We sat down with riotgames' PlayVALORANT Map Design Lead Joe Lansford to discuss Lotus, and the many different elements that come into play when designing a map as complex and visually compelling as the newest to join valorant's map pool.
The introduction of Valorant's newest map, Lotus, has brought a decidedly different tactical question to the game's players. Previously, only Haven existed as a three-site map in the game's competitive pool. Lotus represents a second try at one of Valorant's coolest map design elements, and map designer Joe Lansford is keenly aware of that fact.
Joe Lansford: The art was sort of in response to player feedback. Whenever we put out a new map, we survey players and bring them in for player labs where we ask questions and get player data. One of the consistent pieces of feedback that we got was that players wanted to see more fantastic visuals. They wanted to see our IP, or expressions of our IP, in the realm of a certain setting.
I think with Lotus, we definitely explored some new ideas, particularly within the geo-shapes of 3D assets. They're all shapes that are a little more natural, with rounded edges and things that we haven't explored very much. Breeze has a little bit of it, but not to this degree. I think those are new feelings, where it's not just a hard edge to a 90-degree turn. There's natural shapes.
But at the end of the day, we're just trying to make a good map. We're not trying to make a good map for a specific question; that's not really something that we try to achieve. We just generally want to make a good map. Agents definitely add a little bit of complexity, though, over time. The number of reveals that we have in the game and abilities with what we call footprints, or larger impact on a physical space, has increased over time.
Joe Lansford: The 3-site design is something we always believed to be more of a format than, say, Haven's thing. We had always thought of [Haven] as the foundational 3-site map, and we can build off that idea. This is kind of our first pass of that. If we had to pick one, we'd go with 2-site, but we had built enough of those that it felt like it was a good time to revisit the 3-site.
I think one of the reasons we started with Haven having basic bomb sites is that we're basically taking the attack shooter formula, and then adding abilities on top of that. That's a lot of complexity, so let's try to strip away as much complexity from the maps themselves as we can to let players get comfortable with agents and all the stuff that's going on.
The art comes a little bit after the basic pitch concept, then? Because the recent map releases, whether intentional or not, have lined up very well with the agents who are coming out. It just feels like there's unity in what's being presented. How much of that is intentional, and how much of that is in the moment?
Joe Lansford: The gameplay design is completely independent of narrative. We'll be building a map, and I'll have a location in my head. When I built the original design, I was like, "This is gonna be a Radianite mine or something," and I had this big mountainside where the map was carved in, with artificial lighting and track lighting. Obviously, it didn't end up in a mountainside mine.
Joe Lansford: Yeah, absolutely. We have player labs, where we'll bring players in to test new stuff and get them surveys. We have a mass survey, where we send out a whole bunch of information or questions to players. We've integrated a whole ton of those learnings.
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