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Riot Games has rolled back the latest update for Valorant, patch 1.11, after a series of technical issues.
The developer announced that it would be reverting the tactical shooter to patch 1.10 across all areas that had already received the update – namely North America, Latin America and Brazil – and delaying the patch’s release in all other regions. Riot Games called the update a “technical nightmare” for the company, and that it would only be re-released after fixes have been applied.
Riot Games also noted that the rollback would help the developer avoid disrupting the ongoing Valorant First Strike Qualifiers, which kicked off today (October 28). It also noted that players who had started progressing the contract for new agent Skye will not be able to gain XP until the patch is re-released.
Check out its tweets below.
We'll redeploy later in the week once we can figure out a less disruptive time for the VALORANT First Strike Qualifiers (and have a solution, obviously). If you started the Skye character contract, you won't be able to progress until we patch again. [2/2]
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) October 27, 2020
Patch 1.11 was supposed to add the game’s 13th agent, Skye, as well as introduce the new map Icebox into competitive mode. The update also featured a number of nerfs and buffs for Initiator and Sentinel agents, in conjunction with the First Strike Qualifiers.
The flash abilities for Initiator agents, namely Breach and Pheonix, have been lengthened from 1.75 to 2 seconds. “We are slightly increasing the duration of debuffs from some Initiator abilities,” Riot Games explained. “Our goal here is to increase the opportunity window that Initiator’s teammates have to capitalise on their utility and further differentiate Initiators from Duelists. “
Meanwhile, two Sentinel agents, Cypher and Killjoy, have received a couple of nerfs to “reduce the total potential impact” of their abilities. Cypher’s Trapwire and Spy Camera skills will now be disabled and revealed to enemies once the character dies during a round.
Additionally, Killjoy’s Alarmbot and Turret abilities will now be deactivated if the character is more than 40 metres away from their deployment points, although their pickup cooldowns have been reduced to seven and 10 seconds, respectively.
“We want to increase the depth of decision making when playing Sentinels while also providing enemies with more counterplay to ‘trap’ abilities,” the developer said of the changes. “We want to encourage Sentinel players to play more thoughtfully and carefully around their traps while increasing the reward for taking out the Sentinel player.”
The update also includes a slew of changes to the game’s economy, as well as bug fixes, quality of life changes and the addition of left-handed view mode. Check out all the changes here.
It is currently unknown if all of the updates will still be the same when Patch 1.11 is re-released.
Earlier this week, Riot Games doubled down on the steep costs of Valorant skins, which are known for their expensive price tags. According to the game’s premium content art lead, Sean Marino, skin sets are “not meant to be ‘cheap’”.
“We don’t want players to look at something and say, ‘This feels cheap to me’,” he said. “Part of what we take a look at for all our skins, and this is sort of a Riot-wide approach, is that we want there to feel like there’s a level of effort and care put into skins, or any cosmetic content that people engage with, that makes it feel worthwhile.”
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