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Valorant's director wants to add some chilled social spaces to the competitive FPS

"Tools to actually help you live a more full life inside of Valorant, as opposed to very stressful competitive games back-to-back"

Valorant can be a pretty tense game. Not that that's a bad thing - the tension in competitive games is what brings most of the excitement, but it usually comes hand in hand with a fair amount of stress. Now, Riot's tactical FPS has already got a couple of slightly less competitive modes if you aren't feeling up to a full match, but it would still be nice if there were more options for those of us who fancy a more chilled out Valo experience.

It's a good thing, then, that game director Joe Ziegler says they'd like to add in some modes where players can have a bit of "social downtime".

While the game already has (somewhat) more-relaxed game modes in Spike Rush and Deathmatch, Ziegler wants to put in areas where players can just do things like hang out, warm up and cool down together. He says these sorts of spaces help to create as "ecosystem" around the main game modes.

"What we are looking at right now is like, how do we flesh out that ecosystem even further in the future," he tells USGamer.

"Those are the spaces that I think we're going to continue see growing around Valorant," he adds. "More tools to help you compete, but also more tools to actually help you just a live a more full life inside of Valorant, as opposed to very stressful competitive games back-to-back."

USGamer's interview has more interesting titbits about both long-term plans and things Riot are currently working on. The next map, for example, will supposedly make players "rethink the way you use your abilities."

Having said that, Ziegler notes that making us all think a bit harder about how we use each agent's powers and skills is a general goal for the team. And what do you know? We have a Valorant character guide that could help you with exactly that.

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Imogen Beckhelling avatar

Imogen Beckhelling

Former News Reporter

Imogen is a lore enthusiast and lover of all the fun shenanigans game communities get up to. She spends too much time playing Overwatch, and not enough time having interests that aren't to do with video games.

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