After a long wait, Valorant Episode 3, Act 1 starts today and brings along with it many changes, a new Agent, and a community trailer.
To start off, Riot Games revealed a new 'It Starts Now Episode 3 Kickoff' trailer featuring Valorant's agents in animated form as well as gameplay clips from some of the most notable content creators in the community.
As for the new changes, Episode 3 brings a host of updates not only to the game's performance but to its weapons and Agents as well. In the patch notes, co-lead designers Max Grossman and Sal Garozzo explained why there are a lot of changes with this patch, saying they wanted to refine "two critical components of the game" - increasing the importance of precise gunplay and expanding the tactical sandbox.
"We believe Valorant is at its best when you face a wide variety of unique challenges and are forced to make hard choices about tools and strategies you’ll use to overcome them.
"To that end, we have taken a pass at the entire economy of the game, changing weapon and ability prices so they better suit their impact on a match and allow players to create more dynamic, varied loadouts, and strategies."
As the patch notes detail, Riot has adjusted ability pricing, cooldown rates, as well as ultimate costs on every Agent. For individual Agent changes, each has been given their own set of updates, including Signature abilities. From now on players will only be provided with a minimum of one charge per round, rather than saving up.
For example, Astra's update aims to add more counterplay on her barrier drop while also providing longer and clearer cooldown windows after she recalls her Stars. All detailed Agent changes can be found in the patch notes.
Valorant's latest agent, KAY/O, has also arrived with Episode 3 Act 1 who will take the role of Initiator. His abilities allow him to suppress enemy abilities and halting his opponents' capacity to fight back.
Additionally, the developers addressed Valorant's run-and-gun topic, explaining that the "tag into accuracy," where players can hit shots while moving, has been adjusted including the running accuracy of Sidearms and SMGs, which has been reduced.
Further updates include pricing firing rate changes to weapons, along with a bunch of competitive play updates, such as reducing the feeling of being "hard stuck" on older accounts and more accurate matchmaking.
Elsewhere, Riot Games announced Valorant Mobile for the game's first anniversary.