Valorant: AI Bots in Custom, Deathmatch at Waiting Queue, and Multiplayer Practice Range

Valorant is the most popular tactical FPS titles out there. Moreover, Riot has been mindful of keeping the game from attaining a sense of saturation in terms of gameplay, weapons, or abilities.

With the addition of Deathmatch in the previous matches, along with the changes in the competitive gameplay, Valorant has come a long way. However, the game still has some persistent issues, for instance, the exhausting matchmaking times.

Further reading: Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Latest Patch Nerfs the Overpowered MP5

Recently there was a pretty interesting discussion on the subreddit dedicated to the game. As many of you may know, the devs from Riot are a part of this subreddit as well, and they do take suggestions from players pretty seriously.

Players suggest that Riot should introduce AI bots in Custom and make Practice Range multiplayer

There was a post on this subreddit recently by u/cryptic6868, suggesting devs add AI bots in custom games. That way, players can practice and improve their gameplay on various maps. Moreover, the post suggested that the bots can also be on varying levels of difficulty.

Building on that, another member u/dyrlien suggested that devs make it so that players can join in on the practice range and practice together while waiting in the queue. However, another member explained why that is not possible:

“Ok so think about it like this. Say that riot has 100 servers for all their games (obviously they have more). Now if a unrated game is made, one of those servers is used up until the games ends. So now they would have 99 free servers.

“Well the practice range also takes up one of those servers, but instead of in an unrated games where 10 players use one server, each practice range server only has one person. They don’t have unlimited servers so having 2 people in one practice range server uses less servers than 2 people Given their own, using 2 different servers.”

“My team is looking at building that tech, but it’s a large effort”: Riot Dev replies to player suggestions

The Riot dev going by the username u/tehleach replied to the suggestions in a positive light, hinting that players might just see these features in the game in the future. U/tehleach also added that devs love listening to such suggestions and love incorporating them in the game as much as they can. However, they have to weigh it against the changes they are currently working on.

As for introducing AI bots in the custom games, the dev thinks that it is a great idea, but also quite challenging. However, he added that it is something that his team is looking into currently.

“Bots in customs are another great ask, fragging bots is a great way to learn the game, and also a great way to blow off steam after a long session of getting outpeeked in compet. As others in this thread have pointed out, we do have SOME bot technology as seen in the range/tutorial.

“Taking those guys and turning them into more intelligent things capable of playing our standard game mode is also quite challenging, even setting abilities aside. But it is another thing my team is investigating.”

As for making the Practice Range multiplayer, the dev says that it will be even more challenging than the former ask.

“Range instances use a disproportionate amount of our server resources for just one player. Some of the suggestions in here would improve that situation – like allowing multiple people to join a range session – but require some engineering effort to set up to work with multiple people.”

Deathmatch at queue: A possibility in the near future in Valorant?

U/tehleach says that introducing this feature is something that his team is working on as well. However, Riot will have to find a way for players to join an ongoing match to ensure long-running deathmatches in the matchmaking queue. Otherwise, as he says himself, the deathmatch would end as soon as players found a match. Moreover, making this happen poses its own hurdles.

“My team is looking at building that tech, but it’s a large effort because we made a lot of assumptions in originally building our platform, game client, and game server that matches would always start with the full set of players that would be allowed to connect, and breaking those assumptions creates a lot of work.”

The demands put forward by the community are quite sensible ones, but it will take a lot of effort to incorporate them in Valorant. Let’s see where the eager developers at Riot Games go with these.