As Valorant players continued to hunt for clues about Agent 14, character product lead John Goscicki gave some official clues in today’s official “State of the Agents” blog post. And it seems like people’s suspicions about the agent’s potential identity and abilities might be right.
The blog stated that the game is “fairly stable” so it’s time to put some “deeper thought” into some agents and classes.
Valorant teases new duelist Agent 14
Valorant developers kept pretty tight-lipped about Agent 14, but couldn’t help but spill that the mysterious agent will be a duelist “for all you lurkers out there.” Goscicki stated that the new agent would keep players on their toes and even make them creep around corners because they won’t ever know if they are “truly safe.”
This seems to confirm Valorant fans’ suspicions that the next agent could involve invisibility. Data miners discovered a possible codename, “Stealth.” An Easter egg on Icebox also showed a transparent figure leaving behind footprints as they traversed the map.
But developers haven’t said what exactly this duelist’s sneaky abilities will be.
According to Goscicki, every time an agent drops it should feel “fresh.” They want each agent to make players rethink tactics and work on different skills. Now that basics are in place, Goscicki noted, developers want to start taking more risks and push more boundaries.
“We want to evolve what is possible in an ability-based tac shooter,” Goscicki said. “For now, we are keeping these boundary-pushing ideas a secret.”
Valorant devs discuss changes to controller agents
Valorant developers aren’t only looking at adding new agents. They are also planning some big changes to existing agents. Right now, it seems that they are focused on the controller class. This includes Omen, Viper, and Brimstone.
“At a high level, we want to encourage people to play with their teammates as much as possible and we believe that giving our initiator and controller roles a bit more team-focused power will help achieve that end,” Goscicki said.
Riot developers are hoping to see their first set of controller changes launch along with Episode 2, which is coming at the start of 2021.
There will be changes to initiators and duelists as well, with developers attempting to make the roles feel substantially different from each other.
“Even before the game launched we were feeling that there were some gaps within the abilities/tools Agents provided, this was evident due to there only being two agents (Sova and Breach) with tools to break onto sites, the class known as Initiators,” Goscicki said.
He added that developers at Riot want to focus some work on Skye in an attempt to make her more competitive against Sage when players are picking healers.
