Valorant devs open up about their “Balance Process: Data and Insights” in a recent blog post

Competitive esports shooters like Valorant are not at all easy to balance.

Maintaining the game’s competitive integrity on a “professional” and a “standard matchmaking” level is one of the hardest tricks to pull off.

Riot Games seem to be doing a better job than most other game developers when it comes to keeping their IPs fair and well-balanced for all ranks of players.

The contribution of a multiplayer’s balance team is often overlooked by the community, and not many realize the role that these developers play in keeping the game fun and engaging patch after patch.

In a recent blog post titled 'Trust the balance process: Data and Insights', the Valorant devs opened up about the issues that they face when it comes to nerfing and buffing Agents.

Unlike in CS: GO where guns are the only things that go through any major balance changes, Valorant requires Riot to consider Agent abilities as well.

Data and Insight usage in Valorant

Devs are yet to fully analyze the nooks and carries of balancing a shooter such as Valorant (Image via Riot Games)

Valorant’s Insights researcher Coleman “Altombre” Palm and Insights analyst Brian Chang talked about the use of data and insights when it comes to playing the role of the balancer in the game.

They said:

“One of the major roles that data plays during the game balance process is to help inform designers about the state of the game. Data can tell us when your experience appears to be in a non-ideal state. Data in this case is used as a diagnostic tool to tell us which parts of our game might need tuning. This data could come in the form of in-game telemetry (e.g. a particular Agent’s win rate is too high/low), or it could come in the form of player research (e.g. a majority of players view an Agent to be frustrating to play against).”

However, as Valorant is still a very new esports title, the devs are yet to fully analyze the nooks and carries of balancing a shooter such as this. It will take them some more time to get the formula right and to make changes that help Valorant with its competitive integrity.

Difficulties in nerfing Valorant agents due to mirror match-ups

Mirror-matchups makes judging on a traditional metric that much harder (Image via Riot Games)

By using Sage as an example, the Valorant devs discussed the process that they use when it comes to nerfing and buffing Agents in the game.

They feel that mirror match-ups are what makes it difficult to bring balance changes in the game. Riot’s other IP, League of Legends, has a pick-and-ban phase built into the ranked matchmaking system, which prevents two teams from going for the same type of composition.

However, with the limited number of Agents so far, Valorant cannot implement a system like that as it creates a lot of mirror-matchups that makes judging on a traditional metric that much harder.

If both teams pick Skye and one of the Skye users pops off, then it’s quite hard to determine if the Agent is overpowered or if the player is doing a better job of using her.

Similarly, when Sage went through a nerf spree, gaining 10 consecutive nerfs to her kit by patch 1.07, it was a result of her gaining a higher win rate, i.e teams with her won more often than teams without her.

Devs feel mirror match-ups are what makes it difficult to bring balance changes in Valorant (Image via Riot Games)

Valorant community surveys help the devs understand which Agent they need to pick for a buff, a nerf, or even for balance tweaks.

However, deciding how to nerf or buff the chosen champion to balance his/her kit is a different ball game altogether. Riot came up with a solution by implementing the following steps:

1. Direct feedback from the community about why players believe Sage is strong, both in surveys and in direct conversations
2. Breakouts of Agent strength by side (to understand how much of Sage’s strengths are pronounced on attack/defense)
3. Breakout of Agent strength/presence by rank (to understand if there are discrepancies across skill brackets)
4. Ability-specific data (average amount of healing Sage does in a round, round win rate when Sage uses her ultimate, compared to when other agents use their ultimate, etc.)

Though a majority of the Valorant community might feel that Sage is underpowered and unplayable at the moment, stats show that she is in quite a healthy spot balance-wise.

Sure, she is not as oppressive as she once used to be, but the changes that Riot implemented by using the steps actually seem to have worked.

Valorant patch 1.11 onwards, Sage saw a 2% decline to her win rate in non-mirror matchups, making her changes quite successful.

She even got a bit more agency to her kit in patch 1.14, which helped to significantly improve her quality of life.

It’s impossible to bring the perfect balance change to an Agent in one go but Riot’s formula does seem to work in the long run.