Prior to the deployment of VALORANT Episode Three, the developers have revealed some significant changes coming in regard to the game’s run-and-gun issue.
VALORANT co-lead designers Max Grossman and Sal Garozzo acknowledged that “there are certain situations that moving and shooting should be powerful, it is currently more potent than we’d like.” With that, there will be some changes coming to running and gunning in the next episode.
One involves how damage toward a moving and shooting enemy inadvertently slows them down enough to a point where their bullets become more accurate. The developers refer to this phenomenon as “tag into accuracy” and feel it’s a “root cause” of several of the problematic run-and-gun clips they’ve seen. While not giving specifics, they said the upcoming patch should “mitigate” the effectiveness of this, especially at longer ranges. This is part of a process “to better reward proactive and precise movement,” according to the developers.
Additionally, the devs said the accuracy of walking while shooting will decrease some as well, particularly at medium ranges. They also plan to reduce the running accuracy of both sidearms and SMGs, in particular, while still allowing them to be somewhat more accurate while moving and firing at short ranges.
All of these changes tie into the goal of tightening up combat as much as possible, which is further evidenced by other changes to gun and ability prices, indicating a return to a focus on tactical gunplay in VALORANT.
Episode Three is scheduled to go live on June 22.
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