Riot Is Contemplating New Valorant Deathmatch Modes

The addition of a deathmatch mode to Valorant was music to the ears of many players when it was announced back in August of last year. Although not everyone is happy with the competitive nature of its design, which they feel doesn’t allow for a relaxed warm-up experience.

In a Twitter thread earlier this week, Riot producer Jared Berbach spoke to those concerns and offered some insight about a potential new deathmatch mode coming down the line.

Let’s talk about the current state of FFA DM in @PlayVALORANT and the future of FFA and “warmup” style modes.

We have a lot of plans here, but also a lot of work to do to get to the place that we desire to be. Curious on all of your thoughts about modes/goals…

Thread. https://t.co/Wt2g20goMv

— Jared Berbach (@darkhorse4life) March 8, 2021

Berbach started the discussion by quoting professional Valorant player Subroza, who had months ago wishlisted a version of deathmatch without a time limit or map rotation. In essence, it would function more like a drop-in/drop-out warm-up mode against live targets as opposed to a competitive mode players try to win.

Berbach suggested that Riot is actually considering offering a second deathmatch down the line after having mooted that the deathmatch audience falls into two separate categories: those who want a free-for-all competitive experience with mechanics like power-ups and health regens, and then there are those who just want to hop in and warm-up while, say, listening to music.

There’s a slight issue, though, in that Valorant doesn’t yet feature the sort of technology capable of allowing players to drop in and out of games at will.

Right now, VALORANT game services don’t check to see if new players want to join. We also need to rewrite matchmaking to accomodate joining players to matches in progress and seeing if they are “healthy” from a people and skill perspective. Actively working on and planning this

— Jared Berbach (@darkhorse4life) March 8, 2021

It is being work on, though, and Riot is apparently very open to introducing not only the proposed warm-up modes but also new competitive deathmatch modes for the players who do prefer that design.

This leaves audience 1. Our hope here is to create more of a novel or rotating type mode experience that challenges players who want to play FFA DM but also have a match beginning and end, and a winner. This matches more to popular non tac games. We’ll also have more freedom…

— Jared Berbach (@darkhorse4life) March 8, 2021

Importantly, if you’re interested in having your say then Berbach is inviting players to hop into the thread and join the discussion.

In other Valorant news, the game’s latest patch went live last week. You can read the details here.