Screengrab via Riot Games
Some changes to the VALORANT map Fracture via an upcoming rework will arrive via a future update, according to VALORANT level designer Joe Lansford.
“So, Fracture’s been out for almost a year now,” Lansford said in an Aug. 25 dev post first shared on TikTok. We’re working on a couple of changes right now. The high-level theme is some general quality of life changes across the map, and hopefully, make the A site more defensible.” With so many entryways on the A site, defending the site as defenders or in a post-plant as attackers is a very tough task.
Image via Riot Games
Lansford also hinted at some changes around the dish area near the A site, to make that area “more useable for attack and defense.” Currently, the dish area near A is hard to control as attackers with defenders can pinch the attacking players as soon as the barrier drops. However, it’s also risky for an attacker to push and take an aggressive angle with little cover to fall back to.
In addition to outlining the changes players can expect in the future, Lansford provided a little insight into the design and ideas behind creating Fracture. Anyone who plays VALORANT can tell you that the layout of spawns and sites on Fracture is unique to other maps, but Lansford explains precisely what the team was aiming for when it was created.
“For Fracture, we wanted to flip neutral space on its head,” Lansford said. “Neutral space is the territory between each team’s half of the map. Generally the onus is on the attackers [to take space]…but [on Fracture] the pressure is on defenders to push out and take space.”
The unique design of Fracture has resulted in some different agent compositions as well. During Episode Five, Act One, Breach and Neon had overall pick rates of around three percent per Blitz.gg, but on Fracture, those numbers increased dramatically, especially for Breach at the higher ranks.
Lansford provided no actual date for the Fracture updates but said to look out for it soon.