Riot Games on in-game pauses and going into practice range while queuing

The VALORANT development team blesses us every now and then with an Ask VALORANT blog to answer the most common questions the community has in mind. The ninth iteration of the series brings us a few interesting answers to a number of topics fans have been eager to see, specifically going into the practice range during queuing, in-game pauses, and sharing your crosshair settings via a simple code like a Legends of Runeterra deck.

VALORANT currently doesn’t have any pause mechanism, which means once the match starts, you will have to play it all the way through to the end before you can go about your business. Contrary to what is present in Riot Games’ MOBA, League of Legends, which allows you to pause for a short period of time to reconnect or finish any emergency before continuing the game.

“We've done some rough experimentation with team pauses in-game and pre-round. Pausing mid-round can introduce a number of gameplay concerns that may compromise the competitive integrity of a match. And since we view the competitive integrity of each match as a fundamental part of VALORANT, we've opted to not support mid-round pauses.”

“We know that sometimes you will need to “pee or poop,” as you so elegantly put it. To make sure everyone has a chance to handle their business, we'll be exploring different ways of possibly incorporating a pre-round pause. This would allow you to pause the match without the possibility of impacting the outcome of engagements,” answered Senior Producer Steven Eldredge.

Another title under Riot Games is their collectible card-game, Legends of Runeterra, and its simple feature of sharing any deck you constructed via a code that anyone can input and import the deck you created. VALORANT players are eager for a similar feature to be introduced for crosshair settings, one of the most commonly asked questions to professional players for those trying to imitate their playstyle.

“We definitely have plans for more crosshair customization in the future, and a good extension of that feature is to allow you to share your customizations with teammates and friends. I mean sharing is caring after all, right?,” revealed Senior Producer Steven Eldredge.

The practice range is a very useful place to warm up and improve your aim outside of regular matches. There are definitely ways to enhance what it currently offers, but more importantly, VALORANT players have been wanting to be able to go there while they are in queue. The development team clarified why this isn’t exactly as feasible as people think, purely because of the load it will have on the servers.

“The tech is feasible to let you jump into the practice range while queuing, but we’ve been reluctant to pursue this because it is straight up not efficient for what it’s accomplishing and we’re more excited about alternatives, like an aim trainer you could access while in queue.”

“Now about those alternatives. I mentioned a possible simple aim trainer that can scratch the trigger itch, and that could be a step to a future solution where you queue for something like FFA Deathmatch. There is a bunch of prerequisite tech we need to figure out there before we could do something like this, but an early step we are taking toward this is to implement the ability to join FFA DM games in progress—which we hope to get done early next year,” explained Lead Games Mode Producer Jared Berbach.

What else would you like to see the Riot Games development team address in future Ask VALORANT entries? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!