Riot Games is bringing a new game mode to Valorant and long-time first-person shooter players can feel at home. The staggering, which arrives on February 17, is Valorantis the version of Gun Game, a mode that has been a staple of franchises like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike for many years.
“When designing Escalation, we wanted to create a fast, low-stress Team Deathmatch mode with high uptime and fun to play socially with friends,” Kyle Leach, engineer and designer at Valorantin Modes team said in a statement. “We hope to offer players the opportunity to practice shootings across the arsenal and try out some skills in new ways, while offering a shared goal that benefits from some coordination, but does not require the team to succeed.
Rounds in standard game modes start with players buying weapons and skills. It will not be the case here. Instead, you’ll have a randomly generated set of 12 weapons and skills that both teams have to work on, from the most lethal to the least effective tools. The idea is that the more you kill, the worse your kit gets, so the game gets more and more difficult. If your squad kills many deaths quickly, the opposing team will perform better (at least on paper) and have a decent chance of catching up.
This may all seem familiar enough to experienced Gun Game players, but Valorant takes a different approach in which scheduling is team based. You can help your teammates progress to the next weapon in the cycle, but only players who have accumulated at least one death will advance to the next weapon or skill. When your team reaches the last stage, however, the entire team will have the ultimate weapon / skill. TL; DR: Just kill the enemy team.
If 10 minutes have passed and there is no winner, the team that is leading at that time will claim victory. As such, players who may not have at least 30 minutes to spare for a competitive match can use staggering to get a quick Valorant to repair. It should also be a fun way to try out different weapons and skills in a low stakes game.