Valorant dev teases big changes to Deathmatch and the Practice Range
Riot GamesValorant’s Deathmatch and the Practice Range modes could soon be changed in a few key ways, as Riot Games Software Engineer ‘tehleach’ has teased some big adjustments they’re looking to experiment with.
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Since Valorant first launched, the Practice Range has remained the exact same. You’ve got some targets to practice with, a few round-based training exercises to try, and it’s generally where players spend all their time outside of proper matches.
While the Deathmatch mode was introduced further down the line, changes could soon be coming to both of these core features in Valorant. One is a single-player only experience while the other is only accessible with a full lobby.
Could these trends soon be flipped? Will friends be able to join your warmup session in the Practice Range? Here’s how the two modes might soon be evolving, according to tehleach.
Riot GamesBots in Valorant custom games a possibility
First and foremost, the Valorant community requested more fleshed out AI bots to practice against in Custom Games. This was soon followed up by a simpler request to have multiple players in the same Practice Range instance.
The latter happened to catch the eye of tehleach, who chimed in to confirm that their “team is looking” at adding some new features along these lines. It’s not quite as simple as just flipping a switch and voilà, multiple players start jumping into the same Practice Range together.
Doing so would “require some engineering effort to set up to work with multiple people,” they explained. “It’s a large effort because we made a lot of assumptions in originally building our platform, game client, and game server that matches would always start with the full set of players.
“Breaking those assumptions creates a lot of work,” they added.
Deathmatch open while in Valorant queues
Another feature that could soon be enabled if these hurdles are overcome, is the notion of playing Deathmatch while in queue for a competitive game. A highly requested feature so that players can keep warm while searching, especially as you go higher up the ranks.
“Playing Deathmatch while in queue is also something we want to do, but first we need to build the tech to allow players to join an in-progress match so that we can have long-running deathmatches that players flow into and out of.”
It’s clear that Riot is looking into these features, though there’s no telling how far off they might be.
“I want these things too,” the developer reassured. “We just have to weigh them against other stuff we’re trying to ship.”