The sparkly effects at the tail end of smokes for Astra, Omen, and Brimstone definitely stood out the most visually in VALORANT Patch 7.08. But a really subtle change made to the UI indicates that Riot isn’t slowing down when it comes to one of the game’s most foundational trends: adding new agents.
The patch notes for 7.08 included a small but significant change listed under the general updates section: “We made a slight adjustment to the rows of agents you can select from at the bottom of the screen in order to make room for future Agents.” Currently, the agent select screen sees the 22 agents split into two rows of 11. Patch 7.08 will move them into three rows of nine, which leaves five empty spaces in the third row.
The first of these empty spaces will certainly be filled with the launch of Episode Seven, Act Three, when the highly teased new duelist with a potentially meta-altering ability kit is released. That will bring the total to 23, but the UI change indicates that VALORANT is likely going to end up with 27 agents at the very least.
Thankfully this won’t happen overnight, as Riot has stayed true to its release schedule, sticking to three agent releases within a year. Overall, the number of agents released per Episode has gone down; two new agents released in Episode Two, Three, and Four, while only one released in each of Episodes Five and Six, although two will release as part of Episode Seven.
The potential result of a massive agent selection, one that rivals something like Rainbow Six Siege‘s pool of 65 operators, or League of Legends‘ pool of 165 champions, is something that’s weighed on the minds of VALORANT players as the number of agents has steadily increased. Some say that the timing between releases does a good job of preventing players from being overwhelmed, but over a long period of time, the total number of agents could still end up being a bit too large.
Regardless of what the total number of agents will eventually become, and how Riot plans to manage that growing pool, we can look forward to several new faces over the next year or so of VALORANT.
Published: Oct 17, 2023 04:22 pm