VALORANT’s Design Philosophy

In this week's feature Dev Diary, we are walked through the design aspects of VALORANT as it relates to being a tactical shooter. From the immense amount of thought that went into the movement of each player, to the methodical approach to balancing changes of weapons and characters, Riot Games give us an inside look at the core design philosophy of VALORANT.

Salvator “Volcano” Garozzo (Senior Game Designer) teamed up with Trevor “Classick” Romleski (Game Design Lead) to point out the fact that VALORANT has a much slower and tedious pace compared to other games that players in the community are coming from. Romleski wanted to reassure the players that “we really think these are important tuning levers to help pace the game in a way that’s for what we want out of VALORANT.” Romleski then goes on to say that they wanted to make sure that the players play for a position in a game rather than relying on lucky shots and risky plays. Gorazzo then talks about how the design can shine through higher level play to see “those outplay moments where someone does something incredible...and we think those two things go hand-in-hand, your positioning, ability usage, and individual mechanical skill, combine to create something special.

The pair emphasized that the team wanted to find the perfect balance between gunplay and ability usage. “It’s actually been a really difficult balance to find that sweet spot…” Garozzo states, as he goes into the depth of balancing the game to make it fun for players to use the weapons as well as the abilities provided through each Agent. In addressing patches and updates, the team wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t pull the plug too fast on certain agents and abilities due to community forums or hot topics on social media. They would rather give the community time to see the capabilities of certain agents, and think it “would be better to just, let things take their course and let players solve the problem on their own.”

You can find out more about how the game is being designed fully focused around the community and more in the video below!