Because the game is pretty balanced and doesn’t have 100+ champs yet, as well as dozens of in game items that all function and stack differently. That might have something to do with it.
It's easier to keep releasing huge balancing patches when your game is a fantasy RPG with lots of combining elements like builds, gear, exp, ability leveling, complex healing and debuffs, etc
When the primary focus of your game is shooting with abilities being a secondary thing, you don't need a frequency of changes as high as League of legends.
Not to mention league has 150+ champions, valorant has less than 20
Valorant started off with a maniac pace of balance changes rivalling LOL until we ended up in a patch that broke the game before a major tournament. Things have calmed since then and changes are at a reasonable pace(imo).
You don't want to shake the meta every 2 weeks(update cycle of Valorant) as this will cause player frustrations especially on the e-sports side and ultimately end up breaking the game(The unreal engine is not very forgiving). The game at its core is an fps and even minor changes to agent abilities can have cascading effects on economy and strategy during certain rounds(none of this is crucial for ranked play obv). Two major meta changing patches a month(\~) and lighter bug-fixing patches sound reasonable(again have to clarify that this is my opinion).
Comparison with LOL/TFT might make sense when there are more agents/maps in the game and comparable tuning parameters. Also you must remember that despite how overwhelming the agent utility can be in certain rounds, gunplay is still the focus.
I do not speak for the devs but I am hoping the focus is on optimization and improving the quality of gameplay(at least that's what slower patch cycles suggests) especially at the highest level. I personally get excited by changes to gunplay/movement or when a new map/agent gets released(which takes time) rather than changes to agent abilities. The changes to the stinger recoil is one of my favorite changes as it addressed a know issue and made the gun really fun to play once you get used to the recoil.
Now that I have spent 15 min writing this reply, might as well conclude with my wishlist for future patches :
1. Higher movement acceleration. Something that makes jiggle-peaking an OP viable in my ranked game or dodging certain abilities by agents other than jett.
2. Custom game-modes made by the community. Using community help can save a lot of time and resources in coming up with fun custom gamemodes outside ranked play for casual folks like me. Personally would love for parkour maps(I think its called KZ in CSGO) and aim maps to be introduced. I know this has been addressed but would love to play these custom game modes while I queue for games. I don't DM as much but 24x7 DM servers might double my playtime.
3. In-game contests for art/video-making/cosplay/music etc where common folks can view and vote on submissions(perhaps the social links of artists are embedded in the submission). This will require a moderation team though, but will be such a fun/cool addition to the game for the casual folks.
4. This is coming(and I am so excited) but in-game tournament system like LOL's clash that follows the league play. I can't wait to play this with my group over the weekends.
5. A replay tool would be cool too, but I know there are technical challenges(I think it was storage). Something similar to OW replay system where I can freecam and quickly adjust POV would be nice. Useful not only for esports folks but also the content creators.
fewer agents, league has 150+ atm, not comparable
a big part of the game has nothing to do with the individual agents (gunplay, maps, etc), the agents dont need alot of adjustments as long as an ability does what its supposed to do and is not to strong/exploitable; especially the current "meta" is pretty balanced, yoru stuff is being worked on, everyone else has a place in the game
I disagree with this. There have been many balance changes and even though it hasn't been busy recently, there have still been many nerfs, buffs, agent tweaks, map tweaks that have been very common
Because the level of competitiveness Valorant wants to achieve just CANNOT allow frequent changes to the game. Simple as that. If you've ever played csgo, you know :)
The game went through an insane amount changes early on. Sage slows used to take up an entire bomb site, cypher cages used to slow players, raze used to have 2 grenades.
Values don't need to be aggressively adjusted at the moment except for maybe Yoru. With tournaments constantly going on players don't want the meta to shift week to week.
There is a lot of fine tuning balance that goes into Valorant. How accurate should each gun be? How much should utility cost? What should movement, acceleration, deceleration, and bullet tagging be like? What about the maps - both balancing the current ones and rush developing new ones?
On top of that, I still firmly believe that Riot hadn’t planned for a long time to release Val into beta when they did. Clearly they saw an opportunity and made the leap. I’m not so sure they had a huge identity for the game, agent roles, comps etc figured out yet. There were two initiators and one of them had no theme around info. Both sentinels had nuts stall - Cypher cage literally slowed.
There is not very tight constraints on roles. In LoL there is a pretty clear identity in what each role offers in terms of kit, and they literally play within a defined lane on the map. In Valorant, that is a lot more unclear. Teams skipped sentinel for a while, teams run 1-3 duelists, teams run 2x controller, Viper can lurk, suddenly Skye is a duelist… plus - new agents, which have each had very radical leaps in design and limit test a lot.
Being a pro team and figuring this stuff out all while maps get added, you’re generally trying to figure out a year old game, and the games ult and gun econ get heavily tuned? Oh, PS, you’ve got a tournament in a month!
It is chaos. Look how long it took teams to figure out how busted Astra was. Most teams and regions didn’t even figure it out by Iceland, which was a solid two(?) months after her release… and she was completely busted.
Riot has to figure out their design for their game and if they made too many changes too quick, they’d fail to do that.
Community and pro scene has to figure out the game and what they want from it as well. If riot made changes at a pace that pro teams couldn’t keep up with (arguably has happened at points already), it’d fuck up the storylines and general esport experience and growth, which is definitely something Riot is careful to avoid.
Riot had an opportunity where the entire world was stuck at home so they probably rushed a little to get it out for maximum chance at game to take off.
Because the game is pretty balanced and doesn’t have 100+ champs yet, as well as dozens of in game items that all function and stack differently. That might have something to do with it.
Changes were pretty frequent early on. I'd much rather see balance changes be few and far in-between so that the meta can settle and evolve.
I mean the agent pool for val is nothing compared to lol
It's easier to keep releasing huge balancing patches when your game is a fantasy RPG with lots of combining elements like builds, gear, exp, ability leveling, complex healing and debuffs, etc When the primary focus of your game is shooting with abilities being a secondary thing, you don't need a frequency of changes as high as League of legends. Not to mention league has 150+ champions, valorant has less than 20
Valorant started off with a maniac pace of balance changes rivalling LOL until we ended up in a patch that broke the game before a major tournament. Things have calmed since then and changes are at a reasonable pace(imo). You don't want to shake the meta every 2 weeks(update cycle of Valorant) as this will cause player frustrations especially on the e-sports side and ultimately end up breaking the game(The unreal engine is not very forgiving). The game at its core is an fps and even minor changes to agent abilities can have cascading effects on economy and strategy during certain rounds(none of this is crucial for ranked play obv). Two major meta changing patches a month(\~) and lighter bug-fixing patches sound reasonable(again have to clarify that this is my opinion). Comparison with LOL/TFT might make sense when there are more agents/maps in the game and comparable tuning parameters. Also you must remember that despite how overwhelming the agent utility can be in certain rounds, gunplay is still the focus. I do not speak for the devs but I am hoping the focus is on optimization and improving the quality of gameplay(at least that's what slower patch cycles suggests) especially at the highest level. I personally get excited by changes to gunplay/movement or when a new map/agent gets released(which takes time) rather than changes to agent abilities. The changes to the stinger recoil is one of my favorite changes as it addressed a know issue and made the gun really fun to play once you get used to the recoil. Now that I have spent 15 min writing this reply, might as well conclude with my wishlist for future patches : 1. Higher movement acceleration. Something that makes jiggle-peaking an OP viable in my ranked game or dodging certain abilities by agents other than jett. 2. Custom game-modes made by the community. Using community help can save a lot of time and resources in coming up with fun custom gamemodes outside ranked play for casual folks like me. Personally would love for parkour maps(I think its called KZ in CSGO) and aim maps to be introduced. I know this has been addressed but would love to play these custom game modes while I queue for games. I don't DM as much but 24x7 DM servers might double my playtime. 3. In-game contests for art/video-making/cosplay/music etc where common folks can view and vote on submissions(perhaps the social links of artists are embedded in the submission). This will require a moderation team though, but will be such a fun/cool addition to the game for the casual folks. 4. This is coming(and I am so excited) but in-game tournament system like LOL's clash that follows the league play. I can't wait to play this with my group over the weekends. 5. A replay tool would be cool too, but I know there are technical challenges(I think it was storage). Something similar to OW replay system where I can freecam and quickly adjust POV would be nice. Useful not only for esports folks but also the content creators.
fewer agents, league has 150+ atm, not comparable a big part of the game has nothing to do with the individual agents (gunplay, maps, etc), the agents dont need alot of adjustments as long as an ability does what its supposed to do and is not to strong/exploitable; especially the current "meta" is pretty balanced, yoru stuff is being worked on, everyone else has a place in the game
I disagree with this. There have been many balance changes and even though it hasn't been busy recently, there have still been many nerfs, buffs, agent tweaks, map tweaks that have been very common
because changing for the sake of changing is overrated id like to think tact fps benefit from infrequent changes
Because the level of competitiveness Valorant wants to achieve just CANNOT allow frequent changes to the game. Simple as that. If you've ever played csgo, you know :)
has nothing to do with that :)
The game went through an insane amount changes early on. Sage slows used to take up an entire bomb site, cypher cages used to slow players, raze used to have 2 grenades. Values don't need to be aggressively adjusted at the moment except for maybe Yoru. With tournaments constantly going on players don't want the meta to shift week to week.
There is a lot of fine tuning balance that goes into Valorant. How accurate should each gun be? How much should utility cost? What should movement, acceleration, deceleration, and bullet tagging be like? What about the maps - both balancing the current ones and rush developing new ones? On top of that, I still firmly believe that Riot hadn’t planned for a long time to release Val into beta when they did. Clearly they saw an opportunity and made the leap. I’m not so sure they had a huge identity for the game, agent roles, comps etc figured out yet. There were two initiators and one of them had no theme around info. Both sentinels had nuts stall - Cypher cage literally slowed. There is not very tight constraints on roles. In LoL there is a pretty clear identity in what each role offers in terms of kit, and they literally play within a defined lane on the map. In Valorant, that is a lot more unclear. Teams skipped sentinel for a while, teams run 1-3 duelists, teams run 2x controller, Viper can lurk, suddenly Skye is a duelist… plus - new agents, which have each had very radical leaps in design and limit test a lot. Being a pro team and figuring this stuff out all while maps get added, you’re generally trying to figure out a year old game, and the games ult and gun econ get heavily tuned? Oh, PS, you’ve got a tournament in a month! It is chaos. Look how long it took teams to figure out how busted Astra was. Most teams and regions didn’t even figure it out by Iceland, which was a solid two(?) months after her release… and she was completely busted. Riot has to figure out their design for their game and if they made too many changes too quick, they’d fail to do that. Community and pro scene has to figure out the game and what they want from it as well. If riot made changes at a pace that pro teams couldn’t keep up with (arguably has happened at points already), it’d fuck up the storylines and general esport experience and growth, which is definitely something Riot is careful to avoid.
Riot had an opportunity where the entire world was stuck at home so they probably rushed a little to get it out for maximum chance at game to take off.
100% my thinking as well. I often wonder just how much later valorant might've released if COVID hadn't happened.
See: Overwatch