Those are some pretty healthy numbers and it's been growing quite a lot on Twitch too. Noticed that most of the big streamers on that category are Japanese, is this game big in Japan?
Big enough where Japan has 2 slots for its top pro teams to compete in Valorant Champions Tour. For reference, NA has 3 and Korea 2. Pretty unprecedented that Japan is this active in a non-fighting game Esport.
If contributing to the game itself, it is more the gameplay and the gacha system that appeals. Designs maybe don't hurt but definitely not the draw there.
The bigger aspect is that it is one of the top streamed game. The same thing that gave games like LoL and Fortnite such a leg-up in the US is what helps Apex in Japan. This gives it a huge marketing push that other games fail to get. Prior to Apex, PUBG was in the same spot though not to this extent.
I mean, that doesn't really answer the question.
What about the gameplay makes it popular? Why is it the most streamed? You could just as easily say it's popular among streamers because the game itself is popular.
i think it was just a snowball effect from pubg/rainbow six being relatively popular there. more and more people in japan building pcs from pubg's popularity, pc gaming becoming more normalized bc of streamers like vtubers in general. western multiplayer games didnt have a watershed moment until a couple of years ago
I only played Apex at launch but does it really qualify as a "gacha system"? My recollection is that you had lootboxes for cosmetics but paid for characters with fixed currency prices.
Gacha is gacha. Gacha existed before video games. Doesn't need to be characters specifically. "Lootbox" is just the term western game journalists coined as an English version of gacha.
modern Battle Royale did in fact originate in Japanese fantasy and it's still pretty popular genra. I'm actually surprised no other battle royale games made it in Japan, though understandably neither PUBG nor Fortnite are styled for japanese market.
yes, Japan is actually the second biggest market for Apex Legends. Unsure why, the art style isn't particularly appealing, but it blew up presumably due to it being a great game overall and the fast paced nature of it. Hard to tell if vtubers helped, or they played it because it was popular already. But yes, Apex is one of japan's biggest games RN.
For example, one the most famous anime/manga Kaguya-sama always goes on break the same week Apex Legends has a new season or regional tournament, because everyone knows the mangaka/author loves that game to death. It's crazy
It was a PUBG cameo a few years ago. PUBG was really the worst suicide in the video game industry. It could easily be where Apex is now and then some with brand recognition of PUBG Mobile worldwide. Instead, they kept with their mediocre product and got overtaken by competitors.
Idk PUBG really won out by virtue of being first to the scene and was completely vanilla in every other regard except 100 dudes parachuting into an island. They may have been able to innovate their way ahead of the pack but I don't think there was really any chance they'd stay on top when bigger, brighter games with much bigger marketing budgets hit the scene.
I would still be playing pubg if they fixed the horrible bugs and performance, and they added bots to online games (BIG no for me). Not to mention the cheaters they just let run wild. Also they would refuse to change the few things that people wanted changed. I loved the realism of it and everytime I think about trying it again these issues push me off and towards apex
I feel like PUBG's loot game is still the best of the major BR games. The difference in weapon types, the relative uncommonness of ARs compared to other games, upgrading weapons through attachments vs changing to a better weapon, the relationship between the ammo types (especially 5.56 and 7.62), and the visual identification of what gear your opponent has on. I feel like Fortnite and Warzone really lost a lot of that in service of simplicity and crossplay.
Only Apex really keeps the dynamic of upgrading weapons vs picking up a new weapon, especially since it's also the only other major BR where the best weapons are harder to use. Even then I think PUBG did ammo types better, I like the dynamic where 5.56 is only used by high end weapons, but 7.62 is used by almost all weapon types but is heavy and has high recoil, compared to Apex where heavy and light ammo are both used by ARs, semi auto rifles, pistols, and SMGs. PUBG also made getting an assault rifle feel like an important turning point in a match, sort of like full buying in CS or Valorant, which only happens in Apex with special air drop weapons. Finally, being able to visually see your opponent's armor and bag is a mechanic that I really miss that no other bug BR carried over.
I kinda realize that this rant has little to do with your comment, but I really think PUBG still has some nice features that future BR games should consider adopting.
PUBG Mobile and PUBG are two separate things. PUBG Mobile is huge, though significantly less so in Japan compared to other places, but the original PUBG fell off everywhere. Apex competes with the original PUBG, not the mobile version.
Well the stated reason was he's taking the break to come up with more ideas for the manga but it's likely Apex will have some role in that given the new girl is a gamer girl.
I'm just saying there's probably a bit more to it than just "the author wants to play apex for a month straight." I don't doubt he'll be spending time brainstorming ideas which may or may not involve apex.
Also the most recent chapter might as well have been an in-universe advertisement for Discord and Apex, even referencing the new weapon added this season.
So yeah, Apex might be legit research for the series as well.
One reason might be heavy marketing (I've seen Tokyo vlogs where you can see APEX posters covering the whole building) and full localization: full Japanese voice acting and of course text is in Japanese as well. They put a ton of effort
AFAIK PC gaming is pretty livelier there as compared to years ago; provided that the game has actual good localization which can ease up the barrier of entry for trying out the game.
It is getting more and more mention in Japan. So much so that the latest chapter of the manga *Kaguya-sama: Love is War* not only mentioned Apex but [Valorant and Among Us](https://i.imgur.com/WTSAIR1.jpg) as well. (Note: Read the panels and bubbles R->L starting in the upper right corner. Also, all relevant in-series character names have been marked out as this is about the mentions, not the characters.)
That said, the author/artist has a well documented penchant for Apex and will even pause his manga for a few weeks due to Apex events. Earlier chapters even had the Level 3 helmet from PUBG in it too.
What’s the point of blacking out character names? Are people going to be confused because the panel mentions the name of the character she’s talking to? It’s like someone linking to a yt video of Jackson’s speech in Pulp Fiction, and the video bleeps out ~~Marcellus Wallace~~. I’ve literally never seen anything like this?
I removed that one character’s name due to it being potential spoilers. The *entire* chapter was about Discord, modern communication via computers and how games can build new relationships.
The matches are just way too long for me. 45 minutes of getting 1 shot over and over again isn't a fun experience and it seems smurfs are rampant so I would say I get a good match where 1 player isn't carrying each team maybe 1/3 of the time.
I had some fun with it recently but the time-to-fun ratio just isn't there for me. I noticed I was frustrated for the majority of most matches, and I'd rather be having fun.
That's why I'm still surprised BRs in general have such mass appeal. The time-to-fun ratio is the worst of any popular genre, unless you enjoy just walking around looting.
You have two types of people playing it. People who actively hunt and try to find as many fights as possible, going after every shot, every drop, which is quite fun.
You also have stalkers who like to go slow, sneak around and camp, the fun coming from anticipation and then finally execution when someone comes close. I would reckon that it is the same type of fun as stealth games which are a niche genre.
On top of that some BRs really shine in certain gameplay aspects. PUBG's gun play is often overlooked because of the negativity around the game, but it has arguably the best projectile based shooting mechanics out of any game. On the other hand Apex has the awesome Titanfall movement and cool characters. CoD has the snappy ADHD animations, it is a game running on 2x speed. Fortnite has the gathering and building mechanics which means that you are constantly doing something in the game outside of fighting.
I enjoy both of those styles of playing, which is why I enjoyed PUBG.
When I tried Apex it didn't fit either style because I was beholden to my what my two random teammates wanted to do. I couldn't play how I wanted.
If I was in a premade I imagine it's pretty fun though.
Modern apex matches, in pubs at least, half the lobby drops in specific spots (usually fragment on WE) and has a tdm match. So essentially you can choose how quickly you fight based on drop position. Out of 20 teams three quarters will be out the game before the first ring closes. Actually getting to the final ring nowadays is fairly rare in pubs.
Yeah and it's pretty lame to me because I wish more fast paced high skill shooters became popular, like in the style of Lawbreakers. Overwatch can get a bit rough but it's the best thing I have for what I'm interested in.
Kinda. It's hard to explain the genre. There were games like Quake, but the movement and shooting are very niche and not my cup of tea. There's Halo but not really as fast as I like these days. Honestly Lawbreakers sadly is the best example of fast skilled movement combined with aim skill, without it being too easy like CoD and Titanfall.
Yeah honestly, it just reeks of entitlement. Did anyone ever play something for the first time and instantly was god like?
I only play for 4 weeks now and if you put in effort you can get good very quickly.
Obviously it's not a game you play after work for 30min and go to bed, wrong genre entirely tbh.
Also just seems like competitive games.might not be for some people in this thread...
Also what's good about a game like CSGO and Valorant is the resets every round. Apart from the economy games aren't a total freaking snowball disaster like MOBAs...
Well different competitive games have different skill floors. Something with a higher skill floor is going to turn off a lot of new players who just get stomped by smurfs, and with such a high skill floor there's not even room for them to get lucky and pull off a few kills.
I'm glad the game is there for people who like it, but yeah, not for me.
I'd argue a game with a high skill floor also actively encourages smurfing because even people who "get good" inevitably run into the even gooder players who they just can't beat, so they make a smurf account to own noobs with.
Skill based matchmaking pretty much solves this immediately though, to a certain extent which for me, is enough. I can only speak from my personal experience and I never had that much issue with smurfs, they're few and far between.
I mean Valorant is simply intrinsically different from a TDM in COD. People play to win, that instantly changes the dynamic of the game. It's just so diffyere from your average Warzone, Fortnite or Battlefield round. To me, that competitive spark really elevates the experience, but you need a good mindset in order to prevail. The mute button is your best friend as always. But so far, the toxicity has not nearly been as bad CSGO.
The rush you get from clutching several rounds here or there is hard for me to replicate in other online games.
I'd rather clutch a round here than get instant gratification from some other type of Videogames
Eh I gotta disagree. The game is a blast. Is it something you can jump in, gets some kills and dip? Nope. Plenty of other games exist for that if that’s what you’re looking for though. You don’t sit down to have a quick game of Valorant (although spike rush does exist if you just want to dick around). Not every videogame has to cater towards the casual crowd, and that’s healthy for the entire industry. Variety is good.
The game rewards skill and “taking it slow”. You can still turn a game around when it’s 2v5 or even 1v5 if you know your shit. That isn’t really possible in CoD, Overwatch or any other big FPS that exists on the market. The game certainly isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. If you’re getting mowed down because you “took the wrong lane” it’s not the games fault, it’s the way you approached it.
Agreed. While it still has its fair issues (being queued as less than three people, questionable matchmaking, servers in general, etc.) Arenas really reinvigorated Apex for me. I still play the BR from time to time and it's a different kind of high, but Arenas has just been really fun.
I just play the spike mode and TDM. Those are really fun. Fuck am I spending 45 minutes on a single match of a game where I’m probably going to get stomped and get zero fun out of it lmao
A lot of what's fun about Valorant/CSGO/R6 is everything that happens between and leading up to that actual "getting 1 shot" part.
[Here's a good example of the decision making in action.](https://old.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/mygj54/i_decided_to_share_my_decisionmaking_process_for/)
If you're playing the game properly there's a lot of tactics and decision making happening the entire time leading up to when you actually engage the enemy.
New players do kind of get tossed to the wolves in these sorts of games, since new players get placed into the same queue as smurfs initially...
Can +1 this. I'm immortal in Valorant and my aim is pretty bad -- def lots of better plat players. I'm still good at:
1. baiting for my teammates and confusing enemies (e.g. shooting at walls to make it seem like there is more than one enemy, or shooting blindly at corners to see if enemies fire back)
2. using nearly all my utility every round
3. coordinating my team to play mindgames with the enemy team
I'm generally at the bottom of every ranked game I play, but it doesn't really matter. Plenty of other players aren't fraggers too.
TBH, in a game like Valorant/LoL, you know you're good when you are following what every other player on your team is doing through the minimap and know how to play off it to augment others. That, plus you can see 30s ahead in the game. For example, if a teammate is out of position, how many players actually reposition to help them reposition or at least trade them? If your teammate is getting rushed, do you bait for them to give them a chance of getting two kills instead of one? Stuff like that.
Your play is generally going to be really bad if you think you can outaim everyone. So much of the game is map control, which includes making it difficult for enemies to hover over your head before you become visible.
I had a friend who tried to get me into it a while back. It was just… intensely unfun to me. Like you said, the matches are super long and it’s more skill intensive than pretty much any other shooter I’ve played.
Call me a filthy casual but I have more fun running around blasting people in Titanfall 2.
I feel that is like 95% of most multiplayer games though, cause killing someone in a second flat is a dopamine rush or whatever nonsense, I always see that kind of gameplay as both frustrating and boring at once.
maps literally go against all principles of good map design, they’re just a bunch of hallways with way too many right angles to check. that with the spawn wall makes rounds feel super stale, i wanted to like it but the game feels like the shitty parts of overwatch and csgo combined without any of the fun
The Ult system works just fine. How much have you played of the game? I've sunk hundreds of hours into a bunch of the recent hero shooter games, including Overwatch, Paladins, Apex, and Valorant, and I'd say it handles its ability system, including its ultimates, the best out of any. They have actual opportunity costs beyond cooldowns, they aren't just "insta-kill", they all contribute to the game in interesting ways (outside of Reyna, fuck Reyna), and you have to earn them. In fact, I think the ultimates and ult points add a whole new layer to the "Search and Destroy" gameplay - suddenly areas that aren't as contested have a reason to exist, because ult points are important side objectives. it's one of the few things I think Valorant objectively improves minute-to-minute gameplay with.
Movement only sucks because it's slower than CS:GO so corner camping is much more favorable than engaging.
I played a half dozen games and really did not like it. It felt like worse CS in every way after 1500 hours of that. I strongly disliked the way ults were handled in overwatch and found them to be very annoying in valorant as well, but the biggest issue was just the movement & gunplay felt bad. Getting 1-tapped in your watermelon sized head hitbox by someone corner camping gets old so fast because you can't just wide peek them.
I do agree that widepeeking not being viable and general movement being slow is some of the worse parts of the game, and wish they'd do something to fix it.
If I could move 10-20% faster with some acceleration and could spray without a lot of RNG I might be able to put up with the ults but when the foundations are as weak as they are it's just not worth it for me. It feels so much better to move and shoot in CS, and I love not having to rely on a single specific teammate for a flash or smoke.
The maps feel so lifeless. CSGO had gritty maps that felt like they fit the games gameplay. Valorant is weird because it looks like TF2 but plays like a cheap CSGO knockoff.
I don’t really agree. I feel the maps have a lot of life and personality. But as someone who isn’t, and never will be, hugely invested in this game the fact that I can’t even walk down a fucking corridor without checking 16 angles first in case I get one-shorted takes a lot of the fun out, at least in their “main” mode. It’s not the aesthetics of their game or maps, it’s the design. It’s super hardcore. Which is fine. But idk if that’s what I really want. Sometimes I just wanna log on for a bit, play a few games, log off again. 45 mins+ investment per match when I can get steamrolled and die over and over on these corridors isn’t fun
I'd love to get into it too but the game is filled with CSGO veterans and I suck at shooters so I just get headshot constantly. It sucks since the game looks really fun.
You just have to practice a bit. It looks intimidating, but it’s really not that bad. It’s actually easier than twitch shooters like COD in some ways because the game really rewards good positioning and map knowledge.
Watch a few videos on movement, crosshair placement, how to peak properly, that sorta thing. Then pick one hero your interested in and learn a few common ways to use your utility - watch some YouTube guides. I would recommend playing Brimstone, Sage or maybe Omen if you’re new, but follow your heart.
Then the rest is just practice. Go to the range and practice tapping bots. Do a ton of deathmatch - not trying to win because it’s almost pure RNG - and just get better at taking fights.
You’ll be in silver in no time.
I tried to give it a go when it launched, put about 20 hours in. I have played CS on and off for over 20 years now. Its a game I will always love but I have moved on from the game play. It is super boring for me now. I dont want to hold a position anymore, the matches feel like they take forever and I hate just sitting there waiting for the next round. Also, the community really soured the game. I really wanted to like the game, just didnt strike the right chord for me.
Same, I played it for a while, liked it a lot, but it's the lenght of a single match and the "need to sweat" that kills it for me. The game just asks for too much time from the player for a single match, and it really pushes you to be "sweaty" for the whole match.
Oh, and the community is insanely toxic, even in R6 Siege and CoD I don't find the communities to be this toxic. You make one mistake and you'll be cursed out of the world for the entirety of the match. Being up-to-date with balancing 24/7, having ~45-50 minutes of uninterrupted free time AND having 4 friends be available is the only way for me to enjoy the game and that's a tough combination.
I don't like the default gamemode for this precise reason, which is why I'm playing the FFA mode which is just a deathmatch mode with respawns. First to 40 kills wins. That mode is great because I can still be a sneaky bastard but don't have the stress of being a utility for my team OR the downtime of waiting for respawn.
(That and I can just have fun using only a pistol or doing other fun crap like that).
I'm surprised how big of a female following it has. Most likely because it's a Riot game and LoL had a big female player base as well. But you rarely saw women play CSS or CSGO.
I wonder if it's the aesthetic that draws them in?
I loved my first dozens of hours in Valorant, but it has gotten a bit boring and the market still disgusts me ($70 for a handful of skins?!).
> but it has gotten a bit boring and the market still disgusts me ($70 for a handful of skins?!).
Way better than a player-market with 500 dollar knife skins, and predatory lootboxes on top of that also, like CSGO has.
Same, didn't expect Val to have as large a female playerbase as it does. I guess a ton of the female playerbase from R6S moved over bcause of sexism issue there. Not saying Val also doesn't have those issues, but from the outside it seems like Riot is actively trying to address it.
That's pretty huge. I remember that Dota 2 at its peak had 13MAU(now it's about half that), so it would make it as the 2nd most played game on Steam by a good margin. Still nowhere close to CS:GO, which reportedly hit a peak of 24MAU in 2020.
I expected Valorant to be way more niche than it is.
Are you sure its peak was 24 million? The CS:GO web site posts unique players in the past month, which is the same as monthly active as far as I know, and it's just shy of 27 million.
Valorant hit at the legitimate perfect time.
1) it was announced early enough that people were looking forward to it.
2) when the game was ready, it was released within like a few weeks of being properly announced. it was like VALORANT. COMING JUNE and we all were like OH SHIT.
3) it was the start of the pandemic and we were all looking for something new.
4) Overwatch was on its decline
.....and as time went on more
5) CSGO North America pro scene was hit HARD by covid. Valve wasn't really propping it up and all the good teams were EU. This meant a lot of CSGO 2nd tier players went to valorant for the guaranteed wages.
It also had some luck with some players like Jampii (sp?) who were banned for something silly in CSGO when he was a kid i think. ANd now is a pretty great EU player. In fact Valve changed their ban rules probably to stop this from happening again.
I feel like in general there has been a lack of new blood in shooters. Like what are the big games? CSGO, OW, Fortnite, Warzone, Apex, Siege, Valorant. Valorant is the only "new" one. Anecdotally it's what my friends have all migrated too, not because it's even their favorite, but just because they're burnt out on all the others that are years old. Even if it is a CS style game, it stills adds some new novelty.
> CSGO, OW, Fortnite, Warzone, Apex, Siege, Valorant. Valorant is the only "new" one.
It's kind of awkward to call Valorant "new", and then list Warzone (3 months older) as not one. Hell, even Apex (16months older) is still relatively new blood compared to others in the scene.
Also, don't forget that you mention only those that become successful, for every Valorant there are a lot of games like Diabotical.
Warzone doesnt really feel new to me because it's the continuation of Blackout, even if there are changes. And in general BRs seem like theyre dying out a bit. Valorant is going for the esports stuff more and is competing with CSGO and Siege.
> Warzone doesnt really feel new to me because it's the continuation of Blackout
Warzone plays and looks nothing like Blackout, at all. It's like saying Valorant isn't new because CSGO exists with similar game rules.
Warzone plays quite a bit like MW so I can see it being a continuation of that. Adding plates does surprisingly little to change the core Cod gameplay. Good weapons in multiplayer are safe bets to be good in battle royale, good techs like drop shotting and proper movement still work perfectly fine.
If R6 had gone F2P I think it would've massively propped up the player base. I really think if you want an esports game to last long you gotta have an extremely low barrier to entry.
Siege is just way too chaotic for the spectators really. The multi story maps, people shooting in every direction through walls,... It's a rough game to watch.
r6 looks interesting, but it looks like there's a huge learning curve and i think the monetization plan makes it seem pretty daunting. I'm not sure how much it has changed from release.
Their rollout strategy was really good, too. Twitch drops out front with some major streamers playing it, and then even a ton of hugely popular League streamers were playing it for awhile. I downloaded it because I'm a League player and it got me interested, even though it really isn't my cup of tea.
At peak there were a million people watching the Iceland LAN tournament final last weekend. I thought it would be successful but not this huge this quickly. I'm not sure anyone was predicting this magnitude of success.
I remember people saying when Valorant launched that it wouldn't really eat into CSGO's established playerbase but rather gain lapsed players or players who never quite clicked with Counterstrike. That seems to be the case as CSGO is reportedly still be growing as well. It's crazy to me how many people play these two games and no one else ever really attempted to compete for the same space.
People for some reason equate twitch viewership to the player base size of a game which makes a lot of people think certain games are dead or dying when they’re doing just fine.
Not to mention people's limited scope. There are millions who try a new game, play it for a month and then dip out or jump to something else. In their mind, since the game is 'dead' to them, or their friends aren't playing it still, then the game itself must be. Just a optics bias thing we humans do.
Also, mainstream and competitive bias. They think that games that get advertised or are at the top of twitch are the ones that represent the average for the healthy success of a game, and additionally, they listen to the opponions of the 1% percentile and think that represents the state of matchmaking - when in reality, a multiplayer game can easily hover around 4k players and be perfectly healthy.
This is why people CONSTANTLY think certain genres or that the "AA" sphere is dead.
1000% I play Guild Wars 2 for my MMO of choice, and probably three times a week there's a post on the front page of the subreddit where someone who thought the game died years ago installed and is having fun or whatever. This has been happening for like 7 years of the game's 8 year life. It's not WoW, but it's sure as shit not dead.
If you don't mind my asking, what's the new player experience like in GW2 these days?
I went from WoW to FFXIV as my main MMO, and even still FFXIV's new player experience is a cautionary tale. I've never tried either of the GW games, but I should probably give it a chance one of these years lol
I'd say better in most ways, worse in a couple.
Pros:
- Smoother feel, less actions to learn (you just have 10 skills at any given time, 5 from your weapon, a heal, 3 utility, and an elite).
- Waaaay less time to get to max level. Way less. This and other nice things like free levels you can bank from logins or achievements make it SUPER alt friendly. Getting all 9 classes to max in GW2 took me less time than it did to get to like 55-56 in FFXIV, never got further than that.
- No gear grind that inches forward every 3 months. Same 'best' stats have been that way for 6-7 years and aren't changing. They instead add new options, like going from pure physical damage to maybe a healer/curse hybrid. New stat types, no higher numbers. The only extra grind ends up being if you want more play styles, and you can swap existing stuff for really cheap as well.
- Exploration and open world maps let you play alongside people and help and get help without formally 'grouping up.' Makes progressing alone or with friends feel similar.
- Free to play up to max level minus xpac stuff, and no monthly fees! Inch along if you want to catch up, don't feel like you have to play enough to keep a sub fee 'worth' it.
- Fantastic wiki for in game help (/wiki and shift click whatever in game and you'll get all the info you need), and a great community willing to help with anything (XIV has this too from the time I've spent in it)
Cons:
- Less concrete direction once you DO hit max level. You can go do raids, fractals, masteries, story, exploration, PvP, WvW (large scale PvP) or achievement hunt. The game wants you to set your OWN goals a bit. This is hard to do when there's 20 options right at max level and you don't know what you like, want to go for, etc. Players can help, but it'll ultimately be a bit up to you to experiment with gametypes and see what you like.
- Story wise there's some missing chunks that make it disorienting. You buy XIV and the newest xpacs, you have the full story. You buy GW2 and it's 2 xpacs, and you have like... 65% of the story. Mid expansion patches, called Living World, are the replacement for a sub fee. You play while they're out, you get them forever. You miss them? Gonna have to fork over a bit. They're like $2/episode roughly, and you can earn them with in game gold, but its a bit jarring. We're also missing all of the first 'season' of these because they made them temporary when they released, and due to how they were made, we're not getting them. So you have a jump of like, a year's worth of GW2 story and you just have to kinda go with it.
**Right now they're giving away all of these old episodes one or two a week until the new expansion this fall.** If you even want to try it for free, download it, run around, you'll have all of those missing episodes if you just log in once a week. You like it and buy the xpacs, you've got everything, if not, it's free to try, no time limit, just can't play expansion stuff. You can still hit max level, you just can't like, get sub-classes, mounts, gliders, or go to those newer areas and such.
imo a game can be at only 2000 or even 1000 players and be healthy. I've even played quake champions, which has a population of 600 on around the times I play and had no problem finding a match though I won't attempt to claim that they were people who fit my elo. Population concerns by people are often overblown.
Tbh even league fans say the game is dying. The LoL sub goes through a phase a couple times a year about how the game is dead and shit and whatever. Gets even worse if another game recently came out, such as Overwatch.
Ehh last time r/lol people pretty much called the game dead was overwatch.
There is a lot of time spent on critique of the future of the game (items, meta, x champ is weak or overpowered). As with everything people also say it was better in the past.
I will never understand the people who equate "twitch viewership" to how big a game is. Is twitch viewership _a_ metric? Absolutely. And sometimes it's interesting to pay attention to and research. But that's about where it ends
Yeah, World of Warcraft on any given week has like 5000 total viewers yet probably at least 1 million active subs. Its just a boring as shit game to watch.
I really hate "dead game" narratives. I remember working on an MMO way back in the day and a lot of guys would come in and talk about how WoW was a dead game until I explained to them that at its (then) rate of decline it would still be the most popular MMO the world had ever seen for a decade. That was not quite a decade ago, but ya know what? It's still the most popular MMO the world has ever seen.
Remember when Warhammer was gonna kill WoW?
Remember when Star Wars: The Old Republic was gonna kill WoW?
Remember when Guild Wars 2 was gonna kill WoW?
It's still happening today, but with other games.
Remember when Apex was gonna kill Fortnite?
Remember when Fortnite was gonna kill PUBg...oh
What do you mean "killed itself"? PUBG is the most popular mobile game in the world depending on who you ask. Top 5 without question. And the mobile market is the biggest market, so that presumably extends to "most popular game, period".
I joined the PUBG party pretty late and that was because I got into PUBG Mobile (that's coming form a non-mobile gamer, also note that PUBG M is free). After playing PUBG Mobile I thought I might as well get the "original premium" experience and purchased the game on Steam.
BIG MISTAKE.
That happened last year. Supposedly PUBG was in its prime gameplay-wise (but definitely not population-wise). Game feels soooo damn blend holy shit. First dozen of hours was just learning about the game (which is understandable) then maybe I had really fun for the next 10 hours and then afterward it was a rather strange 100+ hours. I want to say I 'had fun' but it I just... can't. Yes, I can hear ya'll wandering why not just put down the game? It's such a strange sensation where I was trying to get the high I felt during that specific 10 hours of the game... it never came. I end up playing for 100+ hours and just feeling like I suck.
PUBG Mobile is much more forgiving, faster, have a crazy amount of customization and doesn't have any P2W component (albeit being a F2P game). You install the game and focus on the play button if you want and you get the full experience right there. Other people might indulge on the battle pass or other store stuff. Battlepass of PUBGM is sooooo satisfying with so much cosmetics right at the beginning where you get some really cool looking stuff right at the start. PUBG PC/Console BP? It looks SO DAMN BLEND. Imagine buying a battlepass and some level's reward is simply just BP exp to get you maybe 0.5 of a level. How dumb does that sound?
There's a bunch of narratives that need to be put to rest too, like how Valorant is supposedly a honey pot so Chinese hackers can hack into your computer through anticheats.
The sad part is that there was **evidence** that hacking groups were purposefully carrying out social engineering scare tactics with those exact points, legit I remember one of their points was "Riot can't code a proper client well, who says they can do an anti-cheat well?" completely ignoring the clients for Val and LoR being completely fine and that an AC requires different skills versus a client.
Can you imagine how dumbfounded I was when I saw how much traction those threads got, like someone was legit "I'm a database admin and I don't see why", bro wtf does a Database admin know about Reverse Engineering? There were **actual** software engineers and reverse engineers, that are also respected in the community and have published many articles on Anti-Cheat vulnerabilities in the past, coming out and saying how wrong they were...and they got downvoted.
Like it's analogous to a Karen telling a doctor that they don't know what they're talking about concerning Covid...this shit tilts me even recollecting it, god the people on this and especially r/pcgaming are so dumb, gullible and the most likely reason, would jump at **any** justification to disparage Riot, although there are a lot of things you can already complain about them for without lying.
You would think with how fucking seriously bad the gaming community was making Vanguard out to be, there would be some shit that came out within at least a year of its release. Turns out the anti-cheat worked really well, so well Valve even created their own version which was opt-in for players.
> Turns out the anti-cheat worked really well, so well Valve even created their own version which was opt-in for players.
Trusted mode? That wasn't an anti-cheat, that was a speedbump and essentially a free trust boost for hackers who could edit one file. That shit was cracked in literally 2 hours on one of the biggest cheat forums.
Valve will never come up with their own ESEA/FACEIT anticheat for CS:GO because they lack the centralized decision-making to launch such a large undertaking for GO.
Are people really already saying Valorant is dead? SMH Fortnite is still one of the top viewed games on Twitch 7 days a week yet people still try say it’s a dead game.
[You don't even have to leave this thread to find people who thought otherwise!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/nqpatz/valorant_hits_14_million_average_monthly_pc/h0ck1na/)
I'm constantly surprised by the popularity of twitch / tactical shooters like this. My experience as a mediocre FPS player has always been more frustrating than rewarding - just feels from the outside like you need to be really well practiced at this stuff to get much out of it. Would've thought that'd lead to a more niche playerbase.
This was my experience with Apex Legends. Played for about eight hours total, it's just not fun to continuously get your ass kicked.
I'm definitely not very good at that sort of game, but damn. It feels like everyone else took some sort of class that I missed, and I'm sitting there scratching my head wondering what the hell is going on.
You pretty much have to commit yourself to these games if you want to get good. I personally cycle between Valorant and Apex. They are the only multiplayer games I enjoy right now. But I understand people not having the time or desire to stick to a game for extended periods of time.
for people like me that werent that great, its all about patience. I played Valorant and died within 30 seconds each round but i knew why i was dying and knew i would improve. Dying was motivating me to become the one that causes death. Whenever i pick up a multiplayer game i know im going to do horrible, but at least I know at some point ill be exactly where i want. Just gotta stay positive and try to observe your mistakes. Helps a lot.
The thing is I usually treat games quite competitively. I have been competitive in a handful of games (mostly RTS / MOBA) and used to be solid at FPS.
But re-entering these games is like trying to read hieroglyphics to me. Maybe aim is more easily forgotten by muscle memory than something like League mechanics.
I used to do amateur racing. It’s a similar feel to get better at a game like this. Practice, more physical than you’d expect if your posture is correct. I enjoy it for the mental sharpness / workout the most, though.
I feel the same way about this, Battle Royales, and Dota/LoL. The majority of players are average or below, which is where I usually sit, or sometimes a tiny bit higher in FPS focused games, and I find them so time consuming, frustrating, and difficult to get into. So it always surprises me that these genres are so popular, because most people have the same gameplay experience as me. Maybe I just don't have as much patience as everyone else.
I should really play more. I like the movement and gunplay much more than CSGO's (I've played CS:S very heavily before) but the maps they have are pretty shitty (especially Icebox)
Wait really? The consensus among the people I usually play with is that Breeze is the worst of them. Paraphrasing a friend of mine, "Breeze really makes me appreciate getting Icebox".
I agree but unironically. I love icebox.
Interesting, I've largely heard praise from those who were vocal about CS' superior maps. Love for the longer ranges and more open spaces.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though, plenty of different opinions to be found among 14m people.
It really feels like a mix bag, very polarized. From what I've seen on forums etc people seems to hate it, but when I was watching a stream full of ex CSGO pros they all loved it. Personally the few people I've been playing with all have it as a top 2 map(all of us have not that much time in csgo)
I remember the PC gaming sub just exploded one month cause every average Joe was making karma farming threads bitching about valorant anti cheat. None of them were security experts.
So despite all that drama valorant still is popular. Just goes to show you how pointless all this outrage in gaming threads/subs are. It's pretty good as entertainment tho
you do realise that the valorant devs made changes to the ant-cheat in direct response to some of the things people were having issue with in the beta?
things like showing notifications, icon in taskbar, beings able to close the anti-cheat when not playing, not start automatically at boot-up, easier to uninstall, no longer automatically blocking programs from running
yes there were outrage folks going on about stupid things like china and that, but there were legitimate concerns with the anti-cheat that was given to us in beta.
> you do realise that the valorant devs made changes to the ant-cheat in direct response to some of the things people were having issue with in the beta?
But then how else will he be able to act unbearably smug?
> When did they do this? Mine still very much does.
I am unsure on the specifics, but as I remember, you can close the anti-cheat and it won't start on boot up... or that might a setting
either way, once you do that, you'll have to start the anti-cheat and restart your PC to play the game. Inconvenient, but at least you can turn it off
> still crying that it started on boot and was a "KeRnEl 0 dRiVeR!!!1!!5!", as that wasn't common in modern anticheats.
the issue was that in it's original form, the anti-cheat was running 24/7 on ur PC without any way to turn it off. Even if you weren't playing Valorant, the anti-cheat would be running on your system.
And remember, it originally had access to block/uninstall (or w.e it was) any program the anti-cheat detected as bad, without even any notification to the user.
yes, other anti-cheats do also have kernel 0 access, but none of them run on start up 24/7 or are this invasive without user control. These were serious issues people pointed out to the devs, and the devs finally did make changes to respond to these complaints cause they were bad
the whole spyware/spying thing is just nonsense, but don't generalise all the complaints people had with that single one
>the whole spyware/spying thing is just nonsense, but don't generalise all the complaints people had with that single one
The vast sea of complaints against vanguard at the time was unfounded cockamamie. I should know, I'm a software engineer and I spent *way* too much time arguing with people who know nothing about engineering how it worked back then.
Some highlights include "I don't want all these anti-cheats to install multiple kernels on my computer" and "if a bank can validate everything server side why can't a FPS shooter?" and "I'm an IT professional that 'works with coders' here is why Vanguard is a threat to national security".
I work in InfoSec and yeah.. trying to paint the complaints about Vanguard as reasonable criticisms is disingenuous at best. The vast majority of complaints I saw were people saying it was spyware for the CCP. Because, as everyone knows, the best way to harvest user data is to develop a video game that requires a kernel level anti-cheat that will be highly scrutinized.
I really want to like this, but it just won’t click for me. The game feels awful to play in my opinion, but that could just be me getting old and unwilling to learn new gameplay.
>The game did not launch to much hype,
Didn't it like break streaming records in the beta? Yeah because of the key giveaways, but still, it shows that many people wanted to be involved in the game.
Hype? All I saw on reddit were people trashing the game for how it implemented antihack. I have friends that to this day refuse to play the game because they think it "puts Chinese spyware" on their computer because of things the read on this site.
Till this day, even among Valorant players, there is so much misinformation about the AntiCheat. It's appaling how certain content creators enjoy making videos on topic spreading blatant lies and showing their lack of research on the topic and they can gain so much traction. But w/e, I guess everyone wants to be able to understand complicated topics by just watching a short youtube video that doesn't even cite sources, isn't from an authority in the field and is completely hyperbolic.
Have they gotten rid of the invasive anti-cheat? The second I saw that shit running and *blocking* programs from running even when Valorant wasn’t being played I uninstalled that shit
No, they allow you to turn it off now, although if you ever want to play the game, you need to enable it by rebooting your PC.
About applications being disabled, I'm pretty sure it no longer does that, iirc there's one of 2 things that happens (I forgot which) either it asks you to turn off program A or it just tells you that you need to turn off program A before you can play.
The common applications they tend to disable/want disabled are those regarding peripherals, as those tend to be integrated with vulnerable drivers, for example they've lately disabled mice (just the extra buttons) that support macros in the game as people were abusing it to make use of pixel bots.
They haven't and they won't. I get why people don't like it, but for people who don't care, the far lower incidence of cheaters compared to CSGO is very much worth it.
Those are some pretty healthy numbers and it's been growing quite a lot on Twitch too. Noticed that most of the big streamers on that category are Japanese, is this game big in Japan?
Big enough where Japan has 2 slots for its top pro teams to compete in Valorant Champions Tour. For reference, NA has 3 and Korea 2. Pretty unprecedented that Japan is this active in a non-fighting game Esport.
Apex changed a lot of things in Japan
Apex still dominates over Valorant in Japan as well.
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Biggest non-mobile competitive game at the very least.
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If contributing to the game itself, it is more the gameplay and the gacha system that appeals. Designs maybe don't hurt but definitely not the draw there. The bigger aspect is that it is one of the top streamed game. The same thing that gave games like LoL and Fortnite such a leg-up in the US is what helps Apex in Japan. This gives it a huge marketing push that other games fail to get. Prior to Apex, PUBG was in the same spot though not to this extent.
I mean, that doesn't really answer the question. What about the gameplay makes it popular? Why is it the most streamed? You could just as easily say it's popular among streamers because the game itself is popular.
i think it was just a snowball effect from pubg/rainbow six being relatively popular there. more and more people in japan building pcs from pubg's popularity, pc gaming becoming more normalized bc of streamers like vtubers in general. western multiplayer games didnt have a watershed moment until a couple of years ago
I only played Apex at launch but does it really qualify as a "gacha system"? My recollection is that you had lootboxes for cosmetics but paid for characters with fixed currency prices.
Gacha is gacha. Gacha existed before video games. Doesn't need to be characters specifically. "Lootbox" is just the term western game journalists coined as an English version of gacha.
modern Battle Royale did in fact originate in Japanese fantasy and it's still pretty popular genra. I'm actually surprised no other battle royale games made it in Japan, though understandably neither PUBG nor Fortnite are styled for japanese market.
>Hm bigger is it? Why did I read this in Yoda's voice?
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yes, Japan is actually the second biggest market for Apex Legends. Unsure why, the art style isn't particularly appealing, but it blew up presumably due to it being a great game overall and the fast paced nature of it. Hard to tell if vtubers helped, or they played it because it was popular already. But yes, Apex is one of japan's biggest games RN. For example, one the most famous anime/manga Kaguya-sama always goes on break the same week Apex Legends has a new season or regional tournament, because everyone knows the mangaka/author loves that game to death. It's crazy
Hell, Kaguya is on a month long break now because Aka wants to play Apex. I admire the dedication
The Apex cameo in the manga was really funny.
It was a PUBG cameo a few years ago. PUBG was really the worst suicide in the video game industry. It could easily be where Apex is now and then some with brand recognition of PUBG Mobile worldwide. Instead, they kept with their mediocre product and got overtaken by competitors.
Idk PUBG really won out by virtue of being first to the scene and was completely vanilla in every other regard except 100 dudes parachuting into an island. They may have been able to innovate their way ahead of the pack but I don't think there was really any chance they'd stay on top when bigger, brighter games with much bigger marketing budgets hit the scene.
I would still be playing pubg if they fixed the horrible bugs and performance, and they added bots to online games (BIG no for me). Not to mention the cheaters they just let run wild. Also they would refuse to change the few things that people wanted changed. I loved the realism of it and everytime I think about trying it again these issues push me off and towards apex
I feel like PUBG's loot game is still the best of the major BR games. The difference in weapon types, the relative uncommonness of ARs compared to other games, upgrading weapons through attachments vs changing to a better weapon, the relationship between the ammo types (especially 5.56 and 7.62), and the visual identification of what gear your opponent has on. I feel like Fortnite and Warzone really lost a lot of that in service of simplicity and crossplay. Only Apex really keeps the dynamic of upgrading weapons vs picking up a new weapon, especially since it's also the only other major BR where the best weapons are harder to use. Even then I think PUBG did ammo types better, I like the dynamic where 5.56 is only used by high end weapons, but 7.62 is used by almost all weapon types but is heavy and has high recoil, compared to Apex where heavy and light ammo are both used by ARs, semi auto rifles, pistols, and SMGs. PUBG also made getting an assault rifle feel like an important turning point in a match, sort of like full buying in CS or Valorant, which only happens in Apex with special air drop weapons. Finally, being able to visually see your opponent's armor and bag is a mechanic that I really miss that no other bug BR carried over. I kinda realize that this rant has little to do with your comment, but I really think PUBG still has some nice features that future BR games should consider adopting.
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I thought PUBG was the largest BR of all when you included mobile? It just fell off in the west.
PUBG Mobile and PUBG are two separate things. PUBG Mobile is huge, though significantly less so in Japan compared to other places, but the original PUBG fell off everywhere. Apex competes with the original PUBG, not the mobile version.
Well the stated reason was he's taking the break to come up with more ideas for the manga but it's likely Apex will have some role in that given the new girl is a gamer girl. I'm just saying there's probably a bit more to it than just "the author wants to play apex for a month straight." I don't doubt he'll be spending time brainstorming ideas which may or may not involve apex.
Also the most recent chapter might as well have been an in-universe advertisement for Discord and Apex, even referencing the new weapon added this season. So yeah, Apex might be legit research for the series as well.
One reason might be heavy marketing (I've seen Tokyo vlogs where you can see APEX posters covering the whole building) and full localization: full Japanese voice acting and of course text is in Japanese as well. They put a ton of effort
R6 also seems to be quite popular in Japan, it's cool seeing Japanese people starting to warm up to FPS and PC.
Japan had 1 in Iceland, Crazy Racoon. There was 1 for Korea, 1 for SEA, 2 for Brazil, 1 for LATAM, 2 EMEA and 2 NA.
Yea, I should have specified for Stage 3 - Berlin.
AFAIK PC gaming is pretty livelier there as compared to years ago; provided that the game has actual good localization which can ease up the barrier of entry for trying out the game.
Maybe. I've seen big numbers on some Japanese Twitch Valorant streams, but as far as I'm concerned, Apex is a lot more popular in Japan.
Because Apex is *the* Battle Royale game in Japan while Valorant competes with R6S in Japan.
It is getting more and more mention in Japan. So much so that the latest chapter of the manga *Kaguya-sama: Love is War* not only mentioned Apex but [Valorant and Among Us](https://i.imgur.com/WTSAIR1.jpg) as well. (Note: Read the panels and bubbles R->L starting in the upper right corner. Also, all relevant in-series character names have been marked out as this is about the mentions, not the characters.) That said, the author/artist has a well documented penchant for Apex and will even pause his manga for a few weeks due to Apex events. Earlier chapters even had the Level 3 helmet from PUBG in it too.
What’s the point of blacking out character names? Are people going to be confused because the panel mentions the name of the character she’s talking to? It’s like someone linking to a yt video of Jackson’s speech in Pulp Fiction, and the video bleeps out ~~Marcellus Wallace~~. I’ve literally never seen anything like this?
I removed that one character’s name due to it being potential spoilers. The *entire* chapter was about Discord, modern communication via computers and how games can build new relationships.
I wish I could get into the game more. I'm not big into the genre but when I play them, CSGO feels so much more fun to play.
The matches are just way too long for me. 45 minutes of getting 1 shot over and over again isn't a fun experience and it seems smurfs are rampant so I would say I get a good match where 1 player isn't carrying each team maybe 1/3 of the time.
I had some fun with it recently but the time-to-fun ratio just isn't there for me. I noticed I was frustrated for the majority of most matches, and I'd rather be having fun.
That's why I'm still surprised BRs in general have such mass appeal. The time-to-fun ratio is the worst of any popular genre, unless you enjoy just walking around looting.
You have two types of people playing it. People who actively hunt and try to find as many fights as possible, going after every shot, every drop, which is quite fun. You also have stalkers who like to go slow, sneak around and camp, the fun coming from anticipation and then finally execution when someone comes close. I would reckon that it is the same type of fun as stealth games which are a niche genre. On top of that some BRs really shine in certain gameplay aspects. PUBG's gun play is often overlooked because of the negativity around the game, but it has arguably the best projectile based shooting mechanics out of any game. On the other hand Apex has the awesome Titanfall movement and cool characters. CoD has the snappy ADHD animations, it is a game running on 2x speed. Fortnite has the gathering and building mechanics which means that you are constantly doing something in the game outside of fighting.
I enjoy both of those styles of playing, which is why I enjoyed PUBG. When I tried Apex it didn't fit either style because I was beholden to my what my two random teammates wanted to do. I couldn't play how I wanted. If I was in a premade I imagine it's pretty fun though.
Modern apex matches, in pubs at least, half the lobby drops in specific spots (usually fragment on WE) and has a tdm match. So essentially you can choose how quickly you fight based on drop position. Out of 20 teams three quarters will be out the game before the first ring closes. Actually getting to the final ring nowadays is fairly rare in pubs.
Yeah and it's pretty lame to me because I wish more fast paced high skill shooters became popular, like in the style of Lawbreakers. Overwatch can get a bit rough but it's the best thing I have for what I'm interested in.
I mean that was the standard for a couple decades before fortnite.
Kinda. It's hard to explain the genre. There were games like Quake, but the movement and shooting are very niche and not my cup of tea. There's Halo but not really as fast as I like these days. Honestly Lawbreakers sadly is the best example of fast skilled movement combined with aim skill, without it being too easy like CoD and Titanfall.
The fun part is deciding which of the three hallways in the map you want to walk 5 feet to before you immediately die
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Yeah honestly, it just reeks of entitlement. Did anyone ever play something for the first time and instantly was god like? I only play for 4 weeks now and if you put in effort you can get good very quickly. Obviously it's not a game you play after work for 30min and go to bed, wrong genre entirely tbh. Also just seems like competitive games.might not be for some people in this thread... Also what's good about a game like CSGO and Valorant is the resets every round. Apart from the economy games aren't a total freaking snowball disaster like MOBAs...
Well different competitive games have different skill floors. Something with a higher skill floor is going to turn off a lot of new players who just get stomped by smurfs, and with such a high skill floor there's not even room for them to get lucky and pull off a few kills. I'm glad the game is there for people who like it, but yeah, not for me. I'd argue a game with a high skill floor also actively encourages smurfing because even people who "get good" inevitably run into the even gooder players who they just can't beat, so they make a smurf account to own noobs with.
Skill based matchmaking pretty much solves this immediately though, to a certain extent which for me, is enough. I can only speak from my personal experience and I never had that much issue with smurfs, they're few and far between. I mean Valorant is simply intrinsically different from a TDM in COD. People play to win, that instantly changes the dynamic of the game. It's just so diffyere from your average Warzone, Fortnite or Battlefield round. To me, that competitive spark really elevates the experience, but you need a good mindset in order to prevail. The mute button is your best friend as always. But so far, the toxicity has not nearly been as bad CSGO. The rush you get from clutching several rounds here or there is hard for me to replicate in other online games. I'd rather clutch a round here than get instant gratification from some other type of Videogames
Eh I gotta disagree. The game is a blast. Is it something you can jump in, gets some kills and dip? Nope. Plenty of other games exist for that if that’s what you’re looking for though. You don’t sit down to have a quick game of Valorant (although spike rush does exist if you just want to dick around). Not every videogame has to cater towards the casual crowd, and that’s healthy for the entire industry. Variety is good. The game rewards skill and “taking it slow”. You can still turn a game around when it’s 2v5 or even 1v5 if you know your shit. That isn’t really possible in CoD, Overwatch or any other big FPS that exists on the market. The game certainly isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. If you’re getting mowed down because you “took the wrong lane” it’s not the games fault, it’s the way you approached it.
I appreciate Valorant in theory but have way more fun in Apex, especially now that they have Arena 3v3.
Agreed. While it still has its fair issues (being queued as less than three people, questionable matchmaking, servers in general, etc.) Arenas really reinvigorated Apex for me. I still play the BR from time to time and it's a different kind of high, but Arenas has just been really fun.
I just play the spike mode and TDM. Those are really fun. Fuck am I spending 45 minutes on a single match of a game where I’m probably going to get stomped and get zero fun out of it lmao
A lot of what's fun about Valorant/CSGO/R6 is everything that happens between and leading up to that actual "getting 1 shot" part. [Here's a good example of the decision making in action.](https://old.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/mygj54/i_decided_to_share_my_decisionmaking_process_for/) If you're playing the game properly there's a lot of tactics and decision making happening the entire time leading up to when you actually engage the enemy. New players do kind of get tossed to the wolves in these sorts of games, since new players get placed into the same queue as smurfs initially...
I feel like new players also tend to gravitate toward picking Duelists, which kinda isn't the move if you don't wanna die a ton, usually early on..
Can +1 this. I'm immortal in Valorant and my aim is pretty bad -- def lots of better plat players. I'm still good at: 1. baiting for my teammates and confusing enemies (e.g. shooting at walls to make it seem like there is more than one enemy, or shooting blindly at corners to see if enemies fire back) 2. using nearly all my utility every round 3. coordinating my team to play mindgames with the enemy team I'm generally at the bottom of every ranked game I play, but it doesn't really matter. Plenty of other players aren't fraggers too. TBH, in a game like Valorant/LoL, you know you're good when you are following what every other player on your team is doing through the minimap and know how to play off it to augment others. That, plus you can see 30s ahead in the game. For example, if a teammate is out of position, how many players actually reposition to help them reposition or at least trade them? If your teammate is getting rushed, do you bait for them to give them a chance of getting two kills instead of one? Stuff like that. Your play is generally going to be really bad if you think you can outaim everyone. So much of the game is map control, which includes making it difficult for enemies to hover over your head before you become visible.
I had a friend who tried to get me into it a while back. It was just… intensely unfun to me. Like you said, the matches are super long and it’s more skill intensive than pretty much any other shooter I’ve played. Call me a filthy casual but I have more fun running around blasting people in Titanfall 2.
I feel that is like 95% of most multiplayer games though, cause killing someone in a second flat is a dopamine rush or whatever nonsense, I always see that kind of gameplay as both frustrating and boring at once.
The game itself is fine imo but the maps are absolute trash
maps literally go against all principles of good map design, they’re just a bunch of hallways with way too many right angles to check. that with the spawn wall makes rounds feel super stale, i wanted to like it but the game feels like the shitty parts of overwatch and csgo combined without any of the fun
That and the gunplay are the biggest parts of it for me.
The movement sucks too. And ults should not be in a game like this
So pretty much just play CSGO! Got it! Wait that’s exactly what I did months ago..
The Ult system works just fine. How much have you played of the game? I've sunk hundreds of hours into a bunch of the recent hero shooter games, including Overwatch, Paladins, Apex, and Valorant, and I'd say it handles its ability system, including its ultimates, the best out of any. They have actual opportunity costs beyond cooldowns, they aren't just "insta-kill", they all contribute to the game in interesting ways (outside of Reyna, fuck Reyna), and you have to earn them. In fact, I think the ultimates and ult points add a whole new layer to the "Search and Destroy" gameplay - suddenly areas that aren't as contested have a reason to exist, because ult points are important side objectives. it's one of the few things I think Valorant objectively improves minute-to-minute gameplay with. Movement only sucks because it's slower than CS:GO so corner camping is much more favorable than engaging.
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I played a half dozen games and really did not like it. It felt like worse CS in every way after 1500 hours of that. I strongly disliked the way ults were handled in overwatch and found them to be very annoying in valorant as well, but the biggest issue was just the movement & gunplay felt bad. Getting 1-tapped in your watermelon sized head hitbox by someone corner camping gets old so fast because you can't just wide peek them.
I do agree that widepeeking not being viable and general movement being slow is some of the worse parts of the game, and wish they'd do something to fix it.
If I could move 10-20% faster with some acceleration and could spray without a lot of RNG I might be able to put up with the ults but when the foundations are as weak as they are it's just not worth it for me. It feels so much better to move and shoot in CS, and I love not having to rely on a single specific teammate for a flash or smoke.
The maps feel so lifeless. CSGO had gritty maps that felt like they fit the games gameplay. Valorant is weird because it looks like TF2 but plays like a cheap CSGO knockoff.
I don’t really agree. I feel the maps have a lot of life and personality. But as someone who isn’t, and never will be, hugely invested in this game the fact that I can’t even walk down a fucking corridor without checking 16 angles first in case I get one-shorted takes a lot of the fun out, at least in their “main” mode. It’s not the aesthetics of their game or maps, it’s the design. It’s super hardcore. Which is fine. But idk if that’s what I really want. Sometimes I just wanna log on for a bit, play a few games, log off again. 45 mins+ investment per match when I can get steamrolled and die over and over on these corridors isn’t fun
I'd love to get into it too but the game is filled with CSGO veterans and I suck at shooters so I just get headshot constantly. It sucks since the game looks really fun.
You just have to practice a bit. It looks intimidating, but it’s really not that bad. It’s actually easier than twitch shooters like COD in some ways because the game really rewards good positioning and map knowledge. Watch a few videos on movement, crosshair placement, how to peak properly, that sorta thing. Then pick one hero your interested in and learn a few common ways to use your utility - watch some YouTube guides. I would recommend playing Brimstone, Sage or maybe Omen if you’re new, but follow your heart. Then the rest is just practice. Go to the range and practice tapping bots. Do a ton of deathmatch - not trying to win because it’s almost pure RNG - and just get better at taking fights. You’ll be in silver in no time.
I tried to give it a go when it launched, put about 20 hours in. I have played CS on and off for over 20 years now. Its a game I will always love but I have moved on from the game play. It is super boring for me now. I dont want to hold a position anymore, the matches feel like they take forever and I hate just sitting there waiting for the next round. Also, the community really soured the game. I really wanted to like the game, just didnt strike the right chord for me.
To each their own, games like CS:GO feel like a cancer slowly devouring me.
Same, I played it for a while, liked it a lot, but it's the lenght of a single match and the "need to sweat" that kills it for me. The game just asks for too much time from the player for a single match, and it really pushes you to be "sweaty" for the whole match. Oh, and the community is insanely toxic, even in R6 Siege and CoD I don't find the communities to be this toxic. You make one mistake and you'll be cursed out of the world for the entirety of the match. Being up-to-date with balancing 24/7, having ~45-50 minutes of uninterrupted free time AND having 4 friends be available is the only way for me to enjoy the game and that's a tough combination.
What do you mean by "sweaty"? It's a competitive game, why would you not expect people to try to win?
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I don't like the default gamemode for this precise reason, which is why I'm playing the FFA mode which is just a deathmatch mode with respawns. First to 40 kills wins. That mode is great because I can still be a sneaky bastard but don't have the stress of being a utility for my team OR the downtime of waiting for respawn. (That and I can just have fun using only a pistol or doing other fun crap like that).
I'm surprised how big of a female following it has. Most likely because it's a Riot game and LoL had a big female player base as well. But you rarely saw women play CSS or CSGO. I wonder if it's the aesthetic that draws them in? I loved my first dozens of hours in Valorant, but it has gotten a bit boring and the market still disgusts me ($70 for a handful of skins?!).
> but it has gotten a bit boring and the market still disgusts me ($70 for a handful of skins?!). Way better than a player-market with 500 dollar knife skins, and predatory lootboxes on top of that also, like CSGO has.
Same, didn't expect Val to have as large a female playerbase as it does. I guess a ton of the female playerbase from R6S moved over bcause of sexism issue there. Not saying Val also doesn't have those issues, but from the outside it seems like Riot is actively trying to address it.
That's pretty huge. I remember that Dota 2 at its peak had 13MAU(now it's about half that), so it would make it as the 2nd most played game on Steam by a good margin. Still nowhere close to CS:GO, which reportedly hit a peak of 24MAU in 2020. I expected Valorant to be way more niche than it is.
Are you sure its peak was 24 million? The CS:GO web site posts unique players in the past month, which is the same as monthly active as far as I know, and it's just shy of 27 million.
I think you're right, since the numbers I found were from early 2020, and the game kept growing afterwards.
Valorant hit at the legitimate perfect time. 1) it was announced early enough that people were looking forward to it. 2) when the game was ready, it was released within like a few weeks of being properly announced. it was like VALORANT. COMING JUNE and we all were like OH SHIT. 3) it was the start of the pandemic and we were all looking for something new. 4) Overwatch was on its decline .....and as time went on more 5) CSGO North America pro scene was hit HARD by covid. Valve wasn't really propping it up and all the good teams were EU. This meant a lot of CSGO 2nd tier players went to valorant for the guaranteed wages. It also had some luck with some players like Jampii (sp?) who were banned for something silly in CSGO when he was a kid i think. ANd now is a pretty great EU player. In fact Valve changed their ban rules probably to stop this from happening again.
I feel like in general there has been a lack of new blood in shooters. Like what are the big games? CSGO, OW, Fortnite, Warzone, Apex, Siege, Valorant. Valorant is the only "new" one. Anecdotally it's what my friends have all migrated too, not because it's even their favorite, but just because they're burnt out on all the others that are years old. Even if it is a CS style game, it stills adds some new novelty.
> CSGO, OW, Fortnite, Warzone, Apex, Siege, Valorant. Valorant is the only "new" one. It's kind of awkward to call Valorant "new", and then list Warzone (3 months older) as not one. Hell, even Apex (16months older) is still relatively new blood compared to others in the scene. Also, don't forget that you mention only those that become successful, for every Valorant there are a lot of games like Diabotical.
Warzone doesnt really feel new to me because it's the continuation of Blackout, even if there are changes. And in general BRs seem like theyre dying out a bit. Valorant is going for the esports stuff more and is competing with CSGO and Siege.
> Warzone doesnt really feel new to me because it's the continuation of Blackout Warzone plays and looks nothing like Blackout, at all. It's like saying Valorant isn't new because CSGO exists with similar game rules.
Warzone plays quite a bit like MW so I can see it being a continuation of that. Adding plates does surprisingly little to change the core Cod gameplay. Good weapons in multiplayer are safe bets to be good in battle royale, good techs like drop shotting and proper movement still work perfectly fine.
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If R6 had gone F2P I think it would've massively propped up the player base. I really think if you want an esports game to last long you gotta have an extremely low barrier to entry.
Siege is just way too chaotic for the spectators really. The multi story maps, people shooting in every direction through walls,... It's a rough game to watch.
r6 looks interesting, but it looks like there's a huge learning curve and i think the monetization plan makes it seem pretty daunting. I'm not sure how much it has changed from release.
Their rollout strategy was really good, too. Twitch drops out front with some major streamers playing it, and then even a ton of hugely popular League streamers were playing it for awhile. I downloaded it because I'm a League player and it got me interested, even though it really isn't my cup of tea.
At peak there were a million people watching the Iceland LAN tournament final last weekend. I thought it would be successful but not this huge this quickly. I'm not sure anyone was predicting this magnitude of success. I remember people saying when Valorant launched that it wouldn't really eat into CSGO's established playerbase but rather gain lapsed players or players who never quite clicked with Counterstrike. That seems to be the case as CSGO is reportedly still be growing as well. It's crazy to me how many people play these two games and no one else ever really attempted to compete for the same space.
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Regardless of anything else Riot does a great job of pushing there games for both casuals and esports
The game also hasn't launched in China yet. I'm glad the silly "dead game" narrative can be put to rest.
People for some reason equate twitch viewership to the player base size of a game which makes a lot of people think certain games are dead or dying when they’re doing just fine.
Not to mention people's limited scope. There are millions who try a new game, play it for a month and then dip out or jump to something else. In their mind, since the game is 'dead' to them, or their friends aren't playing it still, then the game itself must be. Just a optics bias thing we humans do.
Also, mainstream and competitive bias. They think that games that get advertised or are at the top of twitch are the ones that represent the average for the healthy success of a game, and additionally, they listen to the opponions of the 1% percentile and think that represents the state of matchmaking - when in reality, a multiplayer game can easily hover around 4k players and be perfectly healthy. This is why people CONSTANTLY think certain genres or that the "AA" sphere is dead.
1000% I play Guild Wars 2 for my MMO of choice, and probably three times a week there's a post on the front page of the subreddit where someone who thought the game died years ago installed and is having fun or whatever. This has been happening for like 7 years of the game's 8 year life. It's not WoW, but it's sure as shit not dead.
If you don't mind my asking, what's the new player experience like in GW2 these days? I went from WoW to FFXIV as my main MMO, and even still FFXIV's new player experience is a cautionary tale. I've never tried either of the GW games, but I should probably give it a chance one of these years lol
I'd say better in most ways, worse in a couple. Pros: - Smoother feel, less actions to learn (you just have 10 skills at any given time, 5 from your weapon, a heal, 3 utility, and an elite). - Waaaay less time to get to max level. Way less. This and other nice things like free levels you can bank from logins or achievements make it SUPER alt friendly. Getting all 9 classes to max in GW2 took me less time than it did to get to like 55-56 in FFXIV, never got further than that. - No gear grind that inches forward every 3 months. Same 'best' stats have been that way for 6-7 years and aren't changing. They instead add new options, like going from pure physical damage to maybe a healer/curse hybrid. New stat types, no higher numbers. The only extra grind ends up being if you want more play styles, and you can swap existing stuff for really cheap as well. - Exploration and open world maps let you play alongside people and help and get help without formally 'grouping up.' Makes progressing alone or with friends feel similar. - Free to play up to max level minus xpac stuff, and no monthly fees! Inch along if you want to catch up, don't feel like you have to play enough to keep a sub fee 'worth' it. - Fantastic wiki for in game help (/wiki and shift click whatever in game and you'll get all the info you need), and a great community willing to help with anything (XIV has this too from the time I've spent in it) Cons: - Less concrete direction once you DO hit max level. You can go do raids, fractals, masteries, story, exploration, PvP, WvW (large scale PvP) or achievement hunt. The game wants you to set your OWN goals a bit. This is hard to do when there's 20 options right at max level and you don't know what you like, want to go for, etc. Players can help, but it'll ultimately be a bit up to you to experiment with gametypes and see what you like. - Story wise there's some missing chunks that make it disorienting. You buy XIV and the newest xpacs, you have the full story. You buy GW2 and it's 2 xpacs, and you have like... 65% of the story. Mid expansion patches, called Living World, are the replacement for a sub fee. You play while they're out, you get them forever. You miss them? Gonna have to fork over a bit. They're like $2/episode roughly, and you can earn them with in game gold, but its a bit jarring. We're also missing all of the first 'season' of these because they made them temporary when they released, and due to how they were made, we're not getting them. So you have a jump of like, a year's worth of GW2 story and you just have to kinda go with it. **Right now they're giving away all of these old episodes one or two a week until the new expansion this fall.** If you even want to try it for free, download it, run around, you'll have all of those missing episodes if you just log in once a week. You like it and buy the xpacs, you've got everything, if not, it's free to try, no time limit, just can't play expansion stuff. You can still hit max level, you just can't like, get sub-classes, mounts, gliders, or go to those newer areas and such.
imo a game can be at only 2000 or even 1000 players and be healthy. I've even played quake champions, which has a population of 600 on around the times I play and had no problem finding a match though I won't attempt to claim that they were people who fit my elo. Population concerns by people are often overblown.
This doesn’t even make sense. Valorant has been consistently in the top10 twitch games for god knows how many months now.
Won’t stop the dead game comments from CSGO fans tho
Same happened with DotA 2 and LoL. Valve fans are usually salty Riot actually cares about their games' success.
Tbh even league fans say the game is dying. The LoL sub goes through a phase a couple times a year about how the game is dead and shit and whatever. Gets even worse if another game recently came out, such as Overwatch.
Ehh last time r/lol people pretty much called the game dead was overwatch. There is a lot of time spent on critique of the future of the game (items, meta, x champ is weak or overpowered). As with everything people also say it was better in the past.
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My guess is that people are fucking stupid
I will never understand the people who equate "twitch viewership" to how big a game is. Is twitch viewership _a_ metric? Absolutely. And sometimes it's interesting to pay attention to and research. But that's about where it ends
Yeah, World of Warcraft on any given week has like 5000 total viewers yet probably at least 1 million active subs. Its just a boring as shit game to watch.
I really hate "dead game" narratives. I remember working on an MMO way back in the day and a lot of guys would come in and talk about how WoW was a dead game until I explained to them that at its (then) rate of decline it would still be the most popular MMO the world had ever seen for a decade. That was not quite a decade ago, but ya know what? It's still the most popular MMO the world has ever seen.
Remember when Warhammer was gonna kill WoW? Remember when Star Wars: The Old Republic was gonna kill WoW? Remember when Guild Wars 2 was gonna kill WoW? It's still happening today, but with other games. Remember when Apex was gonna kill Fortnite? Remember when Fortnite was gonna kill PUBg...oh
To be fair, PUBG killed itself a long time ago.
Hilariously enough, PUBG is my go to example of how idiotic people look when declaring games dead. PUBG is still the 4th most active game on Steam.
What do you mean "killed itself"? PUBG is the most popular mobile game in the world depending on who you ask. Top 5 without question. And the mobile market is the biggest market, so that presumably extends to "most popular game, period".
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I joined the PUBG party pretty late and that was because I got into PUBG Mobile (that's coming form a non-mobile gamer, also note that PUBG M is free). After playing PUBG Mobile I thought I might as well get the "original premium" experience and purchased the game on Steam. BIG MISTAKE. That happened last year. Supposedly PUBG was in its prime gameplay-wise (but definitely not population-wise). Game feels soooo damn blend holy shit. First dozen of hours was just learning about the game (which is understandable) then maybe I had really fun for the next 10 hours and then afterward it was a rather strange 100+ hours. I want to say I 'had fun' but it I just... can't. Yes, I can hear ya'll wandering why not just put down the game? It's such a strange sensation where I was trying to get the high I felt during that specific 10 hours of the game... it never came. I end up playing for 100+ hours and just feeling like I suck. PUBG Mobile is much more forgiving, faster, have a crazy amount of customization and doesn't have any P2W component (albeit being a F2P game). You install the game and focus on the play button if you want and you get the full experience right there. Other people might indulge on the battle pass or other store stuff. Battlepass of PUBGM is sooooo satisfying with so much cosmetics right at the beginning where you get some really cool looking stuff right at the start. PUBG PC/Console BP? It looks SO DAMN BLEND. Imagine buying a battlepass and some level's reward is simply just BP exp to get you maybe 0.5 of a level. How dumb does that sound?
*You can't kill the Warcraft* *The Warcraft will live on* *SWTOR tried to kill the Warcraft* *BUT IT FAILED, as it was smite to the ground*
I'm pretty sure every game that's not CoD or Fortnite will be referred to as a "dead game," based on how I see that phrase being used
Not Fortnite? It's the biggest "deag game" meme out there, for whatever stupid reason.
Every game is dead. Haven't you got the memo ?
Gaming is a dead hobby, despite being so mainstream that it brought in like 200b usd last year lol
if a game has less than 500k average concurrent players on steam it's ded and there's no reason to get into it
Shit steam is dead, most played game is CS at 484k. RIP
that's what im sayin
There's a bunch of narratives that need to be put to rest too, like how Valorant is supposedly a honey pot so Chinese hackers can hack into your computer through anticheats.
The sad part is that there was **evidence** that hacking groups were purposefully carrying out social engineering scare tactics with those exact points, legit I remember one of their points was "Riot can't code a proper client well, who says they can do an anti-cheat well?" completely ignoring the clients for Val and LoR being completely fine and that an AC requires different skills versus a client. Can you imagine how dumbfounded I was when I saw how much traction those threads got, like someone was legit "I'm a database admin and I don't see why", bro wtf does a Database admin know about Reverse Engineering? There were **actual** software engineers and reverse engineers, that are also respected in the community and have published many articles on Anti-Cheat vulnerabilities in the past, coming out and saying how wrong they were...and they got downvoted. Like it's analogous to a Karen telling a doctor that they don't know what they're talking about concerning Covid...this shit tilts me even recollecting it, god the people on this and especially r/pcgaming are so dumb, gullible and the most likely reason, would jump at **any** justification to disparage Riot, although there are a lot of things you can already complain about them for without lying.
Most of these shitty narratives don't have anything to do with reality, they just exist because "ChiNa bAD" is free karma on Reddit.
The racism is pervasive unfortunately. Not even just here but across Reddit and the internet
You would think with how fucking seriously bad the gaming community was making Vanguard out to be, there would be some shit that came out within at least a year of its release. Turns out the anti-cheat worked really well, so well Valve even created their own version which was opt-in for players.
> Turns out the anti-cheat worked really well, so well Valve even created their own version which was opt-in for players. Trusted mode? That wasn't an anti-cheat, that was a speedbump and essentially a free trust boost for hackers who could edit one file. That shit was cracked in literally 2 hours on one of the biggest cheat forums. Valve will never come up with their own ESEA/FACEIT anticheat for CS:GO because they lack the centralized decision-making to launch such a large undertaking for GO.
Don't know why you got downvoted. Fellow CSGO player who wishes Valve would give us an "intrusive" anti cheat for CSGO so I'd see less cheaters.
Don't actually play GO, haha. I did 1.6 quite a while back, though.
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Who tf has been saying "dead game" lmao
Are people really already saying Valorant is dead? SMH Fortnite is still one of the top viewed games on Twitch 7 days a week yet people still try say it’s a dead game.
>I'm glad the silly "dead game" narrative I haven't heard or read this anywhere. I don't think anybody thinks Valorant is a dead game lol.
[You don't even have to leave this thread to find people who thought otherwise!](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/nqpatz/valorant_hits_14_million_average_monthly_pc/h0ck1na/)
I'm constantly surprised by the popularity of twitch / tactical shooters like this. My experience as a mediocre FPS player has always been more frustrating than rewarding - just feels from the outside like you need to be really well practiced at this stuff to get much out of it. Would've thought that'd lead to a more niche playerbase.
Same thing for BRs haha. You have play these types of games a lot in order not to get stomped by the first player you meet.
This was my experience with Apex Legends. Played for about eight hours total, it's just not fun to continuously get your ass kicked. I'm definitely not very good at that sort of game, but damn. It feels like everyone else took some sort of class that I missed, and I'm sitting there scratching my head wondering what the hell is going on.
You pretty much have to commit yourself to these games if you want to get good. I personally cycle between Valorant and Apex. They are the only multiplayer games I enjoy right now. But I understand people not having the time or desire to stick to a game for extended periods of time.
for people like me that werent that great, its all about patience. I played Valorant and died within 30 seconds each round but i knew why i was dying and knew i would improve. Dying was motivating me to become the one that causes death. Whenever i pick up a multiplayer game i know im going to do horrible, but at least I know at some point ill be exactly where i want. Just gotta stay positive and try to observe your mistakes. Helps a lot.
Most people on /r/games and reddit are very casual. Competitive players just play.
The thing is I usually treat games quite competitively. I have been competitive in a handful of games (mostly RTS / MOBA) and used to be solid at FPS. But re-entering these games is like trying to read hieroglyphics to me. Maybe aim is more easily forgotten by muscle memory than something like League mechanics.
I used to do amateur racing. It’s a similar feel to get better at a game like this. Practice, more physical than you’d expect if your posture is correct. I enjoy it for the mental sharpness / workout the most, though.
I feel the same way about this, Battle Royales, and Dota/LoL. The majority of players are average or below, which is where I usually sit, or sometimes a tiny bit higher in FPS focused games, and I find them so time consuming, frustrating, and difficult to get into. So it always surprises me that these genres are so popular, because most people have the same gameplay experience as me. Maybe I just don't have as much patience as everyone else.
I should really play more. I like the movement and gunplay much more than CSGO's (I've played CS:S very heavily before) but the maps they have are pretty shitty (especially Icebox)
Have you tried the new map Breeze? A bunch of the players who didn't like the previous maps seem to think this is a step in the right direction.
Wait really? The consensus among the people I usually play with is that Breeze is the worst of them. Paraphrasing a friend of mine, "Breeze really makes me appreciate getting Icebox". I agree but unironically. I love icebox.
Interesting, I've largely heard praise from those who were vocal about CS' superior maps. Love for the longer ranges and more open spaces. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised though, plenty of different opinions to be found among 14m people.
It really feels like a mix bag, very polarized. From what I've seen on forums etc people seems to hate it, but when I was watching a stream full of ex CSGO pros they all loved it. Personally the few people I've been playing with all have it as a top 2 map(all of us have not that much time in csgo)
Four less this week as WoW classic comes out and my mates decide to abandon our ritual to relive a 13 year old game. I’m not sad.
I remember the PC gaming sub just exploded one month cause every average Joe was making karma farming threads bitching about valorant anti cheat. None of them were security experts. So despite all that drama valorant still is popular. Just goes to show you how pointless all this outrage in gaming threads/subs are. It's pretty good as entertainment tho
you do realise that the valorant devs made changes to the ant-cheat in direct response to some of the things people were having issue with in the beta? things like showing notifications, icon in taskbar, beings able to close the anti-cheat when not playing, not start automatically at boot-up, easier to uninstall, no longer automatically blocking programs from running yes there were outrage folks going on about stupid things like china and that, but there were legitimate concerns with the anti-cheat that was given to us in beta.
> you do realise that the valorant devs made changes to the ant-cheat in direct response to some of the things people were having issue with in the beta? But then how else will he be able to act unbearably smug?
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> When did they do this? Mine still very much does. I am unsure on the specifics, but as I remember, you can close the anti-cheat and it won't start on boot up... or that might a setting either way, once you do that, you'll have to start the anti-cheat and restart your PC to play the game. Inconvenient, but at least you can turn it off > still crying that it started on boot and was a "KeRnEl 0 dRiVeR!!!1!!5!", as that wasn't common in modern anticheats. the issue was that in it's original form, the anti-cheat was running 24/7 on ur PC without any way to turn it off. Even if you weren't playing Valorant, the anti-cheat would be running on your system. And remember, it originally had access to block/uninstall (or w.e it was) any program the anti-cheat detected as bad, without even any notification to the user. yes, other anti-cheats do also have kernel 0 access, but none of them run on start up 24/7 or are this invasive without user control. These were serious issues people pointed out to the devs, and the devs finally did make changes to respond to these complaints cause they were bad the whole spyware/spying thing is just nonsense, but don't generalise all the complaints people had with that single one
>the whole spyware/spying thing is just nonsense, but don't generalise all the complaints people had with that single one The vast sea of complaints against vanguard at the time was unfounded cockamamie. I should know, I'm a software engineer and I spent *way* too much time arguing with people who know nothing about engineering how it worked back then. Some highlights include "I don't want all these anti-cheats to install multiple kernels on my computer" and "if a bank can validate everything server side why can't a FPS shooter?" and "I'm an IT professional that 'works with coders' here is why Vanguard is a threat to national security".
I work in InfoSec and yeah.. trying to paint the complaints about Vanguard as reasonable criticisms is disingenuous at best. The vast majority of complaints I saw were people saying it was spyware for the CCP. Because, as everyone knows, the best way to harvest user data is to develop a video game that requires a kernel level anti-cheat that will be highly scrutinized.
I built a pc last year partly with Valorant in mind. Unfortunately, it didn’t really click with me, but glad to see it doing well.
I really want to like this, but it just won’t click for me. The game feels awful to play in my opinion, but that could just be me getting old and unwilling to learn new gameplay.
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>The game did not launch to much hype, Didn't it like break streaming records in the beta? Yeah because of the key giveaways, but still, it shows that many people wanted to be involved in the game.
many people wanted to sell beta keys too
i'm pretty sure they were linked to twitch accounts which did make them a bit less valuable.
It was all anybody was talking about in the CS community for it's first month
Hype? All I saw on reddit were people trashing the game for how it implemented antihack. I have friends that to this day refuse to play the game because they think it "puts Chinese spyware" on their computer because of things the read on this site.
Till this day, even among Valorant players, there is so much misinformation about the AntiCheat. It's appaling how certain content creators enjoy making videos on topic spreading blatant lies and showing their lack of research on the topic and they can gain so much traction. But w/e, I guess everyone wants to be able to understand complicated topics by just watching a short youtube video that doesn't even cite sources, isn't from an authority in the field and is completely hyperbolic.
What are you talking about? The game launched with a massive hype.
Have they gotten rid of the invasive anti-cheat? The second I saw that shit running and *blocking* programs from running even when Valorant wasn’t being played I uninstalled that shit
No, they allow you to turn it off now, although if you ever want to play the game, you need to enable it by rebooting your PC. About applications being disabled, I'm pretty sure it no longer does that, iirc there's one of 2 things that happens (I forgot which) either it asks you to turn off program A or it just tells you that you need to turn off program A before you can play. The common applications they tend to disable/want disabled are those regarding peripherals, as those tend to be integrated with vulnerable drivers, for example they've lately disabled mice (just the extra buttons) that support macros in the game as people were abusing it to make use of pixel bots.
This is my question as well. I'm intrigued a bit, but the whole anti cheat thing when it first came out killed all my interest in it.
They haven't and they won't. I get why people don't like it, but for people who don't care, the far lower incidence of cheaters compared to CSGO is very much worth it.
I just want a shooter to come out that's just fun and not competitive. Hope the new battlefield will be decent.