Why Valorant Needs to Switch Between Game Modes

Valorant has been more on the ball with the issues the community faces than arguably any other eSport title out there. Devs at Riot Games have always worked hard to ensure community satisfaction, both in terms of in-game issues as well as the competitive aspect of the game.

In terms of agent abilities, map rotation, and weapon rotation, Valorant currently boasts a level of balance that players can seldom see in any other eSport title, not to mention its highly effective anti-cheat system. Valorant has even fixed the monotony in its map rotation. In addition, the title currently features a great LTM rotation.

The game recently added the Replication LTM, which makes all the players in a team play with the same agent. This has been one of the most exciting game modes, testing the ability to strategize. However, being an LTM, devs removed this mode on the 25th of May. This, in turn, ended up disappointing the fans. It had come to be a favorite for many, and removing this meant going back to Escalation or Spike Rush.

On the post announcing the removal, Lisa Ohanian, the Modes Senior Producer, explained why there needs to be a rotation of available game modes. As in, why Valorant needs a rotation of LTMs, instead of a multitude of game modes available all the time. However, there is still hope that this LTM might make a return soon.

As Lisa says,

“We’ll begin rotating existing modes (specifically, Replication, Escalation, and Snowball Fight) along with our patch cadence—so about every two weeks.”

“You might be wondering why we don’t just have all the game modes live at once”: Lisa Ohanian on Valorant LTM rotation

Lisa goes on to explain the reason why devs do not have all the modes live at once:

“You might be wondering why we don’t just have all the game modes live at once. Great question! Simply put, having too many modes active at one time dilutes the queues for all of our modes… which in turn makes it take longer to find a match (or an appropriate one, at least) in any of them.”

Now, longer matchmaking queues have been a persistent issue in Valorant. It is true that the experience can be quite frustrating for players. However, as we said, devs do plan on bringing back fan-favorite LTMs. Riot will keep the game mode rotation going like this for now, but they will “reassess what to do longer-term” as well.

If anyone asks why the community does not feel abandoned by the devs as it did with CS: GO, the answer lies right here.