** Max Grossman: ** Mostly, our skin has gotten thicker. That would be my biggest takeaway. Like with Killjoy's turret, there was a lot of skepticism online, and internally that's something that you see and go, "oh god, are we doing the right thing?" For me, it helped build some of that armor and confidence that we weren't ruining the game, which feels good. Chances are if the community is skeptical about an Agent, we are too while designing them. While making a turret character for Valorant, we thought, "well, can we? Can it be good?" A turret that sits there and kills people betrays the promise of our game. So when we see a bunch of people online that feel that same way, I empathize. However, once someone gives a new Agent a spin, I always hope they realize how much work we put in before releasing anything in Valor

While Riot continued to improve events during Season 10, their quality and design went beyond what players had come to expect in the past few years. Specifically, the Spirit Blossom summer event implemented a visual novel experience instead of normal missions allowing players to bond and share some hilarious fourth-wall breaking moments with champions like Teemo. Additionally, after last year's feedback that event passes weren't worth their RP cost, the rewards for playing were significantly boosted. This culminated in the Worlds 2020 pass where over 1000 event tokens and 30 milestone prizes were guaranteed after enough matc

I recently had a chance to speak with Max Grossman, senior game designer on Valorant, about helping ease people into the game. From creating Agents like Killjoy who are beginner-friendly to making sure everyone is on equal footing, Riot Games Trading Card is committed to making Valorant as fair as it is bone-crushingly diffic

Goredrinker is absurd. It's almost definitely going to eat a nerf before the season officially starts, and possibly some afterward. The build path for the item is really solid, with Ironspike Whip and Phage both being quality items to pick up early. The stats on the item alone make it gold efficient, which is surprisingly rare for so-called "mythic" it

You'll be able to covert this temporary currency into permanent rewards with whatever you uncover. Your Steps won't persist, but the items you buy will be usable after the Yordle Expedition event has en

Valorant is all about inches. Anxious, lonesome tiptoes into a bomb site can feel like miles. Every nook and cranny potentially houses miscreants eager to ensure you swallow a dose of lead-aspirin. So a razor-sharp focus and steady trigger-finger are essential to success, even when butterflies tickle the pit of your stomach. Otherwise, you're dead. Dirt wedged firmly between teeth until the lesson sticks: this game gleefully bounces people's heads off the can

Three new missions every day

Each mission gives you more Steps and Blue Motes . So if you're vigilant, you'll be racking up in-game currency rapidly. These missions refresh every day, so, by the end of the event, you'll be rolling in dough to customize and unlock future charact

One mission for each area

Each region is tied to a mission that you'll be on the hook for accomplishing. However, it should be known that the entire server will be responsible for unlocking these regions. It's a solo effort to do your mission, but a group effort to uncover these missi

** TheGamer: ** Was there a particular inspiration for Killjoy, be it aesthetics or playstyle? She's compared to the Engineer from Team Fortress 2 in terms of how she plays, and that her visual design was similar to Dokkaebi from Rainbow Six: Siege. If there was no direct inspiration, does the team try to steer away from making Agents that might be too similar to characters from other ga

** Max Grossman: ** After they go live, it's always tough. We have a bunch of internal data on how Agents perform and can look at the numbers and use that as our most important balancing act. If a character is winning 57% of their matches (none of the Agents are winning that much; this is just a hypothetical) — that's probably something we should address, whether or not the community is aware of that problem. Then there's the flipside: players think something is overpowered, but we have hard data that shows it's not. Regardless of how we get that information, we can identify those problems as things that need addressing, and the solutions can look very differ

League has a lot of mages, but very few of them are used in professional play. Orianna is one of the exceptions though, and this is because she can throw her ball at her allies to shield them from damage. Her ultimate is also very useful because it can pull the entire enemy team together-thus leaving them open for att

Shaco is League's Demon Jester, and he can be incredibly annoying to deal with because of his throwing knife, invisibility, and traps. The traps go invisible too, but once an enemy walks up to one, it fears and shoots them. When Shaco pops his ultimate, he creates a clone of himself that bursts into traps when it runs out of hea