On May 21st, the developers behind Valorant announced several major changes coming to the title shortly. The announcement sheds light on some of the contents of the upcoming patch 8.11, map pool changes, replay system, and more.
To kick things off, the devs announced a bunch of changes to the Agents that they plan on introducing to the game via the upcoming patch 8.11. These include buffs to Iso, Reyna, and Neon, alongside some nerfs to Raze and her Blast Packs.
However, what Valorant players are perhaps looking forward to the most is the change to the active competitive map pool of the title. Through their announcement, Riot Games confirmed that Haven will be making its return to the Valorant map rotation with patch 8.11 in early June 2024.
With the re-entry of Haven into Valorant, Breeze and Split will be leaving the map rotation. The empty slot in the map pool will presumably be filled with the new Valorant map ‘Bastion’ that is likely to be unveiled at the VCT Masters Shanghai finals, which is scheduled to take place on June 9, 2024.
Lastly, the developers revealed that they were actively working on a replay system for Valorant and also showcased a prototype to the community, but it doesn’t seem that fans will be able to see it in-game soon.
Valorant’s Tech Lead, Marcus Reid, further explained the problems that they’re currently facing with the replay system.
“For example, if you’re viewing a replay, time might be paused, and you might want to view a specific round in a match. Unreal gives us a lot for free on replays, but we didn’t plan for these scenarios up front. There are a plethora of issues with maps, abilities, weapons as well as visual and audio effects that we need to work through to make them replay-ready,” Reid said.
He then shared clips from the current version of the replay system, showing closing doors floating in the air on Ascent and Brimstone smokes not displaying correctly.
Unfortunately, the dev team did not provide a timeline for the replay system’s implementation into the live game.
