Valorant leaks reveal major changes coming to ‘friendly fire’

Fresh Valorant leaks indicate that Riot Games’ FPS will soon incorporate a friendly fire mechanic – but not in the way most players would expect. 

In any FPS title there is some debate over whether a friendly fire mechanic should be implemented, for all its pros and cons. While certainly more realistic, it can also make it easier for players to be toxic, able to damage and eliminate teammates.

Games like Rainbow Six Siege have had to navigate these problems but, in the case of Riot Games’ Valorant, the developers opted to simply exclude such a mechanic. While strict ‘friendly fire’ does not exist, players can damage teammates (albeit to a lesser degree) with their agents’ abilities.

However, that could be set to change in an upcoming patch, if leaks are to be believed.

On December 4, ValorLeaks tweeted: “Penalties for Friendly Fire have been added and will be arriving next patch. To get the Penalty your ability usage has to adversely impact your allies in-game. They added that the in-game message appears to be: “Looks like your ability usage adversely impacted your allies in a recent game.”

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As previously mentioned, players’ abilities can damage teammates. It seems that a new mechanic will be added to inflict this damage onto the player whose ability causes the damage, rather than the teammate who finds themselves on the receiving end of the damage.

Games like the aforementioned Rainbow Six have implemented similar systems, albeit relating to weapon damage rather than character abilities.

Some details about the mechanics still remain unclear. One user questioned whether it may still lead to toxicity, with the potential for players to deliberately damage teammates by interacting with their abilities (thus inflicting the damage on the agent who called it in).

It’s also worth remembering that the mechanic remains unconfirmed until we hear something official from Riot.

Given ValorLeaks’ comments about it coming in the “next patch,” that shouldn’t be too far away.