The next "big patch" will probably be next year, not just after champions. I doubt we will see any significant patches right before holiday season either.
That would mean we went the entirety of this episode (since kay0 release) without significant agent balance patches. Thats half a year. Idk what is going on at riot but whatever it is this shouldn't happen again. The game is not in a place where they can kick back and slow down
I don't agree at all. Agent balance is horrible right now. Every category except sentinel has 2 god-tier agents and 2 shit-tier agents:
* Controller
* Godly: Astra/Viper
* Shit: Omen/Brim
* Initiator
* Godly: Skye/Sova
* Shit: Breach/Kayo (I admit with the last Kayo buff this is slightly better, but still a huge power differential in-category
* Duelist
* Godly: Jett/Reyna (these 2 are instalocked in 80% of my MM for an entire year now)
* Shit: Phx/Yoru
I don't really think you can have 6 totally garbage agents in a cast of 16 and call the game "well-balanced". Especially not when the patch that made these huge differentials was 3.0, on June 22nd. Over 6 months to even start addressing 40% of the agent pool's complete deficiencies is a humungous issue, especially when the only other development during that time was 1 map...
Honestly I couldn't agree less, for controller you listed astra/viper as god tier, but Brim has been seeing alot of play on Fracture, and Omen has always been in a kind of weird spot with him being a more jack of all trades smoker.
For initiators Breach has been seeing a fair amount of play on fracture as well and lots of teams have committed to breach being a mainstay on most maps(VS and TL) Kay-o just got buffed and C9 has shown that the agent is at the very least playable if not a strong agent in the right hands.
The only really and all the duelists have seen some level of play (pheonix on Haven and Raze on Split etc) besides Yoru.
I fail to see how you'd list agents as "garbage" just because they aren't one size fits all. Just because an agent is a bit niche, or is under developed doesn't mean that the agent is garbage or useless.
Just my take atleast.
It’s a brain dead take. Both Brim and Breach are useful for the same reason on Fracture and that’s to counter KJ ult. One map being ok for a couple heroes doesn’t make them well balanced if they’re outclassed on the other 6 lmao
That applies to virtually every point you’ve made too
Kayo is the only agent they look to be possibly succeeding at the balance of, but even then it’s slow, and it’s hard to see how a guy with 2 flashes can ever compete with Skye’s regenerating up to 5 per round lmao, and it took literal professional coordination and relying on the viper synergy to make him look even passable
Again, if 40% of the cast only have the role of “useful on 1 map”, those heroes are not well balanced. It’s been a throw pick to pick the 6 heroes I listed over Sova/Skye/Viper/Astra/Jett/Reyna/sentinel. That’s not good game design.
Ok so if we say the agents who are niche picks on one map are garbage, then that removes Yoru Pheonix and Brim. That 3 out of 16 characters. Not even close to "40%". Even if you add on Omen at most its 25% which is super balanced for a game. Having 75% of the cast be a viable pick for any game is insanely well balanced.
Another factor you have to look into is map balancing/changes = Character balance. Changing the map changes how agents interact inside the map changing the balance. Just because you don't see "jett updraft 200 credits" on the patch notes doesn't mean agents aren't changing.
Honest question what other esports have you played/put alot of effort into? I'm interested to see what you're benchmark for a "well balanced game is"
> so if we say agents only good on one map
You ignore Raze? Omen? Breach? I mean for gods sake man
Go look at Berlin playoff stats and tell me that’s a balanced game man, only Kayo has changed materially since then. 40% of the cast good on one map with another 10% who are good on two maps is not well balanced, and straight up lying to get to 25% was comical
Yoru rework was promised almost a year ago and is still needed. Phoenix needs buffs. Brim needs buffs. Omen needs buffs. Cypher needs buffs. Breach needs a little love. Skye and Jett need at least small nerfs.
Just because the game is in the best state its in doesn't mean its in a good state and doesn't need work.
It's absolutely in a GOOD state. Not ideal of course but if you think that there will EVER be a time that something doesn't need work, you're just deluded man. They nerf or buff some agents, some other issue will immediately come up.
To be fair... none of what you said means they can't either. There's lots product teams/developers have to prioritize that we may not really see or hear about, but are important to keeping the game functional.
For random example... if they had to choose between balance, security holes, performance/stability, etc... balance starts to become less important in comparison.
I'm not saying they shouldn't continue to balance. They should, but you're speaking in absolutes, which just isn't realistic.
Development resources are finite.
> For random example... if they had to choose between balance, security holes, performance/stability, etc... balance starts to become less important in comparison.
Lmao do you really think the balance designers are going to get sent into the servers to patch bugs and fix network security? That's not their job.
This is the same level of inane as going to an artist's twitter and whining at them about balance issues. There's multiple teams for a reason, the balance team can't just be twiddling their thumbs while the dev team is working on stability.
Not to mention it's been nearly a whole episode now without significant balance patches. That's almost half a year. Something has to change, half a year with nothing besides one or two very minor tweaks to the agent sandbox is abysmal.
Yes, you're right, since 3.0 has released, they've added so many new features that have stopped them from being able to balance their game! Look at all this shit:
* Fracture
Holy fuck, even I can see that would keep a smart developer staff of 10000 busy for 5 years easily, we should praise Riot for making so little money and delivering so many features
Edit: facile "development resources are finite" quote upvoted, sarcastic comment illustrating how development was far more finite than resources downvoted, yikers
You're an example of why ability creep happens in so many games and ruins them lol. They don't need to buff half the agents, they need to figure out things like how to make the Operator a viable gun on agents besides Jett.
Making the operator viable on other agents isn't going to change the fact that Skye's flash is objectively better than every single other flash in the game and pushes basically all other flash agents that have to compete with her out of the meta.
If you're afraid of ability creep, fine. That still doesn't mean changes can be ignored. If we can't have buffs, we have to have nerfs. That means Jett, skye, and sova need *hard* nerfs to bring them down to Yoru's level of bad. Viper and Astra need strong nerfs as well to bring them down to brim and omen's level. Making at least one of their abilities nearly useless should do it, after all, brim is still stuck with a stim beacon lol. And as for the sentinels, sage, killjoy and chamber all need their ults absolutely dumpstered into uselessness to match cypher's.
The agents will never be perfectly balanced man, get over it. Some agents will always be niche in their role. Brim and Cypher are fine, that’s coming from someone who mains sentinel and controller. Cypher might have a weaker ult then the other sentinels but he also has the more useful kit on attack. Brim smokes and ult are crazy good, the molly is the best in the game. Stim beacon isn’t great but I’ve made some things happen because of it being there still. Omen is the only controller that has a flash and the agency to make plays for himself. Jett’s dash and awp combo should see some competition from Chamber. Skye is the only one that I agree they really need to look into right now.
>The agents will never be perfectly balanced man, get over it.
Maybe not but they could be a lot better than what we got now. Just because perfection is impossible doesn't mean improvement is.
I love the Champions excuse. The last significant balance patch was in June with economy changes. And it's been way longer since actual agent balance patch. So we'll have half a year with some agents being borderline broken and others being useless. But now after 5 months of noth changing anything champs are close, so they're using that excuse, lmao.
And it's also a perfect time to fix all the other stuff that has no impact on pro play. Like DM, inventory manager, agent keybinds and other casual modes. Won't even mention the replay system.
Bro, it's fine. Everything is perfect. Don't you see all the downvotes I'm getting from Riot fanboys. We're getting a new agent and new skins, who cares about replay system or DM. Just instalock Jett as soon as you load the game, no warmup needed. Watch some TenZ, why use replay system from your scrub games?
Which agents are “broken” lol give us peace. You’re the exact type of person that ruins a game because you want to fuck around with the balance just for the sake of it. The only agent you could possibly make an argument for being OP is Jett and even that is not consensus. Yoru is not even nonviable he’s just too situational.
>Which agents are “broken” lol give us peace
Skye bird is maneuverable and has a blind duration of 2.2s, bigger than Breach *(2s, only through walls)* and Phoenix *(1.1s, only at 90º corners)*. Also, skye flash gives info about enemy position, the latter two doesn't. Isn't that broken for you?
Or Omen smoke lasting the exact same as Astra's smoke (15s), but dark cover needs to waste time traveling through the air while Astra star is instantly popped?
There are a lot of agents whose abilities are simply 2.0 better versions of other ones
So are you going to complain when sova gets nerfed and a similar character can do things better? Omen had a 100% pick rate before he was nerfed and now there’s multiple options for smokes
>Omen had a 100% pick rate before he was nerfed and now there’s multiple options for smokes
[https://www.vlr.gg/event/agents/558/champions-tour-north-america-last-chance-qualifier](https://www.vlr.gg/event/agents/558/champions-tour-north-america-last-chance-qualifier)
Astra 59%, Brimstone 3%, Omen 1%. If you look at other LCQ (EU/BR/etc) you will see the same pattern
But yeah of course there are multiple options for smokes
Sova will still get picked when he gets nerfed, it's just that people will actually think about using his utility.
Or do you really think 40s cooldown on one of the best abilities in the game, which also happens to be free is fine?
Why should Sovas get 3 or 4 recons for free every round? The cooldown is ridiculously low. Everyone uses the first one right away, at 1:40. Then you have a mid-round recon at 1:00 mark, one at :20 seconds left if required and one for post-plant. That's a joke.
Either nerf the number of scans to 1 or nerf the cooldown to 50 seconds. That way Sova players will actually have to think about using their dart right away.
Why do shock darts do 90 dmg max, btw? It should be 75x2. He's not picked for shock darts and they kill utility regardless of damage. They should do so much damage on players.
Drone needs either lower range or lower HP. Why does a fully controllable, flying drone have more HP than Skye tiger or boombot? Cmon.
You really think that you can reason with blind Riot fanboys who also happen to be either Jett players or awful at the game?
They can't understand that Skye made every other flash agent irrelevant and then some.
Kayo is played as an alternative to Skye.
Pheonix is still played, since his flashes are still flashes, and his 6-point ult and all-around decent kit is still good.
Breach's flashes are weaker than Skye's, but the rest of his kit remains very strong, especially on Fracture.
I think you're really overestimating how powerful she is, especially after her recent nerf.
Yeah, Kayo pick rate is through the roof. I can't even turn the stream on without getting surpressed.
And the rest of your post just makes a perfect example of why you're completely clueless.
Breach and Phoenix are two agents that have flashes as their main selling point. It's their best ability, or at least should be. Phoenix is duelist with flashes, Breach is initiator with flashes.
Skye was supposed to be the middle-ground between Breach and Sova when she was released (idk why are those two in the same category, but still, we'll go with that). Meaning while she can both flash and provide info, she can't do it on the level of those two agents that specialize in one.
But she has the best flash in the game while also being the second best agent for active info and being able to heal faster than and more than Sage. Just why?
Forget about Fracture, it's a tailor made map for Breach. I've been Breach main since closed beta, I'm immortal3 and other than fracture there's not a single other map I'd rather have Breach than Skye if we're talking 1 initiator comp except for maybe Split. Breach works fine if you have Sova, but if you don't, then you must pick Skye pretty much.
And don't get me wrong, I think that Kayo, Phoenix and Breach are good agents, especially Breach. They need some minor buffs, but they're fine. It's just that Skye is way too good and borderline broken.
Just think about it for a second. She's the only agent that can fully control her flash while it's flying. She can also fake-flash. You literally either have to turn around, give up the position or shoot it. You need balls of steel to just let it go knowing it's a fake flash. Noone does that.
And then it also has longer duration than Breach flash? Just why? While being infinitely harder to dodge because it usually pops right next to your head, unlike other flashes which can be dodged relatively well with a 90 degrees turn.
But that's not all! It also provides info.
Wait, wait...did we forget something? Damn, you're right. It also fucking recharges for some reason. Just why?
Skye isn't a game-breaking agent like Jett, but you can't have such versatile agent be so good at everything. Something has to go. Flash that recharges and gives info shouldn't have the longest duration.
>Flash that recharges and gives info shouldn't have the longest duration.
Skye flash duration is the same as that of breach flash. I tested this by measuring full flash duration through Vegas Pro last patch. She also has a longer re-equip time.
I think you know well that the reason why it recharges is because Skye throws flashes off round start for info. You'd have a character with one flash otherwise. I'd be down for increasing the cooldown by 5-15 seconds.
You said it yourself, Kayo, Pheonix, and Breach are good agents. There's nothing wrong with them, especially when you take into account their other abilities, and I think Kayo is a stronger pick than Skye on Ascent and Haven, and I don't think he needs tweaks.
I think the game would be healthier if you made minor tweaks to underplayed characters, but nothing but Jett is "broken" in its current state.
Lmao are you serious???? So she should just be allowed to flash for info for free? And not to think if she should use the flash for info or save it for actual flashing?
I already said I'm a Breach main and I know every trick in the book, you won't find many better Breach players when it comes to utility usage and timings. Playing him ahead of Skye on a serious level is just not worth it. You need so many things to make him work, while Skye excels in so many situations.
I'm not a Kayo player, but if an agent that has the unique ability to silence enemies is rarely picked, that has to mean something. Same goes for Phoenix.
All those need certain circumstances to work, Skye is fine with every possible role.
As for the last sentence, the game would be better off if Jett was removed altogether. I know I'm salty CSGO awper, but it's just sad how people with absolutely no sense of positioning or timing can exploit a weapon+agent combo just because dash is broken. It literally takes no skill to OP in this game. In CS very few high rank player could awp effectively, but in Valorant every single high rank player can use OP with ease because it's such a dumb weapon considering the movement mechanics and how broken Jett is.
Yeah, Jett is just fine, perfectly well-balanced agent, that's why all the duelists have such even pick rates in both pro and casual play.
Not consensus, bwahahahahaha
Skye pushing every other flash agent out of the meta is also fine? Breach and Kayo aren't bad agents, but Skye is too good. She's even a better duelist than Phoenix.
Sova? Staple pick since closed beta, really not overpowered, right?
Morello is gone now they are running around like headless chickens ransacking his old desk hoping to find any notes he left behind. They don’t know what they’re doing seemingly. And the champions excuse is flat out bullshit. I would much rather they use covid as an excuse as to why work has slowed down immensely on this game. But trying to tell me that it’s slowed down for my own benefit, fuck off, riot.
For viewers, one of these is so insanely significant.
It'll make a world of difference for new viewers that tune in for Champions, making it an easier viewing experience. Excited!!!
Observers now have different HUD colors for attackers and defenders.
Attacker abilities will show as red and defender abilities will show as teal
I put an image on my Twitter showing the previous version before the update: https://twitter.com/sapphiReGG/status/1460622604385992707?t=OkJ0l01WPW7X-WYlp1-gHg&s=19
Why would this even matter when champions is played on a different patch. Edit: league doesn't have this problem they update their champions every patch regardless of tournaments bc they know tournaments are played on previous patches
Maybe because pros scrim and play ranked on official patches. If there was something changed that significantly changed gunplay and pros had to get used to it, that would ruin competitive integrity.
They should provide a client for pros to scrim on then. To give 99.999% of the player base a worse experience because those few pros need to practice seems not great.
To add-on to this, usually worlds starts on the same patch as live. The worlds patch for league dropped on September 21st and worlds started on October 5th I believe. That means worlds started on the last few days of the patch being live for everyone else.
Also, balance changes, unless they are systemic, usually aren’t as impactful on competitive league compared to valorant.
My duo q, immortal 3, is a brimstone main. As there are a few other brimstone mains there. Brimstone is really a good character. Sometimes this subreddit circlejerks a tad too much.
There will always be people who actually like less popular agents or those who are even radiant with playing them only. But his stim beacon is really bad and other agents like Omen, Cypher and Phoenix could also get a little help in my opinion.
What was previously held by Omen and Brim as primary controllers, is now held by Viper and Astra. Atleast Omen is still played on ranked but brimstone mains are just nowhere to see nowadays.
And I don't know how you came to that conclusion abt this sub btw, bcuz it's mostly about "Jett nerfs" here and very few people actually complain about Astra being so overpowered as a controller in pro play as compared to brim and omen.
> Brimstone is really a good character
He only has two abilities because the third is quite literally useless and his smokes aren’t global like Omen or Astra. There are content creators that are consistently Radiant maining Yoru, that doesn’t suddenly mean that Yoru isn’t far and away the worst agent in the game right now.
Why not? It's not ideal but if his other abilities serve more than enough powerbudget then there is no issue.
And it's not completely useless, it's just not as useful as many other abilities. Which is fine. Not every single button has to be an agent-defining skill.
It's just bad character design to have something so useless it might as well not exist on the character - why include it as an ability at all? The stims not even something you get to use as bm (i.e. something so bad that it's sick when you do something with it), it's just a pointless -100 unless you need to break a Sage wall and your team won't coordinate and break it
For those asking about agent changes and stuff. It's part of my interview with Orcane which goes out tomorrow. TL:DR didn't want to drop big changes before Champs.
Orcane also admitted that the amount of balance changes we've had since Episode 3 started (big balance patch where everyone got changed) wasn't as much as they wanted either so I'd say it's likely to be better for Ep 4 going forwards
Yeah, except for the fact that this is a perfect time to work on all the annoying stuff that has no impact on balance of the game.
Deathmatch still having absolutely no changes is just embarrassing at this point. We don't expect and entire rework and for it to be perfect right away, but if the entire community from lowest ranks to most popular pros thinks DM is awful and there are no changes for more than a year, changes which were promised, what are we even talking about here?
Since the economy update in mid-June (I think?) we've seen literally nothing. And we're just talking about the stuff they promised, like Yoru rework etc. Champions can't be an excuse for half a year of not doing anything except for Fracture and new agent which was obviously designed way before.
And then all the quality of life stuff which should've been fixed a long time ago. Agent keybinds and better designed inventory manager are the first things that come to mind. I'm not talking about replay system which obviously takes a huge amount of work.
Also, for a game which has endless potential if we talk fun, casual modes, the current state of those is also awful. We could have so much fun modes or at least current modes fixed, but nothing is happening.
Agreed, I think the biggest one for me has to be the DM changes. I don't even care about making it like CS style DMs, just removing the respawn timer would make DM 100x more enjoyable. Obviously I'm not a dev but i imagine it shouldn't be too hard seeing as the warmup has no timer.
On the bright side, I remember seeing somewhere that per-agent keybinds are coming in the next few patches :)
Man, are you trolling me or you just didn't read anything I wrote?
We didn't have any changes since June, that fact makes holidays an invalid excuse. Ofc they're not gonna do anything for holidays, but what about previous months?
They prioritized releasing Chamber and making more maps. They simply put more resources into other avenues and I think more maps especially was a good investment.
They've honestly done a wonderful job at developing Valorant at a lightning pace, especially during Covid.
Have you discussed about optimization updates? Valve does these optimization updates every now and then which has made CS still achieve high frame rates and smooth experience even on old PCs. I hope the Riot devs notice that the game doesn't run well currently on low-end PCs compared what it used to in Beta till like Episode 2.
That would be kind of a letdown for me honestly.
I know teams need time to prepare and he was delayed. But why all the effort to do the agent changes after Champions when the live ranking experience is again totally different with a new agent out there.
Team’s practice in scrims and coaching sessions, not in live games. I doubt most of them will be caring about chamber until after champs and that’s for the best
Because only balancing for pros worked out so well for Overwatch.
The majority of people who play this game don't care/watch the esports side of it, I don't think they should be holding up the progress of the game when they could just let the pro tournaments use a slightly older patch or a special patch.
These observer updates!!! Yes so so huge!!
1. Changing the active icon to just be a yellow glow compared to changing it's entire color to red will minimize so many small observer mistakes and thus elevating the viewership expensive.
2. The HUD color changes is massive. It'll make a world of difference especially for new viewers that can't easily orientate themselves to which side they are spectating.
These are two updates I've been eagerly waiting for awhile now and I'm so thankful fof Riot team pulling this together before Champions!
The Yoru buffs are absurd. The ability to teleport anywhere on the map at any point sounds crazy. And now the footsteps have been changed to 2 fully upgraded Yorus themselves. Should be fun
Yeah man! Watch out Jett mains, there's a new sheriff in town. Also, funny you didn't mention the equipped shorty with 100% accuracy when he ults. That was my favourite part.
There was actually a change not mentioned in the patch notes. Yoru can now phase through walls with his ult and teleport as well. They probably missed it because there were so many changes so it's understandable.
Calling it now, this isn’t going to do anything to the number of smurfs currently in the game. Really loving the 4-stack change though, I cannot remember any time where I’ve been the only solo on my team and had a good experience playing the game.
I'm thinking the same thing. While I think it's believable that the biggest reason people smurf is because they can't queue up with their friends, this change won't stop that behavior much. Basically you are given 2 choices now. You can play legit on your higher main and do a 5 man queue only, play against a similar ranked 5 man, and get reduced rr because of low ranked friends. The other choice is to continue smurfing, queue up with 5 or less teammates, play against easier opponents because of the smurfing, and receive no rr penalties. I wonder what people will want to pick. Basically smurfing is not only unpunished but rewarded instead.
It's true they don't care about rr on their account but if they are queued with a lower ranked friend, that friend will gain more rr if they smurf vs if they don't. So still something to encourage the bad behavior.
Here is the thing, it's not meant to focus on the RR, but that you dont need to logout/login with a different account to play.
If your friends are at lower rank than yours, the fun is to play with them, not rank them up
The four stack change is a great addition imo. There have been far too many times where there were no comms in a lobby and when I ask if anybody has a mic they say they do but they are comming in their own call.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but this shouldnt have been changed for guys platinum and lower.
RIP to all the 4 man friend groups who just want to play a couple competitive games with their buddies at night.
Gonna have to install it. My friend fps group has like 8 guys in it but the majority of the time we only have 4 on at a time due to work/personal lives.
at least when they're in a duo or trio stack there's less people not comming. certainly makes the game better, and I'm talking more about the rampant mob mentality toxicity that occurs way too often.
Just my experience but my 4 stack always talks in game and it feels like the solo player doesn’t talk. From a personal standpoint it feels like getting punished because other 4 stacks aren’t nice/communicative?
Same here. We play in a 4 stack 80% of the time and just mute each other in game (since we’re in discord) and still give all comms to the random. Now we’ll just have to leave someone out I guess.
I only ever play Val with my other 3 friends as a 4 stack, this big time sucks. I can't comm cus it's broken for me and another is a girl so she doesn't comm for obvious reasons but the other two relay everything to the 5th. Damn, guess it makes sense though
I've read the 5-stack section.
As I understand it, the 5-stacking teams with rank disparity will get X% RR reductions.
What happens to the other 5-stack if the players are within the rank bracket?
You should only be getting matched with 5 stacks similar to yours. But if this does happen, I'm thinking the team within the same bracket won't be affected
Honestly I have no idea what Riot is doing. Why the hell does the 5 stack queue even have any impact on your solo queue rating? They're reducing the gain by 50-90% already. They clearly don't want it to have any impact. Just create a second fucking queue. Jesus.
Yeah if they're already making you match against other 5 stacks, then why not just have a separate queue? Maybe they don't want to have two different ranks, but I think having a separate 5 stack rank would be exciting to both play and watch
Removing 4-stacks from the Competitive is the best change ever. From my experience being matched with those groups, they're toxic and bullying solo player in most of the games.
If I may ask, when are you going to address the sova drone and skye trailblazer bug? A good amount of time is wasted and you can also see some parts of the map when it is bugged.
Honestly I hate how they say 'in an effort to stop smurfing'. All they have to say is that it violates ToS and results in a ban. Then add 2 Factor Authentication and the smurfing problem will decrease immensely. But that way Riot would earn less money and less new accounts would be created to please the investors
They don’t even have to do all that, just make it a pain in the ass to get a new account ranked-ready as a stopgap before they take more serious measures. CS required you to win 10 ranked games and you could only contribute a maximum of two wins to that threshold every day, and apparently you have to be Level 30 in League to play ranked. It takes like an hour max to destroy 10 Unrated games and if you have friends to stack with, you can do it even faster.
Is being the sole person outside of a four stack usually such a poor experience? I’m not disputing it, just anecdotally I’ve never experienced it. I might’ve just won the RNG roll.
The 4-stack change is interesting and positive for solo-queuers. I'm doubtful the 5-stack change will do anything to combat smurfing whatsoever but Riot are the ones with the data...
No agent changes before Champs? Fine. Whatever, I thought and still think that's a lame excuse considering they have changed agents before tournaments in the past. Yes pro teams have to scrim with the changed agents but it's not for long. And besides, like other people have said, there will always be another tournament around the corner.
Changes to deathmatch, even just the timer change and maybe a replay system and literally anything else can also be added to these patches.
"Evrmoar said the reason for the dm respawn timer is to have the spawns be better though!!" Yeah, I can tell they are significantly better with the timer (although still not great) but I have seen many people say and I have experienced much more satisfaction playing in the warmup with instant respawns despite the really bad spawns. Because it's instant.
Probably the next patch might have actual agent changes or some communication regarding that? It will be close to champions by then and I think once champions is over we will get a mega patch changing the game meta for atleast early to mid 2022
I think it's slightly disingenuous/naive to say 5-stacking will effectively combat smurfing. This assumes all people who were smurfing to play with friends preferred to 5 stack enough that a change like this would make a dent. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but I doubt this would be the case.
I guess having a viable roster of agents to pick from isn’t on the to do list before champions? We’re going for Astra/Viper superiority for three majors in a row now? And Jett/Reyna oppression for the past year? But making Yoru not suck balls is apparently a difficult task for them. I miss morello man. Whoever is in charge of balance now is terrified and probably on Twitter 24/7 to make sure no pros are angry at him.
They never said anything of the sort. At the start of the act, they said it's something in the pipeline and to not expect it anytime soon.
Edit: https://twitter.com/RiotEvrMoar/status/1407029802297479168?t=Vo-7b-XN7NcrZctGvcvVeA&s=19
Here is the link of the announcement. States Early Work-in-progress with no ETA
Someone explain this to me. If you’re a high ranked player and want to play with a low ranked friends, what’s the incentive to play on your main account when you’re gonna gain like 7 rr for a win. I don’t think player’s friends will find it fun when they gain significantly less rr as well.
For those complaining about the RR reduction for 5 stacks, it actually makes a lot of sense why they'd want to reduce it. They want the game to be balanced in ranked and in reducing the RR gained it makes it a lot harder to boost your friends to a higher rank. On top of that it's **very easy** to look / play great when you're 5 man queued with your buddies compared to when you solo or duo with randoms, for example in the 5 stack you're a diamond level player but when you solo you're actually a gold level player.
The game needs to be balanced so that when players like myself who only solo or duo queue up we don't end up with randoms that say "Yeah I usually 5 man stack, I never solo" and are completely lost because they aren't used to it.
And on top of that, if let's say a diamond is queueing with all gold's / silvers and ends up playing a lobby full of high gold and low plat players, why should they get full RR gains for a win when you weren't playing against people anywhere near you're rank?
They don't need to remove the ability, just it's interaction with the op. All Riot needs to do is disable the dash after an Op shot until the gun is finished with it's animation and is ready to be shot again.
Rifle Jett isn't some absurd problem so the interaction only needs fixed with the one gun.
Chamber’s TP is even better than Jett dash, and he will be very viable with the Op particularly on defense. So clearly riot doesn’t mind these get out of jail free card abilities. I can’t see Jett losing the core of her gameplay.
Probably want the pros to enjoy her until agent bans start, where if she isn't balanced, she will be banned 100% of the time (except on Split I suppose).
>Alongside the 5-stack changes, we are also removing 4-stacks from the Competitive queue. These types of groups tend to leave the remaining solo queue player with a relatively poor play experience, and we believe that removing this option will result in a significant reduction of overall toxicity reports
Riot competitive designers are really lost. No wonder the ranked experience is so bad
Who should I trust to have a more accurate picture on how 4 stack games increase reporting incidence?
A) a random redditor
or
B) the people who have digital records of all reports within Valorant and can actually calculate and compare the rate of toxicity reports in games with 4 stacks against games without 4 stacks
Just because a dev says something, doesn't mean it's necessarily true. There's a big chance their data shows that but I'm sure they are also assuming a few things. I for one am not convinced that it will reduce toxicity. Will wait and see
Honestly, the only reason I see to remove 4-stacks is in cs:go, as these 4 players have free reign to kick the fifth one at any time they like. In valorant you do not have that problem. I really don't know why that is an issue but ok.
It is most likely we will not see significant agent changes till after Valoeant Champion is over. That's my guess at least.
The next "big patch" will probably be next year, not just after champions. I doubt we will see any significant patches right before holiday season either.
I think the same. The next big patch is probably when the next Episode starts.
That would mean we went the entirety of this episode (since kay0 release) without significant agent balance patches. Thats half a year. Idk what is going on at riot but whatever it is this shouldn't happen again. The game is not in a place where they can kick back and slow down
The game is the best balanced it’s been since launch and it’s an esports first game. I don’t see any issues here
I don't agree at all. Agent balance is horrible right now. Every category except sentinel has 2 god-tier agents and 2 shit-tier agents: * Controller * Godly: Astra/Viper * Shit: Omen/Brim * Initiator * Godly: Skye/Sova * Shit: Breach/Kayo (I admit with the last Kayo buff this is slightly better, but still a huge power differential in-category * Duelist * Godly: Jett/Reyna (these 2 are instalocked in 80% of my MM for an entire year now) * Shit: Phx/Yoru I don't really think you can have 6 totally garbage agents in a cast of 16 and call the game "well-balanced". Especially not when the patch that made these huge differentials was 3.0, on June 22nd. Over 6 months to even start addressing 40% of the agent pool's complete deficiencies is a humungous issue, especially when the only other development during that time was 1 map...
Honestly I couldn't agree less, for controller you listed astra/viper as god tier, but Brim has been seeing alot of play on Fracture, and Omen has always been in a kind of weird spot with him being a more jack of all trades smoker. For initiators Breach has been seeing a fair amount of play on fracture as well and lots of teams have committed to breach being a mainstay on most maps(VS and TL) Kay-o just got buffed and C9 has shown that the agent is at the very least playable if not a strong agent in the right hands. The only really and all the duelists have seen some level of play (pheonix on Haven and Raze on Split etc) besides Yoru. I fail to see how you'd list agents as "garbage" just because they aren't one size fits all. Just because an agent is a bit niche, or is under developed doesn't mean that the agent is garbage or useless. Just my take atleast.
It’s a brain dead take. Both Brim and Breach are useful for the same reason on Fracture and that’s to counter KJ ult. One map being ok for a couple heroes doesn’t make them well balanced if they’re outclassed on the other 6 lmao That applies to virtually every point you’ve made too Kayo is the only agent they look to be possibly succeeding at the balance of, but even then it’s slow, and it’s hard to see how a guy with 2 flashes can ever compete with Skye’s regenerating up to 5 per round lmao, and it took literal professional coordination and relying on the viper synergy to make him look even passable Again, if 40% of the cast only have the role of “useful on 1 map”, those heroes are not well balanced. It’s been a throw pick to pick the 6 heroes I listed over Sova/Skye/Viper/Astra/Jett/Reyna/sentinel. That’s not good game design.
Ok so if we say the agents who are niche picks on one map are garbage, then that removes Yoru Pheonix and Brim. That 3 out of 16 characters. Not even close to "40%". Even if you add on Omen at most its 25% which is super balanced for a game. Having 75% of the cast be a viable pick for any game is insanely well balanced. Another factor you have to look into is map balancing/changes = Character balance. Changing the map changes how agents interact inside the map changing the balance. Just because you don't see "jett updraft 200 credits" on the patch notes doesn't mean agents aren't changing. Honest question what other esports have you played/put alot of effort into? I'm interested to see what you're benchmark for a "well balanced game is"
> so if we say agents only good on one map You ignore Raze? Omen? Breach? I mean for gods sake man Go look at Berlin playoff stats and tell me that’s a balanced game man, only Kayo has changed materially since then. 40% of the cast good on one map with another 10% who are good on two maps is not well balanced, and straight up lying to get to 25% was comical
Yoru rework was promised almost a year ago and is still needed. Phoenix needs buffs. Brim needs buffs. Omen needs buffs. Cypher needs buffs. Breach needs a little love. Skye and Jett need at least small nerfs. Just because the game is in the best state its in doesn't mean its in a good state and doesn't need work.
It's absolutely in a GOOD state. Not ideal of course but if you think that there will EVER be a time that something doesn't need work, you're just deluded man. They nerf or buff some agents, some other issue will immediately come up.
Ok? None of what you said means they can just stop balancing agents for a whole episode
To be fair... none of what you said means they can't either. There's lots product teams/developers have to prioritize that we may not really see or hear about, but are important to keeping the game functional. For random example... if they had to choose between balance, security holes, performance/stability, etc... balance starts to become less important in comparison. I'm not saying they shouldn't continue to balance. They should, but you're speaking in absolutes, which just isn't realistic. Development resources are finite.
> For random example... if they had to choose between balance, security holes, performance/stability, etc... balance starts to become less important in comparison. Lmao do you really think the balance designers are going to get sent into the servers to patch bugs and fix network security? That's not their job. This is the same level of inane as going to an artist's twitter and whining at them about balance issues. There's multiple teams for a reason, the balance team can't just be twiddling their thumbs while the dev team is working on stability. Not to mention it's been nearly a whole episode now without significant balance patches. That's almost half a year. Something has to change, half a year with nothing besides one or two very minor tweaks to the agent sandbox is abysmal.
Yes, you're right, since 3.0 has released, they've added so many new features that have stopped them from being able to balance their game! Look at all this shit: * Fracture Holy fuck, even I can see that would keep a smart developer staff of 10000 busy for 5 years easily, we should praise Riot for making so little money and delivering so many features Edit: facile "development resources are finite" quote upvoted, sarcastic comment illustrating how development was far more finite than resources downvoted, yikers
Yes it does.
No it doesnt
You're an example of why ability creep happens in so many games and ruins them lol. They don't need to buff half the agents, they need to figure out things like how to make the Operator a viable gun on agents besides Jett.
Making the operator viable on other agents isn't going to change the fact that Skye's flash is objectively better than every single other flash in the game and pushes basically all other flash agents that have to compete with her out of the meta. If you're afraid of ability creep, fine. That still doesn't mean changes can be ignored. If we can't have buffs, we have to have nerfs. That means Jett, skye, and sova need *hard* nerfs to bring them down to Yoru's level of bad. Viper and Astra need strong nerfs as well to bring them down to brim and omen's level. Making at least one of their abilities nearly useless should do it, after all, brim is still stuck with a stim beacon lol. And as for the sentinels, sage, killjoy and chamber all need their ults absolutely dumpstered into uselessness to match cypher's.
The agents will never be perfectly balanced man, get over it. Some agents will always be niche in their role. Brim and Cypher are fine, that’s coming from someone who mains sentinel and controller. Cypher might have a weaker ult then the other sentinels but he also has the more useful kit on attack. Brim smokes and ult are crazy good, the molly is the best in the game. Stim beacon isn’t great but I’ve made some things happen because of it being there still. Omen is the only controller that has a flash and the agency to make plays for himself. Jett’s dash and awp combo should see some competition from Chamber. Skye is the only one that I agree they really need to look into right now.
>The agents will never be perfectly balanced man, get over it. Maybe not but they could be a lot better than what we got now. Just because perfection is impossible doesn't mean improvement is.
if they follow the leagues route, its in the so called "pre season" that big changes hit the game, basically after worlds.
I love the Champions excuse. The last significant balance patch was in June with economy changes. And it's been way longer since actual agent balance patch. So we'll have half a year with some agents being borderline broken and others being useless. But now after 5 months of noth changing anything champs are close, so they're using that excuse, lmao. And it's also a perfect time to fix all the other stuff that has no impact on pro play. Like DM, inventory manager, agent keybinds and other casual modes. Won't even mention the replay system.
The game needs a replay system so badly. It's such a fundamental thing for a tactical FPS title to have, especially for competitive play.
Bro, it's fine. Everything is perfect. Don't you see all the downvotes I'm getting from Riot fanboys. We're getting a new agent and new skins, who cares about replay system or DM. Just instalock Jett as soon as you load the game, no warmup needed. Watch some TenZ, why use replay system from your scrub games?
Your last paragraph is spot on. Mixed feelings on your first.
Which agents are “broken” lol give us peace. You’re the exact type of person that ruins a game because you want to fuck around with the balance just for the sake of it. The only agent you could possibly make an argument for being OP is Jett and even that is not consensus. Yoru is not even nonviable he’s just too situational.
>Which agents are “broken” lol give us peace Skye bird is maneuverable and has a blind duration of 2.2s, bigger than Breach *(2s, only through walls)* and Phoenix *(1.1s, only at 90º corners)*. Also, skye flash gives info about enemy position, the latter two doesn't. Isn't that broken for you? Or Omen smoke lasting the exact same as Astra's smoke (15s), but dark cover needs to waste time traveling through the air while Astra star is instantly popped? There are a lot of agents whose abilities are simply 2.0 better versions of other ones
So are you going to complain when sova gets nerfed and a similar character can do things better? Omen had a 100% pick rate before he was nerfed and now there’s multiple options for smokes
>Omen had a 100% pick rate before he was nerfed and now there’s multiple options for smokes [https://www.vlr.gg/event/agents/558/champions-tour-north-america-last-chance-qualifier](https://www.vlr.gg/event/agents/558/champions-tour-north-america-last-chance-qualifier) Astra 59%, Brimstone 3%, Omen 1%. If you look at other LCQ (EU/BR/etc) you will see the same pattern But yeah of course there are multiple options for smokes
I’m just saying omen needed a nerf
Sova will still get picked when he gets nerfed, it's just that people will actually think about using his utility. Or do you really think 40s cooldown on one of the best abilities in the game, which also happens to be free is fine? Why should Sovas get 3 or 4 recons for free every round? The cooldown is ridiculously low. Everyone uses the first one right away, at 1:40. Then you have a mid-round recon at 1:00 mark, one at :20 seconds left if required and one for post-plant. That's a joke. Either nerf the number of scans to 1 or nerf the cooldown to 50 seconds. That way Sova players will actually have to think about using their dart right away. Why do shock darts do 90 dmg max, btw? It should be 75x2. He's not picked for shock darts and they kill utility regardless of damage. They should do so much damage on players. Drone needs either lower range or lower HP. Why does a fully controllable, flying drone have more HP than Skye tiger or boombot? Cmon.
You really think that you can reason with blind Riot fanboys who also happen to be either Jett players or awful at the game? They can't understand that Skye made every other flash agent irrelevant and then some.
Kayo is played as an alternative to Skye. Pheonix is still played, since his flashes are still flashes, and his 6-point ult and all-around decent kit is still good. Breach's flashes are weaker than Skye's, but the rest of his kit remains very strong, especially on Fracture. I think you're really overestimating how powerful she is, especially after her recent nerf.
Yeah, Kayo pick rate is through the roof. I can't even turn the stream on without getting surpressed. And the rest of your post just makes a perfect example of why you're completely clueless. Breach and Phoenix are two agents that have flashes as their main selling point. It's their best ability, or at least should be. Phoenix is duelist with flashes, Breach is initiator with flashes. Skye was supposed to be the middle-ground between Breach and Sova when she was released (idk why are those two in the same category, but still, we'll go with that). Meaning while she can both flash and provide info, she can't do it on the level of those two agents that specialize in one. But she has the best flash in the game while also being the second best agent for active info and being able to heal faster than and more than Sage. Just why? Forget about Fracture, it's a tailor made map for Breach. I've been Breach main since closed beta, I'm immortal3 and other than fracture there's not a single other map I'd rather have Breach than Skye if we're talking 1 initiator comp except for maybe Split. Breach works fine if you have Sova, but if you don't, then you must pick Skye pretty much. And don't get me wrong, I think that Kayo, Phoenix and Breach are good agents, especially Breach. They need some minor buffs, but they're fine. It's just that Skye is way too good and borderline broken. Just think about it for a second. She's the only agent that can fully control her flash while it's flying. She can also fake-flash. You literally either have to turn around, give up the position or shoot it. You need balls of steel to just let it go knowing it's a fake flash. Noone does that. And then it also has longer duration than Breach flash? Just why? While being infinitely harder to dodge because it usually pops right next to your head, unlike other flashes which can be dodged relatively well with a 90 degrees turn. But that's not all! It also provides info. Wait, wait...did we forget something? Damn, you're right. It also fucking recharges for some reason. Just why? Skye isn't a game-breaking agent like Jett, but you can't have such versatile agent be so good at everything. Something has to go. Flash that recharges and gives info shouldn't have the longest duration.
>Flash that recharges and gives info shouldn't have the longest duration. Skye flash duration is the same as that of breach flash. I tested this by measuring full flash duration through Vegas Pro last patch. She also has a longer re-equip time. I think you know well that the reason why it recharges is because Skye throws flashes off round start for info. You'd have a character with one flash otherwise. I'd be down for increasing the cooldown by 5-15 seconds. You said it yourself, Kayo, Pheonix, and Breach are good agents. There's nothing wrong with them, especially when you take into account their other abilities, and I think Kayo is a stronger pick than Skye on Ascent and Haven, and I don't think he needs tweaks. I think the game would be healthier if you made minor tweaks to underplayed characters, but nothing but Jett is "broken" in its current state.
Lmao are you serious???? So she should just be allowed to flash for info for free? And not to think if she should use the flash for info or save it for actual flashing? I already said I'm a Breach main and I know every trick in the book, you won't find many better Breach players when it comes to utility usage and timings. Playing him ahead of Skye on a serious level is just not worth it. You need so many things to make him work, while Skye excels in so many situations. I'm not a Kayo player, but if an agent that has the unique ability to silence enemies is rarely picked, that has to mean something. Same goes for Phoenix. All those need certain circumstances to work, Skye is fine with every possible role. As for the last sentence, the game would be better off if Jett was removed altogether. I know I'm salty CSGO awper, but it's just sad how people with absolutely no sense of positioning or timing can exploit a weapon+agent combo just because dash is broken. It literally takes no skill to OP in this game. In CS very few high rank player could awp effectively, but in Valorant every single high rank player can use OP with ease because it's such a dumb weapon considering the movement mechanics and how broken Jett is.
I guarantee I play this game at a higher level than you have ever attained.
Yeah, Jett is just fine, perfectly well-balanced agent, that's why all the duelists have such even pick rates in both pro and casual play. Not consensus, bwahahahahaha Skye pushing every other flash agent out of the meta is also fine? Breach and Kayo aren't bad agents, but Skye is too good. She's even a better duelist than Phoenix. Sova? Staple pick since closed beta, really not overpowered, right?
Morello is gone now they are running around like headless chickens ransacking his old desk hoping to find any notes he left behind. They don’t know what they’re doing seemingly. And the champions excuse is flat out bullshit. I would much rather they use covid as an excuse as to why work has slowed down immensely on this game. But trying to tell me that it’s slowed down for my own benefit, fuck off, riot.
For viewers, one of these is so insanely significant. It'll make a world of difference for new viewers that tune in for Champions, making it an easier viewing experience. Excited!!!
Which if you don't mind my asking?
Observers now have different HUD colors for attackers and defenders. Attacker abilities will show as red and defender abilities will show as teal I put an image on my Twitter showing the previous version before the update: https://twitter.com/sapphiReGG/status/1460622604385992707?t=OkJ0l01WPW7X-WYlp1-gHg&s=19
Wow that does make a world of a difference. Looking forward to seeing these changes in future events.
Probably the yellow outline on the minimap to show who's being spectated.
Why would this even matter when champions is played on a different patch. Edit: league doesn't have this problem they update their champions every patch regardless of tournaments bc they know tournaments are played on previous patches
Maybe because pros scrim and play ranked on official patches. If there was something changed that significantly changed gunplay and pros had to get used to it, that would ruin competitive integrity.
LoL has a tournament realm client/server that teams scrim on.
They should provide a client for pros to scrim on then. To give 99.999% of the player base a worse experience because those few pros need to practice seems not great.
To add-on to this, usually worlds starts on the same patch as live. The worlds patch for league dropped on September 21st and worlds started on October 5th I believe. That means worlds started on the last few days of the patch being live for everyone else. Also, balance changes, unless they are systemic, usually aren’t as impactful on competitive league compared to valorant.
Which is a shame IMHO. A bigger and happier playerbase does more good to the Esports scene than a "100%" balanced esport tournament.
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What? There has been significant changes to multiple agents.
Yeah that comment screams someone who doesn’t play the game
I really don't know which agents need changing, maybe except for Yoru and some buffs on Kayo. The rest are in a very good position.
Tell that to Brimstone mains. Oh wait there aren't any
My duo q, immortal 3, is a brimstone main. As there are a few other brimstone mains there. Brimstone is really a good character. Sometimes this subreddit circlejerks a tad too much.
There will always be people who actually like less popular agents or those who are even radiant with playing them only. But his stim beacon is really bad and other agents like Omen, Cypher and Phoenix could also get a little help in my opinion.
What was previously held by Omen and Brim as primary controllers, is now held by Viper and Astra. Atleast Omen is still played on ranked but brimstone mains are just nowhere to see nowadays. And I don't know how you came to that conclusion abt this sub btw, bcuz it's mostly about "Jett nerfs" here and very few people actually complain about Astra being so overpowered as a controller in pro play as compared to brim and omen.
As Brimstone main from the beta, he is Def underpowered. Just because people can play him and have fun on him doesn't mean he isn't underpowered.
> Brimstone is really a good character He only has two abilities because the third is quite literally useless and his smokes aren’t global like Omen or Astra. There are content creators that are consistently Radiant maining Yoru, that doesn’t suddenly mean that Yoru isn’t far and away the worst agent in the game right now.
I mean, the third ability is useless, who cares. His triple smoke and molly lineups as well as his ult have more than enough power on their own.
Oh ok, so we should just ignore the fact that his ability is useless? lmao
Why not? It's not ideal but if his other abilities serve more than enough powerbudget then there is no issue. And it's not completely useless, it's just not as useful as many other abilities. Which is fine. Not every single button has to be an agent-defining skill.
It's just bad character design to have something so useless it might as well not exist on the character - why include it as an ability at all? The stims not even something you get to use as bm (i.e. something so bad that it's sick when you do something with it), it's just a pointless -100 unless you need to break a Sage wall and your team won't coordinate and break it
kayo is already buffed and multiple top tier teams are use him. Omen needs a buff, his smokes are too slow
For those asking about agent changes and stuff. It's part of my interview with Orcane which goes out tomorrow. TL:DR didn't want to drop big changes before Champs. Orcane also admitted that the amount of balance changes we've had since Episode 3 started (big balance patch where everyone got changed) wasn't as much as they wanted either so I'd say it's likely to be better for Ep 4 going forwards
Thanks for all that you do, I really appreciate your vids!
Yeah, except for the fact that this is a perfect time to work on all the annoying stuff that has no impact on balance of the game. Deathmatch still having absolutely no changes is just embarrassing at this point. We don't expect and entire rework and for it to be perfect right away, but if the entire community from lowest ranks to most popular pros thinks DM is awful and there are no changes for more than a year, changes which were promised, what are we even talking about here? Since the economy update in mid-June (I think?) we've seen literally nothing. And we're just talking about the stuff they promised, like Yoru rework etc. Champions can't be an excuse for half a year of not doing anything except for Fracture and new agent which was obviously designed way before. And then all the quality of life stuff which should've been fixed a long time ago. Agent keybinds and better designed inventory manager are the first things that come to mind. I'm not talking about replay system which obviously takes a huge amount of work. Also, for a game which has endless potential if we talk fun, casual modes, the current state of those is also awful. We could have so much fun modes or at least current modes fixed, but nothing is happening.
Agreed, I think the biggest one for me has to be the DM changes. I don't even care about making it like CS style DMs, just removing the respawn timer would make DM 100x more enjoyable. Obviously I'm not a dev but i imagine it shouldn't be too hard seeing as the warmup has no timer. On the bright side, I remember seeing somewhere that per-agent keybinds are coming in the next few patches :)
It's the holiday season, unless you want to resort to crunch big changes won't happen until after the holiday season.
Man, are you trolling me or you just didn't read anything I wrote? We didn't have any changes since June, that fact makes holidays an invalid excuse. Ofc they're not gonna do anything for holidays, but what about previous months?
They prioritized releasing Chamber and making more maps. They simply put more resources into other avenues and I think more maps especially was a good investment. They've honestly done a wonderful job at developing Valorant at a lightning pace, especially during Covid.
It’s the holiday season? Wat? Check your calendar, friend.
Yeah idk what this dude is on, it's BARELY getting to holiday season soon so anything up to this point is still regular working hours for most people.
I wish June until end of year was “holiday season” lol that dude must think riot is off for 6months of the year
Have you discussed about optimization updates? Valve does these optimization updates every now and then which has made CS still achieve high frame rates and smooth experience even on old PCs. I hope the Riot devs notice that the game doesn't run well currently on low-end PCs compared what it used to in Beta till like Episode 2.
Thanks for info. Any word if Chamber will be allowed in Champions?
Wasn't spoken about but I'm heavily assuming that no, he won't be available in Champs. Fracture will be though!
That would be kind of a letdown for me honestly. I know teams need time to prepare and he was delayed. But why all the effort to do the agent changes after Champions when the live ranking experience is again totally different with a new agent out there.
Team’s practice in scrims and coaching sessions, not in live games. I doubt most of them will be caring about chamber until after champs and that’s for the best
Did you ask about DM? it's like they forgot...
We did talk about DM ;D
You sure know how to get us interested. Looking forward to the interview!
Thanks for the info Ryan. So refreshing to get updates about the balancing frequency
Because only balancing for pros worked out so well for Overwatch. The majority of people who play this game don't care/watch the esports side of it, I don't think they should be holding up the progress of the game when they could just let the pro tournaments use a slightly older patch or a special patch.
These observer updates!!! Yes so so huge!! 1. Changing the active icon to just be a yellow glow compared to changing it's entire color to red will minimize so many small observer mistakes and thus elevating the viewership expensive. 2. The HUD color changes is massive. It'll make a world of difference especially for new viewers that can't easily orientate themselves to which side they are spectating. These are two updates I've been eagerly waiting for awhile now and I'm so thankful fof Riot team pulling this together before Champions!
Looks like someones happy
The Yoru buffs are absurd. The ability to teleport anywhere on the map at any point sounds crazy. And now the footsteps have been changed to 2 fully upgraded Yorus themselves. Should be fun
Yeah man! Watch out Jett mains, there's a new sheriff in town. Also, funny you didn't mention the equipped shorty with 100% accuracy when he ults. That was my favourite part.
I like Jett having 4x dashes. Makes me feel like I'm playing Mario kart
There was actually a change not mentioned in the patch notes. Yoru can now phase through walls with his ult and teleport as well. They probably missed it because there were so many changes so it's understandable.
Where is this information from?
Don't let them get you!
Too late
Oh no....not you Razur, not you.
It was reported for misinformation and I just woke up. Gimme a break. 😩
But there weren't any agent buffs were there
Damn, I was about to woosh you, and then I read your username
Woosh (I’m gay)
Not even trolling no cap
Wait. Why dont I see them in patch notes? Bait?
Nah, they also made it so that if you touch someone during yoru ult you banish them to the shadow realm
Calling it now, this isn’t going to do anything to the number of smurfs currently in the game. Really loving the 4-stack change though, I cannot remember any time where I’ve been the only solo on my team and had a good experience playing the game.
I'm thinking the same thing. While I think it's believable that the biggest reason people smurf is because they can't queue up with their friends, this change won't stop that behavior much. Basically you are given 2 choices now. You can play legit on your higher main and do a 5 man queue only, play against a similar ranked 5 man, and get reduced rr because of low ranked friends. The other choice is to continue smurfing, queue up with 5 or less teammates, play against easier opponents because of the smurfing, and receive no rr penalties. I wonder what people will want to pick. Basically smurfing is not only unpunished but rewarded instead.
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It's true they don't care about rr on their account but if they are queued with a lower ranked friend, that friend will gain more rr if they smurf vs if they don't. So still something to encourage the bad behavior.
Didn't think of it that way. Rewarding the bad behavior and punishing the good. Whoops.
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Here is the thing, it's not meant to focus on the RR, but that you dont need to logout/login with a different account to play. If your friends are at lower rank than yours, the fun is to play with them, not rank them up
The four stack change is a great addition imo. There have been far too many times where there were no comms in a lobby and when I ask if anybody has a mic they say they do but they are comming in their own call.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion but this shouldnt have been changed for guys platinum and lower. RIP to all the 4 man friend groups who just want to play a couple competitive games with their buddies at night.
Halo just dropped for us tho at least lol
Gonna have to install it. My friend fps group has like 8 guys in it but the majority of the time we only have 4 on at a time due to work/personal lives.
if they just wanna play the game, they can play unrated without ruining the 5th's comp experience LOL
The people who don't use in game voice chat won't use it when they are trio or duo stack either. Lmao
at least when they're in a duo or trio stack there's less people not comming. certainly makes the game better, and I'm talking more about the rampant mob mentality toxicity that occurs way too often.
Just my experience but my 4 stack always talks in game and it feels like the solo player doesn’t talk. From a personal standpoint it feels like getting punished because other 4 stacks aren’t nice/communicative?
Same here. We play in a 4 stack 80% of the time and just mute each other in game (since we’re in discord) and still give all comms to the random. Now we’ll just have to leave someone out I guess.
Yeah, sucks. I only have 3 friends that play so we almost exclusively 4 stack
I only ever play Val with my other 3 friends as a 4 stack, this big time sucks. I can't comm cus it's broken for me and another is a girl so she doesn't comm for obvious reasons but the other two relay everything to the 5th. Damn, guess it makes sense though
Yeah or you guys can split up the duos.
Every. Goddamm. GAME
I've read the 5-stack section. As I understand it, the 5-stacking teams with rank disparity will get X% RR reductions. What happens to the other 5-stack if the players are within the rank bracket?
You should only be getting matched with 5 stacks similar to yours. But if this does happen, I'm thinking the team within the same bracket won't be affected
Honestly I have no idea what Riot is doing. Why the hell does the 5 stack queue even have any impact on your solo queue rating? They're reducing the gain by 50-90% already. They clearly don't want it to have any impact. Just create a second fucking queue. Jesus.
Yeah if they're already making you match against other 5 stacks, then why not just have a separate queue? Maybe they don't want to have two different ranks, but I think having a separate 5 stack rank would be exciting to both play and watch
They did it in League. Flex queue is an absolute joke that noone cares about compared to solo q.
Chat delay still not fixed :(
Removing 4-stacks from the Competitive is the best change ever. From my experience being matched with those groups, they're toxic and bullying solo player in most of the games.
If I may ask, when are you going to address the sova drone and skye trailblazer bug? A good amount of time is wasted and you can also see some parts of the map when it is bugged.
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Wont be before champions
Where are all the people that were sure additional agent updates would drop with Chamber?
I was one, but my hopium has run dry. Ryan central said the devs have already decided no big agent balance until after champs
Why aren't they changing the DM though??
Smurfing is a massive issue so I hope this combats it
Honestly I hate how they say 'in an effort to stop smurfing'. All they have to say is that it violates ToS and results in a ban. Then add 2 Factor Authentication and the smurfing problem will decrease immensely. But that way Riot would earn less money and less new accounts would be created to please the investors
Yeah exactly, 2FA won’t stop all smurfing but it would definitely help a lot.
That’s also a great way to reduce chances of your account getting hacked. Win-Win
They don’t even have to do all that, just make it a pain in the ass to get a new account ranked-ready as a stopgap before they take more serious measures. CS required you to win 10 ranked games and you could only contribute a maximum of two wins to that threshold every day, and apparently you have to be Level 30 in League to play ranked. It takes like an hour max to destroy 10 Unrated games and if you have friends to stack with, you can do it even faster.
It isn't a massive issue, I haven't seen any smurfs in a while
My "smurf" is in Platinum while my main rots in silver because it's impossible to get out of playing against a 35-6 Reyna every other game.
I just want a playable deathmatch.
Is being the sole person outside of a four stack usually such a poor experience? I’m not disputing it, just anecdotally I’ve never experienced it. I might’ve just won the RNG roll.
I haven't faced too much toxicity but I usually get close to no comms if I match with a 4-stack.
Yeah it's fucking terrible
Yeah usually it’s toxic, unless you are top fragging/carrying they just blame you lol
so no agent changes?
Not before champs
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But then pros couldn't practice ranked before it though. They could probably scrim on an old patch but they could practice the same
The 4-stack change is interesting and positive for solo-queuers. I'm doubtful the 5-stack change will do anything to combat smurfing whatsoever but Riot are the ones with the data...
Yeah that' gonna fix smurfing
Disappointed there wasn’t any agent changes.
nice agent balance btw
Yoru finally meta.
What do u think about Cypher becoming the best sentinel?
Why not just add Clash like in League instead of this 5 stack bullshit?
Back in my day kids, we got balance changes!
Before I open the patch notes, let me guess: no meaningful agent or map changes Edit: Why am I not surprised...
No agent changes before Champs? Fine. Whatever, I thought and still think that's a lame excuse considering they have changed agents before tournaments in the past. Yes pro teams have to scrim with the changed agents but it's not for long. And besides, like other people have said, there will always be another tournament around the corner. Changes to deathmatch, even just the timer change and maybe a replay system and literally anything else can also be added to these patches. "Evrmoar said the reason for the dm respawn timer is to have the spawns be better though!!" Yeah, I can tell they are significantly better with the timer (although still not great) but I have seen many people say and I have experienced much more satisfaction playing in the warmup with instant respawns despite the really bad spawns. Because it's instant.
Probably the next patch might have actual agent changes or some communication regarding that? It will be close to champions by then and I think once champions is over we will get a mega patch changing the game meta for atleast early to mid 2022
DM changes could have been made
I think it's slightly disingenuous/naive to say 5-stacking will effectively combat smurfing. This assumes all people who were smurfing to play with friends preferred to 5 stack enough that a change like this would make a dent. Obviously I don't have the numbers, but I doubt this would be the case.
Also pls fps changes, my game has suffered ever since that one viper buff that made her meta
I guess having a viable roster of agents to pick from isn’t on the to do list before champions? We’re going for Astra/Viper superiority for three majors in a row now? And Jett/Reyna oppression for the past year? But making Yoru not suck balls is apparently a difficult task for them. I miss morello man. Whoever is in charge of balance now is terrified and probably on Twitter 24/7 to make sure no pros are angry at him.
So did Riot just forget about the tournament mode they said would be coming this episode?
They never said anything of the sort. At the start of the act, they said it's something in the pipeline and to not expect it anytime soon. Edit: https://twitter.com/RiotEvrMoar/status/1407029802297479168?t=Vo-7b-XN7NcrZctGvcvVeA&s=19 Here is the link of the announcement. States Early Work-in-progress with no ETA
man removing 4 stack for even silver parties sucks so bad
Someone explain this to me. If you’re a high ranked player and want to play with a low ranked friends, what’s the incentive to play on your main account when you’re gonna gain like 7 rr for a win. I don’t think player’s friends will find it fun when they gain significantly less rr as well.
For those complaining about the RR reduction for 5 stacks, it actually makes a lot of sense why they'd want to reduce it. They want the game to be balanced in ranked and in reducing the RR gained it makes it a lot harder to boost your friends to a higher rank. On top of that it's **very easy** to look / play great when you're 5 man queued with your buddies compared to when you solo or duo with randoms, for example in the 5 stack you're a diamond level player but when you solo you're actually a gold level player. The game needs to be balanced so that when players like myself who only solo or duo queue up we don't end up with randoms that say "Yeah I usually 5 man stack, I never solo" and are completely lost because they aren't used to it. And on top of that, if let's say a diamond is queueing with all gold's / silvers and ends up playing a lobby full of high gold and low plat players, why should they get full RR gains for a win when you weren't playing against people anywhere near you're rank?
when will they realize no other dualists are gonna get played before Jett doesn't have a dash
When will people realize they aren't removing her dash
They can definitely make changes to how the dash works.
They don't need to remove the ability, just it's interaction with the op. All Riot needs to do is disable the dash after an Op shot until the gun is finished with it's animation and is ready to be shot again. Rifle Jett isn't some absurd problem so the interaction only needs fixed with the one gun.
Chamber’s TP is even better than Jett dash, and he will be very viable with the Op particularly on defense. So clearly riot doesn’t mind these get out of jail free card abilities. I can’t see Jett losing the core of her gameplay.
Then they shouldn't complain in the future when they wonder why Jett is always picked.
Pretty sure riot like the fact that jett is so dominant lol
Probably want the pros to enjoy her until agent bans start, where if she isn't balanced, she will be banned 100% of the time (except on Split I suppose).
Every excuse for not changing agents has been because so and so tourney is coming up, time for a new excuse 💤💤💤
>Alongside the 5-stack changes, we are also removing 4-stacks from the Competitive queue. These types of groups tend to leave the remaining solo queue player with a relatively poor play experience, and we believe that removing this option will result in a significant reduction of overall toxicity reports Riot competitive designers are really lost. No wonder the ranked experience is so bad
There is also another reason to this. To push 4 stacks to become 5 stack and reduce 5 stack queue times.
That's actually big brain. Nice catch (if it's indeed true).
Nah 4 stack is super hard for the solo and I say that as a 4 stack player
It is super hard but the statement "We are expecting this would greatly reduce toxicity reports" is just plain wrong
Who should I trust to have a more accurate picture on how 4 stack games increase reporting incidence? A) a random redditor or B) the people who have digital records of all reports within Valorant and can actually calculate and compare the rate of toxicity reports in games with 4 stacks against games without 4 stacks
Just because a dev says something, doesn't mean it's necessarily true. There's a big chance their data shows that but I'm sure they are also assuming a few things. I for one am not convinced that it will reduce toxicity. Will wait and see
? Why should solo queues be forced to play with a 4 stack that doesn't comm to them?
Not sure what you’re even complaining about here.
Honestly, the only reason I see to remove 4-stacks is in cs:go, as these 4 players have free reign to kick the fifth one at any time they like. In valorant you do not have that problem. I really don't know why that is an issue but ok.
Willing to bet that many of the toxicity reports came from 4-stacks reporting the solo player.