VALORANT developers want every agent release to disrupt the meta

VALORANT officially released back on June 2nd, 2020, and since then, we have seen two new agents introduced to the tactical shooter: Reyna and Killjoy, who came with patches 1.0 and 1.05 respectively. Both of them had an immediate impact and their addition was felt as people used them to create new team compositions capable of competing at the highest level. The latest developer video from VALORANT’s Lead Character Designer Ryan “Morello” Scott dove into how the studio designs every agent and their intention for its release into the game.

Morello kicked off the discussion with the “hows and whys” of creating new VALORANT agents. He revealed the process begins with the character’s design, from how it looks like and what the team is trying to make. These come from identifying the player needs, whether it is for aggressive players or more defensive players who want to gain intel with their team. The latter is dominant with Killjoy’s kit of abilities, while Reyna caters to the former.

Morello continued to discuss the roster impact aspect of agent design, and how every character is extremely unique in their role in the composition. This extends even to sentinels like Sage and Cypher: although they belong under the same category, one is used to delay 5-man pushes with slow orbs and walls while the other can notify enemies of where an opposing player is with his cameras and trip wires. The intent behind Killjoy is giving her an advantage over incoming players as they have to deal with two threats at once, even if her turrets are purely there to annoy you with minimal chip damage. This makes her slot right in at the highest level as she is versatile and her robots can purely be sacrificed in favor of gaining intel on the enemy’s position.

Every VALORANT agent goes through an extensive balancing and testing process before being shipped, and Morello clarified the completed product is never even close to the one they started with. Towards the end of the video, he discussed how their intention with every new character coming into the world of VALORANT is to disrupt the meta, give players a new learning curve to climb, and expand upon the possible competitively dominant compositions top-tier VALORANT professionals come up with.

What do you think of the current VALORANT meta? What kind of agent do you want to see added next to the roster? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!