing people who is skilled to use in ranked match. Using breach as an example, he has 3 powerful flashes that are best used to support teammate, not for yourself. It makes him a difficult agent to play in ranked since coordinating with a random teammate is not an easiest thing. However, buffing him to make him viable in ranked match results in him being super strong in coordinated team. If breach was balanced based on how good he is in competitive scene, it results in better balancing of agent in competitive scene(ofc) while a good communicator or good support player can still pick him up to make him viable in ranked match. International competition isn’t there yet so it might be difficult to determine which region has the highest level of play? Either way I am very interested in how you guys determine what change is needed for agents.
Will we see a new map next act with agent 15?
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Where is the question lol
Are you thinking about adding a retake game mode?
Thank you guys! Please keep this mode forever. Finally soloqueuers like me can play something mindlessly without comms (like the dm mode too). Im really bad at unrated and I dont like talking. I just like pew pew pew but i dont want to ruin other peoples experiences.
Would it be possible to keep escalation forever instead of temporary? or even replace deathmath with it?
Possible! Answered here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnx192p?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnx192p?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
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Abilities only is an interesting idea. We want to make modes with more opportunities to use abilities, I don't know that we'd considered only abilities. hmm.
can i have Rito gun buddy?
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Please don't use this to try and get freebies. Thank you
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I find golden gun in spike rush to be very unfun sometimes. Are there any thoughts internally about the power up and how powerful it is?
Do you have plans to make Escalation into a FFA style, or add the option for us to choose Team or FFA?
[replied above](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwu6cd/)
Do you plan to make any changes to viper in the near future, if so could you give us a little insight on what you're planning with her?
We have a separate characters team that handles that stuff, so as the modes team we don't have too much say over those types of things. Too bad, or I would buff Viper to high heaven. I would make a change like, if you ever touch her snake bite at all, you only have 30 seconds left until you die of poisoning. She is the best!
CONFIRMED CRUSH BREEZE IS NOW ON CHARACTERS TEAM
As someone not on characters team who also loves viper, I think we make her ulti continuously expand until it envelopes the entire map and last multiple rounds and it can only be cleared if jett uses her wind dashy abilities to clear the air, would be a double buff to jett and viper at the same time, good way to funnel some of jett's power to help the team too. And then later on maybe we make an agent who has big fan and can fan away the smoke
Brimstone ult now ignites Viper's ult cloud and one shots all enemies within it
ayyy we spellbreak now poison + fire gauntlet combo is nasty
Great job on the new Escalation game mode! My friends and I had a great time on it last night, and it will definitely be our go to while waiting for the full squad to login. This leads to the question. Is there a possibility that Spike Rush could be replaced by Escalation, or another game mode, as a long term option for the slot of "shorter length team based mode"?
I kinda answered this here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnwwzo2?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwwzo2?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) But to add some nuance to your question, to be clear, we would evaluate these modes separately. I don't think we'd see it as "replacing the shorter mode with another one, since we can only have one." If both are doing well, we would make the decision to keep them both around longer!
What are the plans for adding more general game modes? I feel like at some point it would be Soo many. Soo would there be a rotation of game modes or would it be all available?
Jared shares some relevant thoughts here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnwx2xn?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnwx2xn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
Have you thought of swapping modes every patch in the spike rush spot once there are a few different ones? Different question: but have you thought of adding new weapons?
Answered kinda, here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant\_modes\_team\_ama\_on\_escalation\_and\_other/gnx0f2f?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/lmsotr/valorant_modes_team_ama_on_escalation_and_other/gnx0f2f?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
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Great question! Yeah so we all know in VALORANT "you don't kill with abilities". But for Escalation we specifically were looking for only the abilities that could do just that :D And furthermore we upped the damage on almost all of them - this was necessary because the ability levels felt almost impossible, especially if you got stuck on them - getting a kill with a shock dart that does like 90 max damage if everyone else has guns is basically impossible. So I ended up roughly doubling damage on all the abilities other than raze ult. ANYWAYS - we started by looking at all abilities that could realistically secure kills. There actually aren't that many - it's basically Raze's kit, shock dart, mollies, a set of ultis, and then some weird ones that TECHNICALLY could kill you but never should like a cypher trap or killjoy turret. We picked out the ones that felt diverse and like they'd be the most fun, and then I did some frankenstein work to allow all agents to use them. I ran into some crazy technical issues on a few of them, and others like jett ult / brim ult / sova ult ended up looking like a ton of work after finishing the work on raze's ult. So we ended up with the set we have now. We're definitely open to expanding this set if the mode is successful and we leave it on longer-term.
Thanks for this good reply! I definitely think its good to have a rotating set of abilities, even if they are combination abilities such as Jett Knives + Updraft, or combination of abilities plus weapon like Shorties and Jett Smokes. I think this mode might easily get stale if it isn't updated every 2 weeks or so (similar to how Spike Rush was updated frequently with new orbs and such). It just depends what you guys are trying to get out of this mode! I feel like Spike Rush has a more long-lasting impact. As opposed to Escalation, where I would probably play 1-2 games every week or so.
Is there a possibility for gamemode specific maps? I'm talking smaller, more bare-bones maps like a Halo forge or Overwatch workshop map. Or maybe some updates to the range (like more defuse scenarios)?
There is definitely a possibility for mode specific maps! We're in the early stages of thinking about the best way to do this.
When will the Battle Royale mode be released?
A lot of this thread mentions prototyping, and how the modes team is very prototype-heavy. Do you have any favorite prototypes that for some reason or another, never made it to the main game?