For VALORANT players who enjoyed creating an army of Killjoy turrets or raining down five Brimstone ultimates from the sky, Replication mode is coming back.
Riot began a new approach to VALORANT’s game modes last month, which rotates Replication, Escalation, and Snowball Fight on a patch-by-patch basis. In Patch 2.11, which should go live today, Replication will swap in for Escalation.
Introduced in Patch 2.09, Replication allows every player on a team to select the same agent after a brief voting system. Players’ shields, weapons, and abilities refresh every round, with the exception of your ultimate. A scaling-economy system gives teams an increasing amount of credits as the match progresses and players earn 100 XP per round played and an additional 200 XP for rounds won.
Riot made the decision to rotate the three modes so that players could find quicker and fairer games. If Replication, Escalation, and Snowball Fight were all live at the same time, then it would dilute the player pool and adversely affect matchmaking.
“Rather than making all of our modes more frustrating, we’re choosing instead to offer a select number and ensure that you can find them quickly, and with solid matchmaking,” senior producer Lisa Ohanian said in a May 21 blog post.
Replication will likely be rotated out at the end of Patch 2.11’s two-week cycle, giving room for Snowball Fight or Escalation.
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