Valorant: Developers talk about Battle Pass progression

In a recent announcement regarding Valorant on Riot Games' official website, the developers behind the game have taken a moment to describe the planning that has gone behind the Valorant Battle Pass.

Valorant Act 3 went live on 13 October, and along with the new 1.10 patch, and it introduced a bunch of changes and new additions to the game, including the new map - Icebox.

Valorant developers talk about Battle Pass

The Battle Pass is described as "a path of various rewards for the time you spend tapping heads and planting Spikes in VALORANT" by the developers in the blog titled Build Me a Valorant BattlePass.

The developer team at Riot Games also say that since the Battle Pass is a feature that all players engage with, their objective is to make it "broadly appealing", even for the free players, who never purchase skins from the store.

The official statement from the developers reads,

"From the start, the Battlepass was built with a free track so free-to-players can also earn rewards and commemorate their participation with a feeling of “I was there!”"

"There are also some rewards that we couldn’t imagine not letting everyone earn, such as the Tactibear Buddy, or the ultimate Chicken spray/title/card combo, to name a few."

Regarding complaints about the item tier changes in every Act, the Valorant developers responded with,

"The tier order changes every Act so that the most popular cosmetics aren't always artificially locked until the last few tiers. That way, if you’re the type of player who only buys the Battlepass, you can find a skin for your favorite weapon regardless if you completed all 50 tiers or not."

They also went on to add,

"For example, in Act I the Vandal skin was in Chapter 9, but in Act II, it showed up much earlier. We want players to feel like they’ve earned something special as they level up through the Battlepass, but we also gotta be fair."

The developers admitted that they are aiming for thematic diversity in the Battle Pass skins with a desire for a pure fantasy design. They also claims that it helps them understand what the Valorant community loved from the Battle Passes.

Talking about Valorant cosmetics being inspired from in-game maps, the developers' statement read,

"Maps are probably our best source of Battlepass inspiration. Even we have a blast running and searching got map easter eggs created by the Maps team! The Chilly McFreeze snowman, Gelato Cutie, Immortal Rose, and all the Tacti-animal gun buddies originated from the Maps themselves. Even the infamous Octopus is based on a mural from Ascent."

They finish the blog with a neat little tease for what's to come in Episode 2 with a message that red, "Oh, you made it this far. How do we put this nicely…", along with the following image.

Valorant Episode 2 Teaser