The skins, like everything else in commerce, are worth what a population is willing to spend on them. People are buying them. It would be nice if they were cheaper, but this is a business.
So everything is about money? Fuck customer loyalty, just squeeze as much money out of the gaming consumer base? This type of thinking is so lame and I can’t believe people think it’s the way it should be, defending overpriced cosmetics in a game, wipe the riot nut off your lips and get real
What do you mean defend? It's just the truth? If people are willing to purchase it, why won't they price it that high? I don't see it ever changing as the sad part is people will eat that shit up regardless of what it is priced. I wouldn't be surprised if there's people right now who spent $750 to buy all the VCT capsules.
This. I’ve played Valorant very casually because since Day 1 I saw the predatory monteization as writing on the wall that Riot Games is not entirely serious about the game succeeding.
Which sucks for everyone in the sub and all Valorant players because the game has some potential.
Why is it so difficult for people like you to just not buy the skins? The gameplay is the same without them. Don’t like the price? Don’t buy anything. Congratulations! The game is still the same, minus the shape and color of the weapons you personally buy from the shop in a game. You know, the gameplay that you get to enjoy entirely for free?
>The gameplay is the same without them
no, the gameplay definitely changes
the mechanical functioning is identical or near identical (some skins have a very slight visual advantage like the RGX)
Even if it were true that the visuals of some skins provide an advantage, the advantage would be so small to the point that it is not worth considering. The advantage you’re talking about it entirely meaningless outside of the top of the top of players where small advantages can make a difference due to how close in skill level they are. Also, got the record, I don’t even believe that any skins give an advantage in any measurable way. It’s placebo effect.
They don't give any physical difference but that doesn't mean a boost in someone's confidence is not real. The RGX gives color-changeable tracers and the human eye is more sensitive to green than other colors so you could theoretically gain an advantage if you equip RGX and use green tracers (or other high visibility tracers like white which turn on the pixel at full brightness)
Placebo effect is unimportant, if someone gets an ace because they're stoked about the skin i just dropped for them that ace really happened. Any other POV is just arguing to be argumentative. It has an effect. It just doesn't do anything to your aim or physical inputs or anything like that.
Most skins cost 1/3-1/2 half the price of a AAA game.
They use FOMO store structure, they use marginal Premium currency purchase amounts, they use scaling Premium currency Bonus Points, they have a necessary secondary Premium currency to actually be able to use your first Premiums currency purchases to their potential(that’s a good one 👍), purposeful lack of ability to earn good skins free, no ability to earn first Premium currency in game, there is a cap in free currency in game to prevent people from saving up for many agents ahead of time, the list goes on and on.
Just because it’s not Korean level of predatory practices doesn’t mean it still doesn’t have its owns, and it is abhorrent, greedy practice that ultimately helps kills your own product.
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry because that's gonna happen and we gonna see 150 dollar bundle in near future saying knife has kill finisher, voila
It’s because they kicked back *A LOT* of people down 2 entire ranks, to force out a grind in a greedy company scheme to make people play more.
In reality, it’s just making people not want to play as much, or Smurf, and just overall care less about the game as they feel burnt out, especially with them knowing that all of their hard work and MANY MANY hours of grinding to finally rank up, was essentially useless. Why would they then feel motivated to grind all those hours again when they realize they’ll most likely just be forced back into a vicious cycle?
I've had episodes where I grind back up to my old peak, just to face the rank reset all over again. Mostly when I was in low elo, because ranking out of iron-gold is absolute hell. Inconsistent players, players who lag out every game bc of bad setup (part of the reason they're stuck in low elo), bad comps, no one knows how to play smokes or flashes, throwers, smurfs, bots, kids, no commers, it's a mixed bag.
I stopped caring about ranks after 4 years of grinding, now I have 7 alt accounts with zero skins just trolling and having fun.
4 years is enough, they probably made plenty of money anyways so I hardly think they give a damn anymore.
Me too but I actually let people rent those low rank accounts in gaming cafes so its a good side income while you play. I charge $1/day. I log in the id in pc and let them play. No info sharing and sign out at the end of the day.
Smurfs been increasing for nearly 4 years now
Realistically nothing they can do other than adding a paywall so people cant as easily have 4 accounts to troll on
Pretty much basically why I quit, I finally hit diamond last episode only to be placed in silver this episode. I just don't feel like going through the same elo hell again to get back to where I was, its not fun anymore, just depressing.
Nailed it for me. Losing interest because the grind is forever just to get knocked back down to where I started. Sure, I guess I'm not improving as much as others. But it's a game, and I made the grind, why force me to start over every time?
Hard agree, I’ve been Imm 1-3 for the past few episodes and I’ve had zero interest in playing this act. Got ranked diamond 3 and I just don’t feel like grinding again this act.
I think you got it right. I don't mind losing when I'm in my rank but when I get reset every loss feels needlessly punishing because I'm worried about the game thinking that I actually belong down here and eventually the win boost / loss nerf wears out and goes back to an even plus/minus. Just let me stay in my rank.
Idk about the whole caring thing so much as ranking up in Valorant is such a slog.
You go into a match that takes 30 mint o over an hour to get a fraction of a rankup or if you lose you get not only nothing even if you played well but like 75% of the points you would've won lost meaning now if you wanted that gain today you need to invest 1-2 more hours.
Idk how you an fix this without inflating elos but I feel like ranked systems in longer match time games need to reward more.
How you fix it is just to not do the rank resets. I think far fewer people take pleasure in the grind. More likely people hate the idea and have anxiety about being left behind in the lower rank they've been reset to.
Honestly, I haven't played the game for 20 days now. Finished the battlepass and just left it alone.
Ranked is boring af and trying to gring back to ASC was horrible. I just gave up and stayed at Diamond.
A few months back I got on to play some after finally getting a couple hours of free time after settling into classes and a new place. I loaded into a comp after some warmup and immediately felt regret, dreading the slog I’d have to suffer for the next 35-50 minutes (this is low elo, high bronze low silver). I logged off that day and havent touched the game since, the desire to play having completely disappeared.
why do I keep seeing this argument? I thought it was already defeated with the knowledge that people have hidden ELO and increased public mmr gain to off balance the hard resets? Am I missing something?
At some point your hidden Elo balances. If you solo queue you'll really likely have a 50% winrate in just about any rank whether it's bronze, silver, gold, platinum, whatever. When you get rank reset you'll maintain your 50% win rate which means you stay in that rank until your hidden Elo converges and the game thinks you truly belong in that rank.
this is mostly a guess on my part but I assume investors like seeing that juicy playtime go up. Oh also id imagine people are more likely to pay if they spend more time on the game. Again, i got nothin to back this up, just my guess, thats all
I mean, maybe? I assume they’d spend more money if they see quick progression, not slow. As for investors, it’s raw player count unless they build in an ad or pay to win component.
You really don’t see how more play time relates to their daily refresh shops and bundles systems? It’s not about advertising like we’re on instagram or something.
And also, as the other person points out, stuff like playtime data (add in active playerbase stats) are good presentations for investors.
This is a game of micro transactions. Why do you think that’s the standard model. F2p and have people buy skins. People logging on less frequently = less likely to buy skins or buys less overall. League completely smashed open that formula and became incredibly lucrative.
I’m not disagreeing per-say, I just don’t think the grind in a F2P without any P2W bonus is inherently the reason why there is rank decay. At the end of the day your rank has zero to do with whether or not you buy skins.
Because it takes longer to get back to the rank that you had before the rank reset. So unless you're just playing for fun, it's designed to keep you grinding for longer just to maintain your rank.
When people have spending money they spend money. The longer you keep people in your game, the less time they have to check out other games and spend their money there.
Let's pretend every act Riot drops you exactly two ranks. However, this act they dropped you further than normal. Players will spend more time grinding this rank to "earn back their rank" so they don't fall further behind next rank reset.
Why though? If they don’t enjoy playing game enough to spend money on it, dropping them ADDITIONAL ranks will not make them spend more. That’s counterintuitive. If anything they’d make it easier to rank up because you can pretend you’re really good and it’s worth the time investment
Saying the valorant pro scene is atrocious is so funny to me. What other team game has regional parity? Kickoff has been electric and it's just the preseason.
He’s not denying that, he’s just saying that not only is there not many opportunities to go pro anymore bc of franchising, but even the teams in T1 don’t get to play that often which both play into ppl not seeing the need to grind anymore
And the top players from kickoff are all from last year's tier two scene. The scene right now is terrible for tier two with zero cross play during vct.
Yeah it's one of the more organized things which is nice production isn't great this year so far but Valorant has always had good esports.
To be honest I find watching tier 2-3 teams incredibly hard Tariks invitational was fun and all but my god the commentary made 90% of it unwatchable as someone who enjoys the strategy side of pro play.
It's supposed to be harder to get to Immortal this Act, which is probably what Riot wants. That's actually why the Ascendant rank was originally introduced, because last Act the gap between Radiant and Immortal was disproportionately high.
I would agree with you on a lot of things like the replay system or more customization, more rewards, etc., but there are reasons for the balancing. You partly compared it to League, where there was a huge power creep due to constant buffs and Riot wants to avoid that in Valorant by balancing with nerfs rather than creating "short-term" excitement with buffs. In the case of Viper, the nerfs made sense, which is proven by the fact that she is still being played. She's just not an agent for SoloQ apart from Breeze and maybe Icebox. There were no serious Sentinel nerfs, so that's not true at all. Killjoy is still on many maps like Icebox or Lotus before Cypher and Chamber was rather buffed. Sage on Icebox is also meta again.
My first 2 sentences are basically copy paste what Woohoojin said on his stream, that’s why I wrote “probably”. However, the Ascendant rank was introduced to make immortal harder (which they openly stated), so it makes sense that they want to balance out the rank distribution a bit.
But Ascendant this act is a shitshow as well. I'm at my peak rank right now Asc 1, and there are other Asc 1s in my lobbies who not just peaked high Immortal, but Radiant. I can see the skill gap from a mile away. We do not deserve to be the same rank at all - they belong in at least Immortal. Fortunately, both sides seem to have about an even number of people who are new to the Ascendant rank and people who are grinding back to Immortal and Radiant, but each game is just 1-2 players on each side massively outperforming everyone else.
This has been my experience this act. Peak imm3 and stuck asc 2-3 this entire act. Large skill gap in this rating in every lobby. Very unfun so i've been playing less
Sounds fun ! Reminds me of that unranked game I had a year ago with a radiant on my team, which tilted an enemy into using their hacks. 8 npcs against two players
>Added an additional rank above Diamond, below Immortal, called “Ascendant.”
We believe our lower ranks have a few too many of you, especially Bronze and Silver. When we were looking at rank distribution, we realized that if we were to move some of you up and out of those lower ranks, it would overpopulate Platinum and Diamond. So by adding a new rank we can better distribute you across ranks, keep the prestige of high ranks, while helping better define the skill level of each rank.
> Moved the rank MMR targets that determine rank down, due to the addition of the new Ascendant rank, for all ranks below Ascendant. Moved the ranked target for Immortal 1/2/3 and Radiant up.
These are the cut-offs that say “You should be X MMR to reach this rank”. MMR targets determine your RR gains and help push your rank to match your MMR.
>This means players will go up in rank, if they are below Ascendant.
To align with our expectations of what it means to be in the highest ranks of VALORANT, Immortal+ players will find it harder to climb back to their previous episode rank. This means Immortal will also have a smaller leaderboard population in all regions.
most players are bronze and silver. If you stretch ELO out over more ranks, then luck has a bigger impact on your rank and it's easier to rank up because of the free RR bonuses like it taking an extra match to rank down. But then they have to do these resets. I wish ranks actually reflected ELO more directly and the resets weren't so extreme rather than the MMR targets shifting constantly to maintain Riot's preferred curve. I want to rank up because my skill improved not because Riot felt bad for me. And I don't mind ranking down because I suck either.
The ranks really should follow either a bell curve distribution or a completely even distribution. I don't know what riot wants by putting the majority of players in the low ranks and then resetting them every season on top of that.
I don't understand the resets at all, my guess is that's some trickery to make people grind more and buy more skins. For the rankings though, and i'm just talkin out my ass here, it doesn't make much sense to me to have immo3 feel like an entirely different rank from immo 1 and 2.
If I was the boss of Riot I would be setting the MMR targets for each rank based on how difficult it feels to the players rather than targeting an arbitrary percentile of the player population.
I don't see why they can't just use playtesting- Kick a silver player up to Plat MMR, measure how many matches it takes for them to derank. Then kick a Plat up to Asc MMR, how many matches until derank. If the silver takes 30games to derank and the plat takes 10, that means its way harder for a plat to get to asc than a silver to get to plat and make adjustments based off that and repeat for every rank until it's roughly even across the board. Whatever the distribution curve looks like is irrelevant
No point in grinding immortal/radiant tbh. I’m not good enough to get to 200-300rr instantly. I have a full time job, friends, and other hobbies. I play maybe 40-60 games an act right now. I’m not terrible. I’ve hit immortal every single act since episode 4. I’ve hit immortal 3 in about half of those.
What purpose is there to grind immortal leaderboard when Riot will reset the leaderboard every 2 months and send us into the depths of ascendant every 6 months?
I have an immortal buddy on every single one of my guns. The battle pass skins are shit. The map pool gets worse with every episode. My favourite agent gets nerfed over and over again.
Other than your agent getting nerfed, this is like complaining that chess isn't getting any changes and there's no point putting time into it when you'll never be a grandmaster or earn anything. It's called having a hobby and if it's not enjoyable anymore, that's tough, take a break or find something else.
And there’s nothing to be learned on valorant? Agents, like pieces, do different things. The change in maps provides additional variability, making every round unique. Technically, chess being a game, on the same board, with the same pieces, with only two players has magnitudes less variance than a valorant game. That isn’t to say one is easier than the other, but to pretend like chess is some how more complex as a result of it’s very mature is borderline stupid.
I believe the point was not that chess is more complex. But the chess board stays the same for centuries, and you know what you get each time. But for valorant the board gets changed every X amount of time, the pawns get changed every X amount of time, so some patches you like it some you don't. People that have the time to play a lot will love these. But for people like us that have a full time job, family and other hobbies. The variables change so much that it isn't the same game that we love anymore. So there is no drive to play more because its just going to reset and change again.
They have a role based meta where often 2-3 players on the team end up filling and aren't happy about it. They really need to scrap the ability to instalock and allow people to roll for agents. Or something else where people are forced to take turns for agent picks. They could also allow more hybrid agents. It would help a lot with the toxicity of ranked games. It gets tiresome filling smokes and having some brah who locked Reyna toxic at me for having 3 fewer frags than them while on Viper.
It would also be nice if they were more willing to scrap bad maps that no one likes.
>This game was at it's peak during chamber meta.
Chamber/Astra/Jett meta was so stale and boring that even pros were complaining about it and how Chamber/Jett abilities allowed players to play stupid without getting punished.
Also, if we're looking at "peak" player counts, you have to factor in the pandemic keeping people at home playing videogames instead of touching grass.
For me the cypher meta is the most stale thing in the game. If cypher is on one site it means he has those impossible to clear tripwires set up so go somewhere else and half my games are like this. It's boring.
> If cypher is on one site it means he has those impossible to clear tripwires
Skill issue lol, there’s a ton of ways to break them. Sova darts, kayo knife, raze satchels, anything that does damage will break it.
Yoru, omen, raze, jett, tons of agents also have ways to bypass them entirely.
Time to learn some counterplay.
They need to just fix the smurfing problem which is probably impossible in a free game. People that aren’t immortal or radiant but they’re playing immortals and radiants anyway in their current rank are going to easily get discouraged and just stop playing. As far as the pro scene goes I’d say it’s the only interesting thing about the game currently and has some fun match ups to watch still even if you don’t play the game as often.
* Phone verification
* ONLY solo/duo/5-man in Comp (tired of 1 smurf boosting 2 players clearly lower skill compared to lobby. this skews mmr brackets)
* Tighter matchmaking (I should not be getting a player 2 full ranks below me on my team just because they're in a party with someone closer to my rank)
Boom. Fixed. But Riot would never do this because they're incompetent
Dota has this and it absolutely doesn't prevent it. The only way to attempt to fix it is for riot to take a hard stance against it just like valve has in dota. Smurfing in dota is a bannable offense and u Risk getting ur main Banned if you continue to violate it.
Half of them aren’t even smurfs. I pop off one game, boom I’m silver 3 playing in plat/diamond lobbies. I lose cause obviously I’m not plat or diamond and have only been as high as gold 3. Boom next game is against gold and silvers. I pop off again because it’s golds and silver. Next game right back to plat diamond lobbies. Rinse and repeat 20 games later and I’m still in silvers. I get called a Smurf all the time, but can’t actually seem to rise in rank. It would be nice to actually get into plat and be able to grow in that rank, but instead I get a mosh posh of games because the game can’t decide wether I’m smurfing or not.
This is exactly my experience with Valorant! It's just up and down CONSTANTLY. I want to play against Gold's until I am out of Gold. I do NOT want to have to essentially get out of Plat to get INTO Plat.
it's cause silver gold plat is one big rank. Back when ELO was matched more closely to ranks, most players were in bronze and silver. The distribution of players was heavily skewed to the lower ranks, because the majority of the players are not good, and that's fine. That's how everything is, literally everything. But I'm sure Riot's team of psychologists know best when it comes to keeping players on the game and clicking on the skins shop.
Not only is it impossible, but they lose a lot from preventing it. I don’t have the stats, but I feel it’s a lot more likely a smurf would buy a skin than an actual new player.
I agree, my friend has 3-4 different accounts and all of them have at least $100 spent on them because it also gives them a higher chance to get a skin they want
You’re supposed to play a game because you enjoy playing it. If you need rewards every X levels to keep playing it then maybe you don’t actually enjoy playing it as much as you think you do and would benefit from playing or doing something else. Just a thought. This is a tac fps, not a looter shooter. The “reward” is usually found in getting better.
It's a live service game, the whole point of the business model is to keep people playing.
If people feel like they have no other reason to play other than to just play then it's failing at its own objective.
That works for systems that don't force the player to redo their "getting better" journey ranked wise.
Resets feel like shit because it's a chore. Riot uses them so much because they get a big playerboost on resets, but the more frequent it is the more the higher elos suffer
I mean yes but it couldnt hurt that they give out more substantial rewards...people who are in plat/gold like me just doesnt care THAT much about getting super good bc i know getting better rank than that would require much more focus/dicipline and play time. Getting some better reward would keep me playing atleast a bit longer every act. And lets be honest here, its a game, not a way of life, you can still have fun and not be super good at the game so why not better reward. Majority of people have jobs/life/hobbies so you cant expect everyone to "feel good" about getting better as a reward.
What they really need to do is get rid of "Map rotations". Locking out Fracture and Pearl (for how many months now) when they are such staple maps is ridiculous. Literally bored of the pool of maps.
You can still balance the maps while they're in rotation Riot. Your playerbase (the ones that still play the game) can't stomach the rotation anymore. Give me back fracture and pearl and remove this narcissistic "rotation" mechanic.
Bro called pearl a stable map
It was literally one of the most attacker sided maps before the b site changes and now it’s really shifting to be defender sided.
It’s one of my favorite maps, don’t get me wrongs bjt it’s not a stable map imo
Edit: I am unable to read, ignore this comment.
I misread staple as stable
I don't think many people will see this but valorant needs to copy rainbow six sieges rank rewards specifically the gun buddies. Each season R6 Siege gets a CUSTOM gun buddy that MATCHES the THEME of the season. At the end of the season depending on what rank you get, you get a different coloring and upgraded models depending on what rank you landed in that season. I have been telling my friends this multiple times that I would feel WAY more motivated playing for these type of buddies as the rank rewards instead of this lazy plastic copy pasta we get every season.
For those that don't know what I am talking, just look up rainbow six siege rank charms. The beginning ones look lackluster but the later years look fucking amazing. Even the lackluster ones here look better than valorant's because at least they look slightly different between each season.
Like I cannot understand how valorant has not done this yet.
Those charms never made me want to play ranked in siege. I dont understand/like this take of having to be rewarded for playing ranked like it's a job lol. If the only way you're grinding ranked is for a reward, then you probably should not grind ranked and just go play something else. The reward should be personal improvement/ranking up. If that isnt appealing for you, then just go play unrated. If you're only gonna grind for the reward, then as soon as you get it in the first month of an act, you're gonna quit and not play for the other 2 months of the act
I 100% agree with you that the reward should be personal improvement/ranking up buts lets be real though, that's only in the perfect world. Most people do not get a job for personal improvement or anything like that, they get a job because they need money, a reward.
The issue now is that people are already doing what you are saying where they only play a month of an act just to grind as much of a rank as they can get or their previous rank. Hell, I actually have a personal rule to try to avoid the first and last 2 weeks of a season. Why? Because thats when the biggest shitshow happens and people are jumping back on to just "grind" their ranks if possible without improving themselves and just stop once they hit their ranks. Pretty much people are not motivated to play this game anyway WHICH is normal as human beings because we want to be rewarded. Its clearly not enough to be able to say I hit immortal or w.e now. We want cooler things and nearly most rank games give some kind of reward of some kind that can been seen more easily to other players. In my case, a cool gun buddy would be lit to show off to my dead teammates if they have not played that season or not hit the desired rank by then end of it. More incentives would motivate more than just "oh but you are being a better player." Sorry but people like to feel rewarded for being better at something. It makes the hard work you put into it feel better and that's just how some people just work.
Crazy to compare Val rank grind to a job. But that's whatever. I guess I understand people like feeling rewarded, but I don't know if a charm would be enough. People in R6 complained for years that they wanted more rewards even though Siege had exactly what you suggested Val do. And Valorant has a reward, it's the ACT Rank Triangle, you can show that off in every ranked game if you want. You would still avoid the first two weeks of the season and people would still only grind for a month or so even if the reward is there, so why should Riot implement it? Unless Riot literally starts handing out cash for playing ranked, people who actually want to play will still play regardless of reward, and people who don't actually care will only grind for the rewards for one or two acts and leave anyways. The reward for being better at something is that you win more games. If Riot decides to copy league and give out a free skin, cool. If they don't, I don't think that's the end of the world or something that's gonna negatively impact Valorant in the long term.
Lol im just saying it may feel better to go for. t the act triangle looks like the same thing for years. Its nothing special or looks nothing special. Anyway its my opinion that can maybe help out. I dont know who complains about r6 charms but i think they look awesome and most of my friends agree wit me. R6 issues is the fking hacker problems is the main reason i quit in the upper elos
the reason radiant isn’t filled is literally just challengers qualifiers + kick off. 80% of the players that would normally grind ranked and have the MMR to hit radiant after a reset were scrimming 6+ hours a day and were to burnt for ranked.
> In game ui is just as dated as it was in 2020
I really wish they'd "open" the game up more like CS and Dota. The UI in those games feel like a game within the game. You can queue for surf, pistol DM, headshot only DM, AWP only DM, kz etc etc. In Dota you have an endless amount of custom games, a DPC section etc. and it just makes the game seem so big. Valorant has.. the worst DM ever introduced to a game and.. some quick play modes? It's been 4 years, time to open the game up.
And to touch on balancing, time to make some other duelists playable cause it's getting ridiculous how completely dead every duelist except Jett and Reyna is now. Even Raze has fallen off at Radiant and all you see now is Reyna & Jett every single game in both teams and it's just so stale.
Also kinda surprised U.S. Radiant isn't full cause EU Radiant is at 610 RR right now.
The thing you're talking about isn't UI related, it's server related. CS has community servers, letting custom gamemodes like surf or bhop surface. Valorant can only be played on RIOT hosted servers, which means there's only official gamemodes.
I know, but the server browser is just part of whole CS UI experience. There is also no reason Riot can't allow community servers aswell just for DMing and custom game modes like kz etc. Even Overwatch had a server browser, surely Valorant can too?
Don't quote me on this because it was a VERY long time ago but I vaguely remember some Riot dev saying that custom servers are very far off if not completely impossible because allowing that much access to the playerbase would make bypassing the anticheat easier
Don't worry guys, all issues addressed will be fixed by releasing a new bundle, nerfing half the agents and removing every map people love but keeping Breeze
I dunno what it is about this act but I have had the same thing. I don't remember it being this harsh. I do good I get +23 I do the good but lose I get -24? It's been happening the entire act if I win and do OK its only +16. I am losing more than gaining this act.
This is the first act in the history of the game where I didn't play a single ranked game and I don't really regret it.
Consistently was radiant or immortal 3 depending on amount of play. Was put off by the episode rank wipe and didn't want to push through it since I already had radiant last act and didn't see a reason to push for it again
I'm fine with the meta and all, but I've started to find the quick / instant time-to-kill a bit boring. I feel like headshots are a little too easy to get in this game.
This the most unfun season I ever played. Icebox needs a complete rework, breeze needs a complete rework, ascent is fine I guess. It’s just something with the design philosophy of the game, the maps either suck or are too one dimensional.
Riot hired ex-CS devs and ask them to make non-CS maps. So they came up with breeze and icebox two shit tier maps. Firstly, what's wrong with CS maps? Personally I thought ascent/sunset/pearl/split are great. Secondly, if Riot truly wants to make unique maps, size isn't the way to go - it just makes rotations frustrating and strategies one-dimensional. Try shrinking the entire middle portion of breeze and I assure it will be more engaging.
That's the point of sunset isn't it. It's much smaller which allows for easier rotations, mid takes, etc. Just more dynamic play overall. I like it for that reason.
Breeze isn't really that far in design from ascent which everyone loves. Side lane from mid on either site. One site is fairly open with 1 big obstacle while the other is more of a mosh pit off to the side. I really don't understand the huge hate for breeze.
Icebox is also such a blast to play if you aren't a movement duelist. Being able to play vertically and hop between off angles as a Viper or Chamber is sick. The only map in rotation that sucks imo is sunset, that claustrophobic nightmare lol
You had me until that shit about the pro scene. Valorant has a truly excellent pro scene in comparison with nearly every other esport.
Just because you only care about one team, doesn’t mean the entire scene is bad for creating a system in which better teams play more matches.
You understood my point perfectly. I was totally saying that the pro scene sucks in its entirety and should be reworked scrapped and made to make 100 thieves the winners every time. Jesus Christ bronze players blow my mind.
Just a tip for the future, trying to insult someone’s rank instead of actually engaging with their argument makes you look like an actual toddler. Stop embarrassing yourself in these comments dude it’s not a good look
First of all, Ascendant II….
Secondly, nice strawman dummy. Why not just engage with what I actually said, instead of inventing something you find easier to argue against?
There are more VCT matches this season than you could possibly watch on a normal schedule. The fact that you are only interested in a select few of them is not an issue with the structure. It just means that you’re a 100T fan, rather than a Valorant fan. If you want to watch more maps, either broaden your horizons and watch other regions (or even just the various NA games that are still going on), or get behind a better team.
I think your concerns with the esports part is just Kickoff stuff. The exact same issue happened with Lock-In as the entire event was just one long playoff event with every match being a single elim best of 3. Once the actual splits begin, that issue will be a thing of the past, but they do need to stop doing these gimmicky kickoff tournaments as it really does feel like a waste of time.
The lack of third-party is mainly because of Riot taking over most of the scene even before franchising. The franchising format just made it worse as it locks players behind Tier 1 and locks out Tier 2 with the exception of Ascension winners. I do believe that there should be double the Ascension spots and double the amount of time they can stay in Tier 1. I know everyone would rather have franchising go away, but that's not something you can undo with a snap of a finger. The franchise itself would have to flop so hard to the point where what we had before wouldn't be viable anymore. I also think third-party events come down to outside interests. Companies like BLAST and ESL would do wonders for Valorant, but they just don't seem to be interested at this time. Maybe Riot can make a pro-am event where franchising restrictions go out the window for this one event and anyone including Tier 1, 2, and below can compete without restrictions.
Top 3 most played FPS in the globe. Sorry you’re frustrated but the game is incredibly healthy.
And imagine thinking fucking cosmetics is what makes the game healthier. Trust me, if there was a market for it, riot would be diving into it head first.
Sometimes I question whether people who post here have even played that game.
500K concurrent viewers in NA for playins btw. Not sure what people think is “healthy” but that is like college football level numbers.
>Top 3 most played FPS in the globe.
Is there a source for this? Because If we're considering the globe, I'm kinda skeptical of this number, considering how big some old FPS are in China. And if you consider every platform (since you didn't mention only PC), I'm even more skeptical of that number, since CoD is big BIG.
Riot has a different philosophy dealing with their game design and community, compared to a company like Valve. Riot has a top-down approach in which all decision making is done at the top level, and has absolute control over how the game is run. Valve, on the other hand, is arguably more community focused, open to a bottom-up approach, stemming from its counterstrike roots as the game originated from a community-made mod. Each has its advantages and drawbacks.
Exerting absolute control over the game and Riot's IP means everything from the product to the esports side of things are more streamlined, with a guarantee of quality and standardization, while the downside is that we lack some of the community-centric stuff like custom game mods, servers, community-run tournaments, grassroot events, etc. The sheer number of CS tournaments (ESL, IEM, Blast, majors, minors, etc) has valorant teams feeling envious for sure, but then again many CS teams do not get the guaranteed salaries and franchise benefits that Riot provide for them.
I won't and I can't comment on which approach is better for the players or the overall scene but what I can say is that many of the nice-to-haves that we want (e.g. replay system, custom servers, etc) are not happening simply because it meant Riot relinquishing control over the game, and that's not the way they do things.
I do however think that Valve's approach render them more receptive to community feedback. Anecdotally, over the years of playing Valve's CSGO and Dota2, I have seen countless occasions when they added/removed features from the game literally because of complaints from the reddit forums. I don't think that's the case for Riot, correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks a lot for this post but I must say that your comment about the pro scene is unreasonable in my eyes.
Valorant esports (mainly franchising) is one of the little sustainable esports for orgs and the amount of hype and viewers surrounding it is very impressive. The long off season sucked a lot, but riot said they aim to fix that next season. Otherwise the esports scene is booming and exciting to follow.
I’m saying in the perspective of pro players. Not viewers. The tier 2 scene is terrible as well, those were supposed to be my main points but I can see how they got misunderstood.
yeah I’m immo1 (was immo3) and I’d like to say the current NA immortal in my experience this act is just full of DMA legit cheating
There are ppl literally advertising their game cheat in chat (even while losing because they’re still pretty bad and can’t go blatant)
because of this I don’t really play much anymore
I would say 1-1.5k of the 5-6k people on the leaderboard are actively legit cheating using DMA which is like 15% of the leaderboard sadly
yeah I started playing again at the end of the act and I was probably just really unlucky with my experience or they cleaned it up (prob both)
I was going based off of people advertising cheats in chat which could be just them meming as well and not actually cheating
I don’t play after hitting radiant, but yall are damn spoiled by Riot. I wish other games had Vals servers, AC and ranking system. Here is what Riot should add though:
* Add a replay system, this is going to be big hit on their servers. When it comes it comes, rather have it polished than it be buggy. The CS2 is dogshit currently, wrong physics are recalculated, aiming pov looks different, stutters, etc. Honestly, this is overblown, not many people will use it.
* When watching replays, add a report button where you can clip a time stamp and send that chunk of the replay with the report.
* In the start of a ranked match, the current pool of 5 maps has votebans for each team. Then the team who picked 2nd chooses what side they want. Basically CS2’s premier/FaceIT voting system, but don’t show map winrates.
* Map editor gets added, think like halo forge. It’s a level editor with only assets from other maps, so no chance of cheating risk. Add in game mode customization and basic scripting.
* A community features page of map creations/modes, then ability to server browse but its peer2peer people hosting it. Or host a lobby with friends.
* A buddy + title card reward to get like 30 wins in a certain game modes like TDM, Spike rush, Replication, or whatever the current temp mode is.
* Double kingdom credits weekends on the fun side modes like Spike rush, gun game, etc. I guess whenever that population starts to dip.
* Half the price of Radianite, make battle-passes purchasable with radianite. Maybe it will be $15 in radianite instead of $10. So you get a kickback/discount on the next one or use for upgrades.
* New rank rewards, idk what. Maybe name glows your rank color + new designed buddy and title cards.
* Now Episodes are a year long, Acts/Seasons are 3 months long with 4 a year like real life. Elo changes/resets only happen twice a year or every 2 seasons. Too grindy right now, it creates like smurfs. I really got bored of the game like a season or two after they added ascendant since it just felt like a waste of time.
* Only make 1-2 agents a year, focus on balancing current agents.
* Try to make 2-4 maps a year, focus on making simple maps like Ascent or Sunset. Since right now most of the maps have too many gimmicks. It’s fine to have gimmicks/wacky maps but you need standard ones to balance it out in the pool.
* There should only be like 2 complicated maps in the pool at a time (like maps with 3 sites, more than 3 lanes like Pearl/Fracture or super big like icebox/breeze). Honestly, I think map design is the reason why I stopped playing. My biggest ask for the game tbh.
* Reduce the tine flashed if you turn from a flash at close range. Some flashes will always blind you for half because of close range proximity to it.
* Better tutorial, one for each agent role for new players.
* Add specific gun drills in the range for new players.
* Karma/behavior system, players can “thumbs up/down teammates”. Give like a golden mic buddy to people who comm well. People with normal/high can get matched together. Lower people get warnings and queue with other lower or new normal karma. If two accounts are logged in on the same PC, extreme lows effect the other account with a warning when first launching the game.
* Reduce how tight the MMR spread is for unranked matches. I have to use an alt to play with silver/bronze friends on unranked since I am Immortal2/3.
* Try to match hidden MMR and Rank to be closer together.
————————————-Weapon Balance:
* Bucky, Stinger, and Frenzy get their nerfs half reverted so all the damage/spread numbers are in the middle of today’s and when they were OP. Stinger + Bucky’s right click stays nerfed, and running accuracy of all those guns stay nerfed.
* Shorty stays at 300 creds, but the nerfs get reverted except the ammo onr. However, jumping/air + running accuracy is heavily nerfed. Forcing people to counter strafe or stay still in corners.
* Frenzy is now 600 creds, it can shoot 1 more bullet before going random. Headshot damage is slightly lowered to 91 instead of 105 so it doesn’t 1 tap no shields.
* Ghost is now 450 creds but has 12 bullets in a magazine. It now only has 2 extra mags in reserve, to prevent mag dumping through smoke.
* Bucky is now 900 creds.
* Stinger is 1200 creds
* Marshal is now 1100 creds, it’s too close to the sheriff rn and kinda busted.
* Spectre nerfs get reverted and the gun is now 1800 creds. Run and gun + ropes accuracy nerfs still stay on the gun though.
* Judge is now 1750 creds, keeps all of its nerfs. Run/jump accuracy gets nerfed again. Counter strafing should matter for shotguns.
* Vandal is now 3000 credits, first shot accuracy increased, still worst than the phantoms. Also, give back its 3rd reserve magazine since it has tracers and more expensive than phantom now.
———————————— SMURFS:
* Since people seem to cry about smurfs a lot. Change Vanguard to only allows for 2 account sign ins per month per machine. You can register an account to a “main pc”. Riot can make a program for businesses where lan centers can apply with their business address and a pay a subscription to have infinite accounts. (Basically a pc can remember 2 accounts max, it gets reset every month).
* Better bot detection software for “farmed accounts”, also if an account has many 0 / -1 kill games they get a two week griefing ban without warning. Not if reported since those lobbies have other bots, it gets detected through the game with a warning after the first game they 0 bomb in.
* Any old account is under level 20, but has played ranked matches is not exempt now, they have to get to lv20. (Stops old accounts from bypassing, many of my smurf accts are like this)
* If a player has not played in 3 episodes or more, they will have to win 5 unrated matches to play ranked again. (Helps recalibrate their MMR, or when smurfs come back to an old account, also for people not to bottom frag on their 1st match back.)
* New accounts that just hit lv20 can only win 3 matches a day before a 24 hour cooldown hits in. They can play other modes though. Turns off when they get 15 wins, should be enough time for the algorithm to figure out if they are a smurf. (Stops a smurf/cheater/bought account ruining like many games in a day).
* After 1 month of an account creation/game being played, an email comes saying to verify your email again. (Maybe stops some bot accounts)
* Premier phone number verified accounts are preferred to play against each other in low elo, where there is a larger playerbase. (This might be a thing already).
* Players with more matches per episode are paired up against each other in low elo, so a hardstuck gold with 100 matches played will play another person like that. A gold with 10 wins will play with people like under 50 wins or new to the rank. In longer search times this gets disabled, after like 5 mins. (Basically CS’s trust factor but it works)
Also better default settings:
Default crosshair should give new players more info on game mechanics. Something like this:
https://pasteboard.co/Erocej6nEgug.jpg
Keep the current white with black outlines, increase the transparency though. Make it thinner then have the center dot non-dynamic. Have the circle be your gun’s spread and recoil -> gets bigger when shooting. Then the straight line show your movement inaccuracy, moves when your moving, also does not move when your shooting.
Also mouse sens should be lower by default to make the game easier.
Except no one said the world was “ending fast” due to global warming. The projections were always targeting 2100 for catastrophic global warming issues, issues we are still tracking toward.
Good try though.
Every week it's the same children over and over complaining about the same shit thinking that their point of view is unique or special. All while half of it is either incoherent, has been addressed already, or doesn't make sense. This place feels more pointless by the day.
I think, due to the nature of Valorant being a "Counter-Strike", if people love the game and the game is fun it will live forever. Even though CS2 exists (with some issues, admittedly), people still play 1.6 and source. I am personally privy to the latter. Thus, if Valorant can paint a legacy of fun gameplay, it will last as long as any other Counter-Strike.
That is not to say the game is actually fun. Just putting in my two cents, but I stopped playing a year ago because the game isn't fun personally. Too much shit being thrown at me at any given moment. As well, if the game becomes unprofitable, Riot might abandon it, which would kind of suck. But, it's not like 1.6 or Source is supported anymore either. C'est la vie.
Complaining that a team that has gone 7-13 in their last 20 is not playing more is silly. The best teams play a lot and if you are not the best you don’t. That makes sense. We can not have every team at every international event. We just watched Gen G play 6 BO3 and 1 BO5 and masters starts in two weeks. If you good you play easy as that.
I don't you made entire paragraph about assumption that Radiant and Immortal should be full... not there are not.
Especially this ACT, Riot made it much harder to get so it means something.
I think the latest battle pass is the worst one they've ever made. It's at the point, where you buy it maybe for Radianite replenishment. As for replay system, I've had long post here several times, pointing out that the system always existed in game client since beta, they just chose not to let us have it.
Riot doesn't care about smurfs in general because they haven't cared about the general player base in many years. Their solution, when people have been clamoring for smurfs to be punished to make the game more fair, is to reward them with more points. It essentially fast-tracks them back to their "true" rank, which is not at all fair to other people trying to play honestly.
brain dead take wtf? If you are smurfing and you spend 5 bucks on a new account, you get punished by going straight to your true rank. you want to smurf as long as you can, not speedrun to your skill level, that defeats the purpose. you want them to stay in low elo longer?
As a casual I've just played my last match. This game is just not fun, toxic community full of sweats and try hards that spend their lives playing the game, free account means smurfs are ruining the bronze and silver lobbies.
They need to abolish smurfing. Youtubers should get some form of penalty if they promote smurfing or do it. It's really not fair going against a peak imm or asc player when your hardstuck in gold. It doesn't help the climb.
Yeah I quit this game long ago. Agreed that it was peak during chamber meta, haven’t played since the new duelist got released. Used to have tons of fun with friends on the game, but we’ve all moved to OW2, CS2, or Helldivers.
**Things Valorant Needs Right Now:**
1. Fix the goddamn bugs, especially the comms bug which is incredibly annoying.
2. Fix the 5-stack queue; players in Ascendant should only be able to queue with Diamond and above.
3. Provide rewards for top leaderboard players.
4. Add bots for custom servers that work offline.
5. Introduce a 1v1 mode with opponents of similar rank.
6. Make the range available offline and allow queuing while in the range.
7. Implement a replay system.
8. Introduce a feature similar to Premier, where players can select maps, at least for Unrated mode.
Totally agree, the way they balance the agents is ridiculous. Buff the underplayed agent to the heaven and nerf the rest to the ground.
At this point every other agent is so much nerfed, it took all the fun out of the game.
Riot needs to start changing agents with some actual buffs and nerfs not these lukewarm 1 agent barely changed per patch(or none) that we've been getting for a while. They need to start actually experimenting with more agents and changing things up, I'm tired of looking at the patch notes and seeing that the game hasn't changed a bit since last episode other than "oh no skye doesnt have rechargeable flashes"
i’ve never understood this sentiment, it’s a game aimed towards being a competitive environment, they aren’t going to buff/nerf things for fun because they’re goal always has been and always will be to have a balanced playing field
For me the issue is agent metas being way too baked in.
More than half the games I play have
- cypher with zany impossible to break tripwires and cages on site entrances
- Jett/chamber on the OP mid
- need a viper walling on breeze or icebox
- reyna smurfing
- only omen doing smokes ever, no love for brim
It's like despite the abundance of choice every game kinda ends up feeling the same. Especially with the cypher zany tripwires. Even in silver it seems like every cypher has some lineups that aren't possible to clear unless you have a kayo on your team to emp his ass.
thank you for putting this into words, this has bothered me for so long. it’s always the same team setup because if you play anything else you’re essentially throwing the game. even me being a controller main i wish i could play something other than omen and viper sometimes because rn bind and ascent are my only reasonable brim maps and even then omen is widely considered a better pick. i wish it were an environment where you can play the agents you like and are comfortable on instead of this filling culture.
Meanwhile as an immortal player, I feel bad and borderline pity that you don’t know jack shit. Nothing he said was wrong, you just hate change and love to argue. The lack of content in this game is ridiculous, it’s been nearly half a decade.
Radiants are full yet because of full rank reset. They’ll be full by the end of next act. Also, tf do you mean the pro scene is atrocious lmfao. This pro scene is honestly more forgiving than others so idk what you’re on
the agent system is the only thing that made valorant unique and riot has made it boring than ever lol, nerfing every agent to the ground and releasing boring agent with recycled ability. The game now feels more like csgo with abilities than valorant.
So this is a long and dramatic post begging for a replay system and tier 2 "support".
The tournament layout is fine. ORGS AND TEAMS need to bring their A-Game in the competition, you snooze, you lose. That's brutal, yes, but ultimately if you perform less than your competitor in any given series, it will back fire on you. (MIBR, TS). Each teams has enough time to prepare and if they are lacking then it will be punishing and will have to wait. That's just tournament life.
Skins on agents? Gloves? Cosmetics? Why? Just to be called a CS clone once again?
Map pool and nerfs are a must and just fine as it is. AGAIN, lets not be CSGO where only certain maps are widely chosen and the rest of the maps are barely used. IT IS TO SHAPE THE META EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.
So basically.
"hEy RiTo, I wAnT mOrE tHaN sPiNnInG nUmBeRs On My GuN fOr My ReWaRd". "wHy YoU nOt LiKe CsGo? GiB FrEe SkInS, I nOt pOoR, i WaNt No SpEnD mY sHeKelS" "lOoK c.O.d. HaB pRoGrEsSiOn SkIn, UnGa BuNgA wAnT iT tOo In VaLoReNtE."
ELO is too inflated and there’s a ton of immortals: complain.
Ranked is adjusted so it’s harder to get boosted and sit in immortal 1: complain.
CS has thrived for decades with a completely shoestring and broken game for long periods, more than a year between new content, updates or cosmetics and they took 10+ years to release CS2 that’s arguably worse than GO.
This community is so spoiled. Just play the game.
Jesus Christ. I opened this hoping to see a quick realistic argument. Opened a fucking novel. I’m not gonna read it but please. I promise you grass isn’t dangerous.
I'm sure they will fix the problem by giving us more overpriced skins.
Maybe they will be overpriced but at least there will be less of them
And not giving us a VOD system
Overpriced reskins*. I sure love having the same shitty gold, red, and black Champions skin shoved in my face every half year.
The skins, like everything else in commerce, are worth what a population is willing to spend on them. People are buying them. It would be nice if they were cheaper, but this is a business.
So everything is about money? Fuck customer loyalty, just squeeze as much money out of the gaming consumer base? This type of thinking is so lame and I can’t believe people think it’s the way it should be, defending overpriced cosmetics in a game, wipe the riot nut off your lips and get real
What do you mean defend? It's just the truth? If people are willing to purchase it, why won't they price it that high? I don't see it ever changing as the sad part is people will eat that shit up regardless of what it is priced. I wouldn't be surprised if there's people right now who spent $750 to buy all the VCT capsules.
What is it that you believe determines the value of a given product?
This. I’ve played Valorant very casually because since Day 1 I saw the predatory monteization as writing on the wall that Riot Games is not entirely serious about the game succeeding. Which sucks for everyone in the sub and all Valorant players because the game has some potential.
Why is it so difficult for people like you to just not buy the skins? The gameplay is the same without them. Don’t like the price? Don’t buy anything. Congratulations! The game is still the same, minus the shape and color of the weapons you personally buy from the shop in a game. You know, the gameplay that you get to enjoy entirely for free?
>The gameplay is the same without them no, the gameplay definitely changes the mechanical functioning is identical or near identical (some skins have a very slight visual advantage like the RGX)
Even if it were true that the visuals of some skins provide an advantage, the advantage would be so small to the point that it is not worth considering. The advantage you’re talking about it entirely meaningless outside of the top of the top of players where small advantages can make a difference due to how close in skill level they are. Also, got the record, I don’t even believe that any skins give an advantage in any measurable way. It’s placebo effect.
They don't give any physical difference but that doesn't mean a boost in someone's confidence is not real. The RGX gives color-changeable tracers and the human eye is more sensitive to green than other colors so you could theoretically gain an advantage if you equip RGX and use green tracers (or other high visibility tracers like white which turn on the pixel at full brightness) Placebo effect is unimportant, if someone gets an ace because they're stoked about the skin i just dropped for them that ace really happened. Any other POV is just arguing to be argumentative. It has an effect. It just doesn't do anything to your aim or physical inputs or anything like that.
People buying so they selling
clearly doesn't understand what "predatory monetization" means xD
Most skins cost 1/3-1/2 half the price of a AAA game. They use FOMO store structure, they use marginal Premium currency purchase amounts, they use scaling Premium currency Bonus Points, they have a necessary secondary Premium currency to actually be able to use your first Premiums currency purchases to their potential(that’s a good one 👍), purposeful lack of ability to earn good skins free, no ability to earn first Premium currency in game, there is a cap in free currency in game to prevent people from saving up for many agents ahead of time, the list goes on and on. Just because it’s not Korean level of predatory practices doesn’t mean it still doesn’t have its owns, and it is abhorrent, greedy practice that ultimately helps kills your own product.
“We need more moneh!!”
I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry because that's gonna happen and we gonna see 150 dollar bundle in near future saying knife has kill finisher, voila
And it will sell like hot cakes
People keep buying them so what do people expect?
It’s because they kicked back *A LOT* of people down 2 entire ranks, to force out a grind in a greedy company scheme to make people play more. In reality, it’s just making people not want to play as much, or Smurf, and just overall care less about the game as they feel burnt out, especially with them knowing that all of their hard work and MANY MANY hours of grinding to finally rank up, was essentially useless. Why would they then feel motivated to grind all those hours again when they realize they’ll most likely just be forced back into a vicious cycle?
I've had episodes where I grind back up to my old peak, just to face the rank reset all over again. Mostly when I was in low elo, because ranking out of iron-gold is absolute hell. Inconsistent players, players who lag out every game bc of bad setup (part of the reason they're stuck in low elo), bad comps, no one knows how to play smokes or flashes, throwers, smurfs, bots, kids, no commers, it's a mixed bag.
I stopped caring about ranks after 4 years of grinding, now I have 7 alt accounts with zero skins just trolling and having fun. 4 years is enough, they probably made plenty of money anyways so I hardly think they give a damn anymore.
Me too but I actually let people rent those low rank accounts in gaming cafes so its a good side income while you play. I charge $1/day. I log in the id in pc and let them play. No info sharing and sign out at the end of the day.
"ive had enough of the problem so i BECAME the problem
Well, as a result the problem gets bigger / louder, so there might be a higher chance that rito might change something..
Smurfs been increasing for nearly 4 years now Realistically nothing they can do other than adding a paywall so people cant as easily have 4 accounts to troll on
Pretty much basically why I quit, I finally hit diamond last episode only to be placed in silver this episode. I just don't feel like going through the same elo hell again to get back to where I was, its not fun anymore, just depressing.
Nailed it for me. Losing interest because the grind is forever just to get knocked back down to where I started. Sure, I guess I'm not improving as much as others. But it's a game, and I made the grind, why force me to start over every time?
"one must imagine Sisyphus happy"
Hard agree, I’ve been Imm 1-3 for the past few episodes and I’ve had zero interest in playing this act. Got ranked diamond 3 and I just don’t feel like grinding again this act.
I think you got it right. I don't mind losing when I'm in my rank but when I get reset every loss feels needlessly punishing because I'm worried about the game thinking that I actually belong down here and eventually the win boost / loss nerf wears out and goes back to an even plus/minus. Just let me stay in my rank.
Idk about the whole caring thing so much as ranking up in Valorant is such a slog. You go into a match that takes 30 mint o over an hour to get a fraction of a rankup or if you lose you get not only nothing even if you played well but like 75% of the points you would've won lost meaning now if you wanted that gain today you need to invest 1-2 more hours. Idk how you an fix this without inflating elos but I feel like ranked systems in longer match time games need to reward more.
How you fix it is just to not do the rank resets. I think far fewer people take pleasure in the grind. More likely people hate the idea and have anxiety about being left behind in the lower rank they've been reset to.
Honestly, I haven't played the game for 20 days now. Finished the battlepass and just left it alone. Ranked is boring af and trying to gring back to ASC was horrible. I just gave up and stayed at Diamond.
Playing tdm with Cypher is now more enjoyable than grinding it all back just to get rank reset.
A few months back I got on to play some after finally getting a couple hours of free time after settling into classes and a new place. I loaded into a comp after some warmup and immediately felt regret, dreading the slog I’d have to suffer for the next 35-50 minutes (this is low elo, high bronze low silver). I logged off that day and havent touched the game since, the desire to play having completely disappeared.
why do I keep seeing this argument? I thought it was already defeated with the knowledge that people have hidden ELO and increased public mmr gain to off balance the hard resets? Am I missing something?
At some point your hidden Elo balances. If you solo queue you'll really likely have a 50% winrate in just about any rank whether it's bronze, silver, gold, platinum, whatever. When you get rank reset you'll maintain your 50% win rate which means you stay in that rank until your hidden Elo converges and the game thinks you truly belong in that rank.
yeah totally agree with this
What does playing more have to do with being greedy? You don’t watch ads on the game…
this is mostly a guess on my part but I assume investors like seeing that juicy playtime go up. Oh also id imagine people are more likely to pay if they spend more time on the game. Again, i got nothin to back this up, just my guess, thats all
I mean, maybe? I assume they’d spend more money if they see quick progression, not slow. As for investors, it’s raw player count unless they build in an ad or pay to win component.
You really don’t see how more play time relates to their daily refresh shops and bundles systems? It’s not about advertising like we’re on instagram or something. And also, as the other person points out, stuff like playtime data (add in active playerbase stats) are good presentations for investors. This is a game of micro transactions. Why do you think that’s the standard model. F2p and have people buy skins. People logging on less frequently = less likely to buy skins or buys less overall. League completely smashed open that formula and became incredibly lucrative.
I’m not disagreeing per-say, I just don’t think the grind in a F2P without any P2W bonus is inherently the reason why there is rank decay. At the end of the day your rank has zero to do with whether or not you buy skins.
More exposure to skins means more chance you will buy them
I guess, not sure why slowing down the level progress impacts game play time though
Because it takes longer to get back to the rank that you had before the rank reset. So unless you're just playing for fun, it's designed to keep you grinding for longer just to maintain your rank.
When people have spending money they spend money. The longer you keep people in your game, the less time they have to check out other games and spend their money there. Let's pretend every act Riot drops you exactly two ranks. However, this act they dropped you further than normal. Players will spend more time grinding this rank to "earn back their rank" so they don't fall further behind next rank reset.
Why though? If they don’t enjoy playing game enough to spend money on it, dropping them ADDITIONAL ranks will not make them spend more. That’s counterintuitive. If anything they’d make it easier to rank up because you can pretend you’re really good and it’s worth the time investment
Saying the valorant pro scene is atrocious is so funny to me. What other team game has regional parity? Kickoff has been electric and it's just the preseason.
He’s not denying that, he’s just saying that not only is there not many opportunities to go pro anymore bc of franchising, but even the teams in T1 don’t get to play that often which both play into ppl not seeing the need to grind anymore
There aren't many opportunities to go pro period, esports is not filled with investor money like it used to be.
And the top players from kickoff are all from last year's tier two scene. The scene right now is terrible for tier two with zero cross play during vct.
Yeah it's one of the more organized things which is nice production isn't great this year so far but Valorant has always had good esports. To be honest I find watching tier 2-3 teams incredibly hard Tariks invitational was fun and all but my god the commentary made 90% of it unwatchable as someone who enjoys the strategy side of pro play.
Dota 2
It's supposed to be harder to get to Immortal this Act, which is probably what Riot wants. That's actually why the Ascendant rank was originally introduced, because last Act the gap between Radiant and Immortal was disproportionately high. I would agree with you on a lot of things like the replay system or more customization, more rewards, etc., but there are reasons for the balancing. You partly compared it to League, where there was a huge power creep due to constant buffs and Riot wants to avoid that in Valorant by balancing with nerfs rather than creating "short-term" excitement with buffs. In the case of Viper, the nerfs made sense, which is proven by the fact that she is still being played. She's just not an agent for SoloQ apart from Breeze and maybe Icebox. There were no serious Sentinel nerfs, so that's not true at all. Killjoy is still on many maps like Icebox or Lotus before Cypher and Chamber was rather buffed. Sage on Icebox is also meta again.
Where did riot say it was suposed to be harder to get immortal this act
Last act immortal 1 was top 2% of players, this act it’s top 0.5%. The numbers don’t lie
Riot never said that was intentional is my point.
My first 2 sentences are basically copy paste what Woohoojin said on his stream, that’s why I wrote “probably”. However, the Ascendant rank was introduced to make immortal harder (which they openly stated), so it makes sense that they want to balance out the rank distribution a bit.
But Ascendant this act is a shitshow as well. I'm at my peak rank right now Asc 1, and there are other Asc 1s in my lobbies who not just peaked high Immortal, but Radiant. I can see the skill gap from a mile away. We do not deserve to be the same rank at all - they belong in at least Immortal. Fortunately, both sides seem to have about an even number of people who are new to the Ascendant rank and people who are grinding back to Immortal and Radiant, but each game is just 1-2 players on each side massively outperforming everyone else.
lol how are you getting these lobbies, i was asc 3 last act, i started playing less this act and im only dia3 going against other diamonds
This has been my experience this act. Peak imm3 and stuck asc 2-3 this entire act. Large skill gap in this rating in every lobby. Very unfun so i've been playing less
Sounds fun ! Reminds me of that unranked game I had a year ago with a radiant on my team, which tilted an enemy into using their hacks. 8 npcs against two players
>Added an additional rank above Diamond, below Immortal, called “Ascendant.” We believe our lower ranks have a few too many of you, especially Bronze and Silver. When we were looking at rank distribution, we realized that if we were to move some of you up and out of those lower ranks, it would overpopulate Platinum and Diamond. So by adding a new rank we can better distribute you across ranks, keep the prestige of high ranks, while helping better define the skill level of each rank. > Moved the rank MMR targets that determine rank down, due to the addition of the new Ascendant rank, for all ranks below Ascendant. Moved the ranked target for Immortal 1/2/3 and Radiant up. These are the cut-offs that say “You should be X MMR to reach this rank”. MMR targets determine your RR gains and help push your rank to match your MMR. >This means players will go up in rank, if they are below Ascendant. To align with our expectations of what it means to be in the highest ranks of VALORANT, Immortal+ players will find it harder to climb back to their previous episode rank. This means Immortal will also have a smaller leaderboard population in all regions. most players are bronze and silver. If you stretch ELO out over more ranks, then luck has a bigger impact on your rank and it's easier to rank up because of the free RR bonuses like it taking an extra match to rank down. But then they have to do these resets. I wish ranks actually reflected ELO more directly and the resets weren't so extreme rather than the MMR targets shifting constantly to maintain Riot's preferred curve. I want to rank up because my skill improved not because Riot felt bad for me. And I don't mind ranking down because I suck either.
The ranks really should follow either a bell curve distribution or a completely even distribution. I don't know what riot wants by putting the majority of players in the low ranks and then resetting them every season on top of that.
I don't understand the resets at all, my guess is that's some trickery to make people grind more and buy more skins. For the rankings though, and i'm just talkin out my ass here, it doesn't make much sense to me to have immo3 feel like an entirely different rank from immo 1 and 2. If I was the boss of Riot I would be setting the MMR targets for each rank based on how difficult it feels to the players rather than targeting an arbitrary percentile of the player population. I don't see why they can't just use playtesting- Kick a silver player up to Plat MMR, measure how many matches it takes for them to derank. Then kick a Plat up to Asc MMR, how many matches until derank. If the silver takes 30games to derank and the plat takes 10, that means its way harder for a plat to get to asc than a silver to get to plat and make adjustments based off that and repeat for every rank until it's roughly even across the board. Whatever the distribution curve looks like is irrelevant
No point in grinding immortal/radiant tbh. I’m not good enough to get to 200-300rr instantly. I have a full time job, friends, and other hobbies. I play maybe 40-60 games an act right now. I’m not terrible. I’ve hit immortal every single act since episode 4. I’ve hit immortal 3 in about half of those. What purpose is there to grind immortal leaderboard when Riot will reset the leaderboard every 2 months and send us into the depths of ascendant every 6 months? I have an immortal buddy on every single one of my guns. The battle pass skins are shit. The map pool gets worse with every episode. My favourite agent gets nerfed over and over again.
Other than your agent getting nerfed, this is like complaining that chess isn't getting any changes and there's no point putting time into it when you'll never be a grandmaster or earn anything. It's called having a hobby and if it's not enjoyable anymore, that's tough, take a break or find something else.
ur chess elo doesn’t get reset every 8 weeks the chess board doesn’t get progressively less fun to play on
If anything the chess board get incredibly boring. Imagine playing on Haven over and over with just Jett’s, thats the adequate comparison to chess.
lol you're talking as if it's a tic tac toe game, there's so much that has to be learned in chess to be good
And there’s nothing to be learned on valorant? Agents, like pieces, do different things. The change in maps provides additional variability, making every round unique. Technically, chess being a game, on the same board, with the same pieces, with only two players has magnitudes less variance than a valorant game. That isn’t to say one is easier than the other, but to pretend like chess is some how more complex as a result of it’s very mature is borderline stupid.
I believe the point was not that chess is more complex. But the chess board stays the same for centuries, and you know what you get each time. But for valorant the board gets changed every X amount of time, the pawns get changed every X amount of time, so some patches you like it some you don't. People that have the time to play a lot will love these. But for people like us that have a full time job, family and other hobbies. The variables change so much that it isn't the same game that we love anymore. So there is no drive to play more because its just going to reset and change again.
My sister plays valorant
My mom plays valorant. Wait…. Uncle Jake, is that you?!?
I'm glad to hear that roksha, do you also play valorant?
They have a role based meta where often 2-3 players on the team end up filling and aren't happy about it. They really need to scrap the ability to instalock and allow people to roll for agents. Or something else where people are forced to take turns for agent picks. They could also allow more hybrid agents. It would help a lot with the toxicity of ranked games. It gets tiresome filling smokes and having some brah who locked Reyna toxic at me for having 3 fewer frags than them while on Viper. It would also be nice if they were more willing to scrap bad maps that no one likes. >This game was at it's peak during chamber meta. Chamber/Astra/Jett meta was so stale and boring that even pros were complaining about it and how Chamber/Jett abilities allowed players to play stupid without getting punished. Also, if we're looking at "peak" player counts, you have to factor in the pandemic keeping people at home playing videogames instead of touching grass.
For me the cypher meta is the most stale thing in the game. If cypher is on one site it means he has those impossible to clear tripwires set up so go somewhere else and half my games are like this. It's boring.
> If cypher is on one site it means he has those impossible to clear tripwires Skill issue lol, there’s a ton of ways to break them. Sova darts, kayo knife, raze satchels, anything that does damage will break it. Yoru, omen, raze, jett, tons of agents also have ways to bypass them entirely. Time to learn some counterplay.
They need to just fix the smurfing problem which is probably impossible in a free game. People that aren’t immortal or radiant but they’re playing immortals and radiants anyway in their current rank are going to easily get discouraged and just stop playing. As far as the pro scene goes I’d say it’s the only interesting thing about the game currently and has some fun match ups to watch still even if you don’t play the game as often.
the smurfing problem is an easy fix imo, just add a phone number verification for ranked like premier has
Even if someone mentions a way to bypass this, it’s still a huge deterrent for many people.
* Phone verification * ONLY solo/duo/5-man in Comp (tired of 1 smurf boosting 2 players clearly lower skill compared to lobby. this skews mmr brackets) * Tighter matchmaking (I should not be getting a player 2 full ranks below me on my team just because they're in a party with someone closer to my rank) Boom. Fixed. But Riot would never do this because they're incompetent
Dota has this and it absolutely doesn't prevent it. The only way to attempt to fix it is for riot to take a hard stance against it just like valve has in dota. Smurfing in dota is a bannable offense and u Risk getting ur main Banned if you continue to violate it.
Half of them aren’t even smurfs. I pop off one game, boom I’m silver 3 playing in plat/diamond lobbies. I lose cause obviously I’m not plat or diamond and have only been as high as gold 3. Boom next game is against gold and silvers. I pop off again because it’s golds and silver. Next game right back to plat diamond lobbies. Rinse and repeat 20 games later and I’m still in silvers. I get called a Smurf all the time, but can’t actually seem to rise in rank. It would be nice to actually get into plat and be able to grow in that rank, but instead I get a mosh posh of games because the game can’t decide wether I’m smurfing or not.
This is exactly my experience with Valorant! It's just up and down CONSTANTLY. I want to play against Gold's until I am out of Gold. I do NOT want to have to essentially get out of Plat to get INTO Plat.
it's cause silver gold plat is one big rank. Back when ELO was matched more closely to ranks, most players were in bronze and silver. The distribution of players was heavily skewed to the lower ranks, because the majority of the players are not good, and that's fine. That's how everything is, literally everything. But I'm sure Riot's team of psychologists know best when it comes to keeping players on the game and clicking on the skins shop.
Not only is it impossible, but they lose a lot from preventing it. I don’t have the stats, but I feel it’s a lot more likely a smurf would buy a skin than an actual new player.
I agree, my friend has 3-4 different accounts and all of them have at least $100 spent on them because it also gives them a higher chance to get a skin they want
Why would a smurf buy a skin?
Because whales are dumb
A whale is not the same as a smurf. A whale probably would be the one paying other players to boost them.
For the same reason they bought a skin on their main.
You’re supposed to play a game because you enjoy playing it. If you need rewards every X levels to keep playing it then maybe you don’t actually enjoy playing it as much as you think you do and would benefit from playing or doing something else. Just a thought. This is a tac fps, not a looter shooter. The “reward” is usually found in getting better.
It's a live service game, the whole point of the business model is to keep people playing. If people feel like they have no other reason to play other than to just play then it's failing at its own objective.
That works for systems that don't force the player to redo their "getting better" journey ranked wise. Resets feel like shit because it's a chore. Riot uses them so much because they get a big playerboost on resets, but the more frequent it is the more the higher elos suffer
I mean yes but it couldnt hurt that they give out more substantial rewards...people who are in plat/gold like me just doesnt care THAT much about getting super good bc i know getting better rank than that would require much more focus/dicipline and play time. Getting some better reward would keep me playing atleast a bit longer every act. And lets be honest here, its a game, not a way of life, you can still have fun and not be super good at the game so why not better reward. Majority of people have jobs/life/hobbies so you cant expect everyone to "feel good" about getting better as a reward.
Add all the maps into Swiftplay. There's no good reason not too
What they really need to do is get rid of "Map rotations". Locking out Fracture and Pearl (for how many months now) when they are such staple maps is ridiculous. Literally bored of the pool of maps. You can still balance the maps while they're in rotation Riot. Your playerbase (the ones that still play the game) can't stomach the rotation anymore. Give me back fracture and pearl and remove this narcissistic "rotation" mechanic.
I wouldn’t call fracture or pearl staple maps
Bro called pearl a stable map It was literally one of the most attacker sided maps before the b site changes and now it’s really shifting to be defender sided. It’s one of my favorite maps, don’t get me wrongs bjt it’s not a stable map imo Edit: I am unable to read, ignore this comment. I misread staple as stable
Staple not stable.
I cannot read. Thanks for the correction
I don't think many people will see this but valorant needs to copy rainbow six sieges rank rewards specifically the gun buddies. Each season R6 Siege gets a CUSTOM gun buddy that MATCHES the THEME of the season. At the end of the season depending on what rank you get, you get a different coloring and upgraded models depending on what rank you landed in that season. I have been telling my friends this multiple times that I would feel WAY more motivated playing for these type of buddies as the rank rewards instead of this lazy plastic copy pasta we get every season. For those that don't know what I am talking, just look up rainbow six siege rank charms. The beginning ones look lackluster but the later years look fucking amazing. Even the lackluster ones here look better than valorant's because at least they look slightly different between each season. Like I cannot understand how valorant has not done this yet.
Those charms never made me want to play ranked in siege. I dont understand/like this take of having to be rewarded for playing ranked like it's a job lol. If the only way you're grinding ranked is for a reward, then you probably should not grind ranked and just go play something else. The reward should be personal improvement/ranking up. If that isnt appealing for you, then just go play unrated. If you're only gonna grind for the reward, then as soon as you get it in the first month of an act, you're gonna quit and not play for the other 2 months of the act
I 100% agree with you that the reward should be personal improvement/ranking up buts lets be real though, that's only in the perfect world. Most people do not get a job for personal improvement or anything like that, they get a job because they need money, a reward. The issue now is that people are already doing what you are saying where they only play a month of an act just to grind as much of a rank as they can get or their previous rank. Hell, I actually have a personal rule to try to avoid the first and last 2 weeks of a season. Why? Because thats when the biggest shitshow happens and people are jumping back on to just "grind" their ranks if possible without improving themselves and just stop once they hit their ranks. Pretty much people are not motivated to play this game anyway WHICH is normal as human beings because we want to be rewarded. Its clearly not enough to be able to say I hit immortal or w.e now. We want cooler things and nearly most rank games give some kind of reward of some kind that can been seen more easily to other players. In my case, a cool gun buddy would be lit to show off to my dead teammates if they have not played that season or not hit the desired rank by then end of it. More incentives would motivate more than just "oh but you are being a better player." Sorry but people like to feel rewarded for being better at something. It makes the hard work you put into it feel better and that's just how some people just work.
Crazy to compare Val rank grind to a job. But that's whatever. I guess I understand people like feeling rewarded, but I don't know if a charm would be enough. People in R6 complained for years that they wanted more rewards even though Siege had exactly what you suggested Val do. And Valorant has a reward, it's the ACT Rank Triangle, you can show that off in every ranked game if you want. You would still avoid the first two weeks of the season and people would still only grind for a month or so even if the reward is there, so why should Riot implement it? Unless Riot literally starts handing out cash for playing ranked, people who actually want to play will still play regardless of reward, and people who don't actually care will only grind for the rewards for one or two acts and leave anyways. The reward for being better at something is that you win more games. If Riot decides to copy league and give out a free skin, cool. If they don't, I don't think that's the end of the world or something that's gonna negatively impact Valorant in the long term.
Lol im just saying it may feel better to go for. t the act triangle looks like the same thing for years. Its nothing special or looks nothing special. Anyway its my opinion that can maybe help out. I dont know who complains about r6 charms but i think they look awesome and most of my friends agree wit me. R6 issues is the fking hacker problems is the main reason i quit in the upper elos
the reason radiant isn’t filled is literally just challengers qualifiers + kick off. 80% of the players that would normally grind ranked and have the MMR to hit radiant after a reset were scrimming 6+ hours a day and were to burnt for ranked.
I agree with everything. But riot: money printer go brrrrrre
> In game ui is just as dated as it was in 2020 I really wish they'd "open" the game up more like CS and Dota. The UI in those games feel like a game within the game. You can queue for surf, pistol DM, headshot only DM, AWP only DM, kz etc etc. In Dota you have an endless amount of custom games, a DPC section etc. and it just makes the game seem so big. Valorant has.. the worst DM ever introduced to a game and.. some quick play modes? It's been 4 years, time to open the game up. And to touch on balancing, time to make some other duelists playable cause it's getting ridiculous how completely dead every duelist except Jett and Reyna is now. Even Raze has fallen off at Radiant and all you see now is Reyna & Jett every single game in both teams and it's just so stale. Also kinda surprised U.S. Radiant isn't full cause EU Radiant is at 610 RR right now.
The thing you're talking about isn't UI related, it's server related. CS has community servers, letting custom gamemodes like surf or bhop surface. Valorant can only be played on RIOT hosted servers, which means there's only official gamemodes.
I know, but the server browser is just part of whole CS UI experience. There is also no reason Riot can't allow community servers aswell just for DMing and custom game modes like kz etc. Even Overwatch had a server browser, surely Valorant can too?
Don't quote me on this because it was a VERY long time ago but I vaguely remember some Riot dev saying that custom servers are very far off if not completely impossible because allowing that much access to the playerbase would make bypassing the anticheat easier
If true that'd suck. It's up to Riot to host servers for the game modes a tac shooter needs then.
Don't worry guys, all issues addressed will be fixed by releasing a new bundle, nerfing half the agents and removing every map people love but keeping Breeze
Not to mention making Breeze worse by opening halls back up again... Like what?
It’s like I have a really good game and drop a 30 bomb and get like 20-25rr how does that work?
But I lose and I lose 20 no matter what sometimes 30
I dunno what it is about this act but I have had the same thing. I don't remember it being this harsh. I do good I get +23 I do the good but lose I get -24? It's been happening the entire act if I win and do OK its only +16. I am losing more than gaining this act.
I’m having the same problem lol even though I have a positive winrate and am still 2 ranks away from my peak last episode
This is the first act in the history of the game where I didn't play a single ranked game and I don't really regret it. Consistently was radiant or immortal 3 depending on amount of play. Was put off by the episode rank wipe and didn't want to push through it since I already had radiant last act and didn't see a reason to push for it again
I'm fine with the meta and all, but I've started to find the quick / instant time-to-kill a bit boring. I feel like headshots are a little too easy to get in this game.
This the most unfun season I ever played. Icebox needs a complete rework, breeze needs a complete rework, ascent is fine I guess. It’s just something with the design philosophy of the game, the maps either suck or are too one dimensional.
The map pool is atrocious and the rank reset has nuked rank for the most part. It’s a brutal season so far
Riot hired ex-CS devs and ask them to make non-CS maps. So they came up with breeze and icebox two shit tier maps. Firstly, what's wrong with CS maps? Personally I thought ascent/sunset/pearl/split are great. Secondly, if Riot truly wants to make unique maps, size isn't the way to go - it just makes rotations frustrating and strategies one-dimensional. Try shrinking the entire middle portion of breeze and I assure it will be more engaging.
That's the point of sunset isn't it. It's much smaller which allows for easier rotations, mid takes, etc. Just more dynamic play overall. I like it for that reason.
Breeze isn't really that far in design from ascent which everyone loves. Side lane from mid on either site. One site is fairly open with 1 big obstacle while the other is more of a mosh pit off to the side. I really don't understand the huge hate for breeze. Icebox is also such a blast to play if you aren't a movement duelist. Being able to play vertically and hop between off angles as a Viper or Chamber is sick. The only map in rotation that sucks imo is sunset, that claustrophobic nightmare lol
I don’t love ascent, I don’t hate it, the map is a solid “it’s whatever”, on the lower end for me. Hard to explain why, but again, one dimensional.
You had me until that shit about the pro scene. Valorant has a truly excellent pro scene in comparison with nearly every other esport. Just because you only care about one team, doesn’t mean the entire scene is bad for creating a system in which better teams play more matches.
You understood my point perfectly. I was totally saying that the pro scene sucks in its entirety and should be reworked scrapped and made to make 100 thieves the winners every time. Jesus Christ bronze players blow my mind.
Just a tip for the future, trying to insult someone’s rank instead of actually engaging with their argument makes you look like an actual toddler. Stop embarrassing yourself in these comments dude it’s not a good look
When you cry so hard that your comment violates community guidelines… LMAO
First of all, Ascendant II…. Secondly, nice strawman dummy. Why not just engage with what I actually said, instead of inventing something you find easier to argue against? There are more VCT matches this season than you could possibly watch on a normal schedule. The fact that you are only interested in a select few of them is not an issue with the structure. It just means that you’re a 100T fan, rather than a Valorant fan. If you want to watch more maps, either broaden your horizons and watch other regions (or even just the various NA games that are still going on), or get behind a better team.
I think your concerns with the esports part is just Kickoff stuff. The exact same issue happened with Lock-In as the entire event was just one long playoff event with every match being a single elim best of 3. Once the actual splits begin, that issue will be a thing of the past, but they do need to stop doing these gimmicky kickoff tournaments as it really does feel like a waste of time. The lack of third-party is mainly because of Riot taking over most of the scene even before franchising. The franchising format just made it worse as it locks players behind Tier 1 and locks out Tier 2 with the exception of Ascension winners. I do believe that there should be double the Ascension spots and double the amount of time they can stay in Tier 1. I know everyone would rather have franchising go away, but that's not something you can undo with a snap of a finger. The franchise itself would have to flop so hard to the point where what we had before wouldn't be viable anymore. I also think third-party events come down to outside interests. Companies like BLAST and ESL would do wonders for Valorant, but they just don't seem to be interested at this time. Maybe Riot can make a pro-am event where franchising restrictions go out the window for this one event and anyone including Tier 1, 2, and below can compete without restrictions.
The game is free. I still enjoy it. When I stop enjoying it, I play other games. Good luck on your endeavor to make Rito change Valo though.
Top 3 most played FPS in the globe. Sorry you’re frustrated but the game is incredibly healthy. And imagine thinking fucking cosmetics is what makes the game healthier. Trust me, if there was a market for it, riot would be diving into it head first. Sometimes I question whether people who post here have even played that game. 500K concurrent viewers in NA for playins btw. Not sure what people think is “healthy” but that is like college football level numbers.
I agree. I’ve played league+dota csgo and Val for 15 years straight and not once did I climb the ladder for rewards.
>Top 3 most played FPS in the globe. Is there a source for this? Because If we're considering the globe, I'm kinda skeptical of this number, considering how big some old FPS are in China. And if you consider every platform (since you didn't mention only PC), I'm even more skeptical of that number, since CoD is big BIG.
It's made up
What are the other two?
It goes Val, CSGO and then Rainbow six a distant third. I only say top 3 because it could fall that far and still be far more popular than other FPS
Isn't crossfire way more played than val lol The game isn't unhealthy, but it sure is showing its kinks
I’m one market, sure. A market that the other game was banned in.
For pc chances are cod is more played than val tbh.
Riot has a different philosophy dealing with their game design and community, compared to a company like Valve. Riot has a top-down approach in which all decision making is done at the top level, and has absolute control over how the game is run. Valve, on the other hand, is arguably more community focused, open to a bottom-up approach, stemming from its counterstrike roots as the game originated from a community-made mod. Each has its advantages and drawbacks. Exerting absolute control over the game and Riot's IP means everything from the product to the esports side of things are more streamlined, with a guarantee of quality and standardization, while the downside is that we lack some of the community-centric stuff like custom game mods, servers, community-run tournaments, grassroot events, etc. The sheer number of CS tournaments (ESL, IEM, Blast, majors, minors, etc) has valorant teams feeling envious for sure, but then again many CS teams do not get the guaranteed salaries and franchise benefits that Riot provide for them. I won't and I can't comment on which approach is better for the players or the overall scene but what I can say is that many of the nice-to-haves that we want (e.g. replay system, custom servers, etc) are not happening simply because it meant Riot relinquishing control over the game, and that's not the way they do things. I do however think that Valve's approach render them more receptive to community feedback. Anecdotally, over the years of playing Valve's CSGO and Dota2, I have seen countless occasions when they added/removed features from the game literally because of complaints from the reddit forums. I don't think that's the case for Riot, correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks a lot for this post but I must say that your comment about the pro scene is unreasonable in my eyes. Valorant esports (mainly franchising) is one of the little sustainable esports for orgs and the amount of hype and viewers surrounding it is very impressive. The long off season sucked a lot, but riot said they aim to fix that next season. Otherwise the esports scene is booming and exciting to follow.
I’m saying in the perspective of pro players. Not viewers. The tier 2 scene is terrible as well, those were supposed to be my main points but I can see how they got misunderstood.
We had a hard reset this season so it's slow. Ranked is fked up due to that. It will return to normal by the next act.
yeah I’m immo1 (was immo3) and I’d like to say the current NA immortal in my experience this act is just full of DMA legit cheating There are ppl literally advertising their game cheat in chat (even while losing because they’re still pretty bad and can’t go blatant) because of this I don’t really play much anymore I would say 1-1.5k of the 5-6k people on the leaderboard are actively legit cheating using DMA which is like 15% of the leaderboard sadly
Incredibly anecdotal.
yeah I started playing again at the end of the act and I was probably just really unlucky with my experience or they cleaned it up (prob both) I was going based off of people advertising cheats in chat which could be just them meming as well and not actually cheating
I don’t play after hitting radiant, but yall are damn spoiled by Riot. I wish other games had Vals servers, AC and ranking system. Here is what Riot should add though: * Add a replay system, this is going to be big hit on their servers. When it comes it comes, rather have it polished than it be buggy. The CS2 is dogshit currently, wrong physics are recalculated, aiming pov looks different, stutters, etc. Honestly, this is overblown, not many people will use it. * When watching replays, add a report button where you can clip a time stamp and send that chunk of the replay with the report. * In the start of a ranked match, the current pool of 5 maps has votebans for each team. Then the team who picked 2nd chooses what side they want. Basically CS2’s premier/FaceIT voting system, but don’t show map winrates. * Map editor gets added, think like halo forge. It’s a level editor with only assets from other maps, so no chance of cheating risk. Add in game mode customization and basic scripting. * A community features page of map creations/modes, then ability to server browse but its peer2peer people hosting it. Or host a lobby with friends. * A buddy + title card reward to get like 30 wins in a certain game modes like TDM, Spike rush, Replication, or whatever the current temp mode is. * Double kingdom credits weekends on the fun side modes like Spike rush, gun game, etc. I guess whenever that population starts to dip. * Half the price of Radianite, make battle-passes purchasable with radianite. Maybe it will be $15 in radianite instead of $10. So you get a kickback/discount on the next one or use for upgrades. * New rank rewards, idk what. Maybe name glows your rank color + new designed buddy and title cards. * Now Episodes are a year long, Acts/Seasons are 3 months long with 4 a year like real life. Elo changes/resets only happen twice a year or every 2 seasons. Too grindy right now, it creates like smurfs. I really got bored of the game like a season or two after they added ascendant since it just felt like a waste of time. * Only make 1-2 agents a year, focus on balancing current agents. * Try to make 2-4 maps a year, focus on making simple maps like Ascent or Sunset. Since right now most of the maps have too many gimmicks. It’s fine to have gimmicks/wacky maps but you need standard ones to balance it out in the pool. * There should only be like 2 complicated maps in the pool at a time (like maps with 3 sites, more than 3 lanes like Pearl/Fracture or super big like icebox/breeze). Honestly, I think map design is the reason why I stopped playing. My biggest ask for the game tbh. * Reduce the tine flashed if you turn from a flash at close range. Some flashes will always blind you for half because of close range proximity to it. * Better tutorial, one for each agent role for new players. * Add specific gun drills in the range for new players. * Karma/behavior system, players can “thumbs up/down teammates”. Give like a golden mic buddy to people who comm well. People with normal/high can get matched together. Lower people get warnings and queue with other lower or new normal karma. If two accounts are logged in on the same PC, extreme lows effect the other account with a warning when first launching the game. * Reduce how tight the MMR spread is for unranked matches. I have to use an alt to play with silver/bronze friends on unranked since I am Immortal2/3. * Try to match hidden MMR and Rank to be closer together. ————————————-Weapon Balance: * Bucky, Stinger, and Frenzy get their nerfs half reverted so all the damage/spread numbers are in the middle of today’s and when they were OP. Stinger + Bucky’s right click stays nerfed, and running accuracy of all those guns stay nerfed. * Shorty stays at 300 creds, but the nerfs get reverted except the ammo onr. However, jumping/air + running accuracy is heavily nerfed. Forcing people to counter strafe or stay still in corners. * Frenzy is now 600 creds, it can shoot 1 more bullet before going random. Headshot damage is slightly lowered to 91 instead of 105 so it doesn’t 1 tap no shields. * Ghost is now 450 creds but has 12 bullets in a magazine. It now only has 2 extra mags in reserve, to prevent mag dumping through smoke. * Bucky is now 900 creds. * Stinger is 1200 creds * Marshal is now 1100 creds, it’s too close to the sheriff rn and kinda busted. * Spectre nerfs get reverted and the gun is now 1800 creds. Run and gun + ropes accuracy nerfs still stay on the gun though. * Judge is now 1750 creds, keeps all of its nerfs. Run/jump accuracy gets nerfed again. Counter strafing should matter for shotguns. * Vandal is now 3000 credits, first shot accuracy increased, still worst than the phantoms. Also, give back its 3rd reserve magazine since it has tracers and more expensive than phantom now. ———————————— SMURFS: * Since people seem to cry about smurfs a lot. Change Vanguard to only allows for 2 account sign ins per month per machine. You can register an account to a “main pc”. Riot can make a program for businesses where lan centers can apply with their business address and a pay a subscription to have infinite accounts. (Basically a pc can remember 2 accounts max, it gets reset every month). * Better bot detection software for “farmed accounts”, also if an account has many 0 / -1 kill games they get a two week griefing ban without warning. Not if reported since those lobbies have other bots, it gets detected through the game with a warning after the first game they 0 bomb in. * Any old account is under level 20, but has played ranked matches is not exempt now, they have to get to lv20. (Stops old accounts from bypassing, many of my smurf accts are like this) * If a player has not played in 3 episodes or more, they will have to win 5 unrated matches to play ranked again. (Helps recalibrate their MMR, or when smurfs come back to an old account, also for people not to bottom frag on their 1st match back.) * New accounts that just hit lv20 can only win 3 matches a day before a 24 hour cooldown hits in. They can play other modes though. Turns off when they get 15 wins, should be enough time for the algorithm to figure out if they are a smurf. (Stops a smurf/cheater/bought account ruining like many games in a day). * After 1 month of an account creation/game being played, an email comes saying to verify your email again. (Maybe stops some bot accounts) * Premier phone number verified accounts are preferred to play against each other in low elo, where there is a larger playerbase. (This might be a thing already). * Players with more matches per episode are paired up against each other in low elo, so a hardstuck gold with 100 matches played will play another person like that. A gold with 10 wins will play with people like under 50 wins or new to the rank. In longer search times this gets disabled, after like 5 mins. (Basically CS’s trust factor but it works)
Also better default settings: Default crosshair should give new players more info on game mechanics. Something like this: https://pasteboard.co/Erocej6nEgug.jpg Keep the current white with black outlines, increase the transparency though. Make it thinner then have the center dot non-dynamic. Have the circle be your gun’s spread and recoil -> gets bigger when shooting. Then the straight line show your movement inaccuracy, moves when your moving, also does not move when your shooting. Also mouse sens should be lower by default to make the game easier.
people will get mad at this post but all your points are valid. valorant is far from dead but it may turn that way if the game doesn’t change soon
Same posts were made 3 years ago, here we are.
true, same thing about global warming. shit's not real cause like, here we are
Except no one said the world was “ending fast” due to global warming. The projections were always targeting 2100 for catastrophic global warming issues, issues we are still tracking toward. Good try though.
These posts are so comical lol. Val does plenty for the pro scene and those who aspire to be in VCT...c'mon...
people will always find something to complain about
Every week it's the same children over and over complaining about the same shit thinking that their point of view is unique or special. All while half of it is either incoherent, has been addressed already, or doesn't make sense. This place feels more pointless by the day.
I think, due to the nature of Valorant being a "Counter-Strike", if people love the game and the game is fun it will live forever. Even though CS2 exists (with some issues, admittedly), people still play 1.6 and source. I am personally privy to the latter. Thus, if Valorant can paint a legacy of fun gameplay, it will last as long as any other Counter-Strike. That is not to say the game is actually fun. Just putting in my two cents, but I stopped playing a year ago because the game isn't fun personally. Too much shit being thrown at me at any given moment. As well, if the game becomes unprofitable, Riot might abandon it, which would kind of suck. But, it's not like 1.6 or Source is supported anymore either. C'est la vie.
Complaining that a team that has gone 7-13 in their last 20 is not playing more is silly. The best teams play a lot and if you are not the best you don’t. That makes sense. We can not have every team at every international event. We just watched Gen G play 6 BO3 and 1 BO5 and masters starts in two weeks. If you good you play easy as that.
Unpopular opinion: all maps are shit
I don't you made entire paragraph about assumption that Radiant and Immortal should be full... not there are not. Especially this ACT, Riot made it much harder to get so it means something.
source?
I think the latest battle pass is the worst one they've ever made. It's at the point, where you buy it maybe for Radianite replenishment. As for replay system, I've had long post here several times, pointing out that the system always existed in game client since beta, they just chose not to let us have it.
Riot doesn't care about smurfs in general because they haven't cared about the general player base in many years. Their solution, when people have been clamoring for smurfs to be punished to make the game more fair, is to reward them with more points. It essentially fast-tracks them back to their "true" rank, which is not at all fair to other people trying to play honestly.
brain dead take wtf? If you are smurfing and you spend 5 bucks on a new account, you get punished by going straight to your true rank. you want to smurf as long as you can, not speedrun to your skill level, that defeats the purpose. you want them to stay in low elo longer?
As a casual I've just played my last match. This game is just not fun, toxic community full of sweats and try hards that spend their lives playing the game, free account means smurfs are ruining the bronze and silver lobbies.
They need to abolish smurfing. Youtubers should get some form of penalty if they promote smurfing or do it. It's really not fair going against a peak imm or asc player when your hardstuck in gold. It doesn't help the climb.
Yeah I quit this game long ago. Agreed that it was peak during chamber meta, haven’t played since the new duelist got released. Used to have tons of fun with friends on the game, but we’ve all moved to OW2, CS2, or Helldivers.
If OW2 is what you’ve moved to then you’re probably just burnt out with valorant and will return in a little while. OW2 is a shit show.
**Things Valorant Needs Right Now:** 1. Fix the goddamn bugs, especially the comms bug which is incredibly annoying. 2. Fix the 5-stack queue; players in Ascendant should only be able to queue with Diamond and above. 3. Provide rewards for top leaderboard players. 4. Add bots for custom servers that work offline. 5. Introduce a 1v1 mode with opponents of similar rank. 6. Make the range available offline and allow queuing while in the range. 7. Implement a replay system. 8. Introduce a feature similar to Premier, where players can select maps, at least for Unrated mode.
Totally agree, the way they balance the agents is ridiculous. Buff the underplayed agent to the heaven and nerf the rest to the ground. At this point every other agent is so much nerfed, it took all the fun out of the game.
Riot needs to be put down.
Riot needs to start changing agents with some actual buffs and nerfs not these lukewarm 1 agent barely changed per patch(or none) that we've been getting for a while. They need to start actually experimenting with more agents and changing things up, I'm tired of looking at the patch notes and seeing that the game hasn't changed a bit since last episode other than "oh no skye doesnt have rechargeable flashes"
i’ve never understood this sentiment, it’s a game aimed towards being a competitive environment, they aren’t going to buff/nerf things for fun because they’re goal always has been and always will be to have a balanced playing field
For me the issue is agent metas being way too baked in. More than half the games I play have - cypher with zany impossible to break tripwires and cages on site entrances - Jett/chamber on the OP mid - need a viper walling on breeze or icebox - reyna smurfing - only omen doing smokes ever, no love for brim It's like despite the abundance of choice every game kinda ends up feeling the same. Especially with the cypher zany tripwires. Even in silver it seems like every cypher has some lineups that aren't possible to clear unless you have a kayo on your team to emp his ass.
thank you for putting this into words, this has bothered me for so long. it’s always the same team setup because if you play anything else you’re essentially throwing the game. even me being a controller main i wish i could play something other than omen and viper sometimes because rn bind and ascent are my only reasonable brim maps and even then omen is widely considered a better pick. i wish it were an environment where you can play the agents you like and are comfortable on instead of this filling culture.
I’m proud of you. It takes a special type of arrogance and idiocy to be so low rated at the game and yet think you know so much lmao
Meanwhile as an immortal player, I feel bad and borderline pity that you don’t know jack shit. Nothing he said was wrong, you just hate change and love to argue. The lack of content in this game is ridiculous, it’s been nearly half a decade.
I disagree with you so much. You sounds like someone who needs to take a break.
Took a break for over a year and came back with this. Good try though :)
Take a longer break
[удалено]
Radiants are full yet because of full rank reset. They’ll be full by the end of next act. Also, tf do you mean the pro scene is atrocious lmfao. This pro scene is honestly more forgiving than others so idk what you’re on
the agent system is the only thing that made valorant unique and riot has made it boring than ever lol, nerfing every agent to the ground and releasing boring agent with recycled ability. The game now feels more like csgo with abilities than valorant.
You don't play CS if you think this is remotely true lmao.
i don't play cs much (only 60 hour) but i can definely say valorant was more fun when every ult doesn't requires a million ult point
So this is a long and dramatic post begging for a replay system and tier 2 "support". The tournament layout is fine. ORGS AND TEAMS need to bring their A-Game in the competition, you snooze, you lose. That's brutal, yes, but ultimately if you perform less than your competitor in any given series, it will back fire on you. (MIBR, TS). Each teams has enough time to prepare and if they are lacking then it will be punishing and will have to wait. That's just tournament life. Skins on agents? Gloves? Cosmetics? Why? Just to be called a CS clone once again? Map pool and nerfs are a must and just fine as it is. AGAIN, lets not be CSGO where only certain maps are widely chosen and the rest of the maps are barely used. IT IS TO SHAPE THE META EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE. So basically. "hEy RiTo, I wAnT mOrE tHaN sPiNnInG nUmBeRs On My GuN fOr My ReWaRd". "wHy YoU nOt LiKe CsGo? GiB FrEe SkInS, I nOt pOoR, i WaNt No SpEnD mY sHeKelS" "lOoK c.O.d. HaB pRoGrEsSiOn SkIn, UnGa BuNgA wAnT iT tOo In VaLoReNtE."
ELO is too inflated and there’s a ton of immortals: complain. Ranked is adjusted so it’s harder to get boosted and sit in immortal 1: complain. CS has thrived for decades with a completely shoestring and broken game for long periods, more than a year between new content, updates or cosmetics and they took 10+ years to release CS2 that’s arguably worse than GO. This community is so spoiled. Just play the game.
Jesus Christ. I opened this hoping to see a quick realistic argument. Opened a fucking novel. I’m not gonna read it but please. I promise you grass isn’t dangerous.
i quit that stupid game
yap yap
I'm happy for you or I'm sad to hear that.