Riot Games believe Operator "isn't too OP" and address footsteps audio

In the competitive VALORANT universe, we see the Operator often. It is important to the extent that some teams consider it essential to have a skilled Jett player who is deadly with an Operator in hand, similar to the likes of Matthew "WARDELL" Yu and Tyson "TenZ" Ngo. The weapon has received its fair share of criticism since VALORANT’s release, with people questioning its balancing and whether its excessive existence is ruining the meta.

The latest and sixth iteration of Ask VALORANT finally reveals what the game’s developers think of it, as well as addressing the reported footsteps audio issues. These blog posts have provided us with a lot of information before, clarifying the “abilities don’t kill” statement and giving VALORANT fans more information on upcoming lore around the tactical shooter’s agents and universe.

Riot Games believe the Operator isn’t as strong as people make it look, and attributes its current position in the meta to certain agents failing to break its line of sight with the utility in hand. This comes in addition to effective team coordination and map knowledge, which allows you to counter Operator-welding players on the opposing team.

However, there are a lot of characters who don’t have in their ability kit almost anything to break an Operator’s line of sight, with Cypher and Raze as examples. It isn’t as simple as the developers make it sound, but at least they acknowledged the weapon’s current state. Whether we will see a change to it remains their decision as it is not an instant win condition as people make it out to be.

“We think the Operator isn't "too OP" but do believe that the feeling sometimes comes from a lack of personal agency against the weapon (for Agents that don't have tools to break line of sight for themselves), coupled with an overwhelming amount of team coordination to effectively counter an Operator. We're looking into a lot of avenues to help smooth out the experience but we do believe the Operator should be powerful and should encourage a team to thoughtfully enter a space where it might be in play.”

“To give an anecdote: we've tried iterations of the game where the Operator's strengths weren't as sharp as they are today (especially in holding defensive angles). We discovered that without moments where a team was forced to sit down and plan how to play against (or around) a good Operator, a lot of gameplay became about who could rush faster,” explained VALORANT Game Designer, Nicholas “Nickwu” Smith.

Later on in the blog post, Riot Games finally addressed the report footsteps audio issues and whether there is actually something wrong with it or are they working as intended. The title’s Audio Director explained footsteps’ sound is supposed to be a danger indicator for players to prepare themselves for whoever is coming towards them. Unfortunately, when there are abilities and utility being used by your teammates around you, it gets lost in the midst of it all. This isn’t how it should be.

“The footstep radius is set up to give players who hear enemy footsteps time to use an ability and re-equip a weapon before they are in danger.”

“I've also heard feedback around the fact that people have a hard time telling how far away a footstep is, which there is truth to. We optimize for making sure footsteps are heard, as opposed to optimizing for portraying distance. What this looks like is an attenuation curve that is somewhat flat, versus one that drops off a lot over distance. There are a couple reasons we do this. One is that under chaotic conditions where abilities are being used and you are probably hearing a lot of VOIP from your team, it is essential that you don't miss a footstep.”

“Based on internal playtests, not hearing a footstep and getting killed by someone you knew had to run to get to you is very tilting. This feels especially bad for players who have internalized rotation times on the map and have good communication and callouts on their team,” clarified VALORANT Audio Director, Peter Zinda

VALORANT is still incredibly young, but the commitment and communication so far from Riot Games has been more than impressive. The studio continues to listen to the community’s feedback and acts upon it.

Do you believe the Operator needs any nerfs or is it balanced in its current state? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!