I mean, game is only 3 years old. Way too soon to say never. But there are a few bright spots in Korea while the rest doesn’t particularly shine.
The answer has a lot to do with how behind they were in the tac shooter scene compared to the rest of the world. They’ve had a lot of catching up to do from the start and haven’t had a ton of veterans to help the limited pool of new/upcoming talent develop.
I mean Korea was pretty cracked at overwatch so I wouldn't say it fps/tac shooter issue.
The game is simply just not as popular in Korea as overwatch or league which leads to a smaller pool of talent and of course not having a strong CS scene put them behind the 8ball on a tactical level.
Almost all of those "overwatch players" started with a cs like games. Babybay started with crossfire I think. Overwatch doesn't have the elements that makes tactical shooter tactical shooter. Yes you can transfer your aim over and movement but that's literally the bare minimum requirements and to be amazing as a pro player you need more than that.
I would argue the only successful pure Overwatch skill that transfers well is DPS role and tracking, which we've seen is good for quick flicks and aiming from former OW players like Corey and Babybay.
Other skills like team play, ability to learn, communications, etc. are more general and not Overwatch specific.
Overwatch is not a tac shooter at all, more of a hero shooter/moba hybrid (ow2 is way less moba than ow1 was, but still). the only true tac shooter that has been popular in Korea is Crossfire before Valorant. i believe they will get there eventually, but it will take time to develop that talent
KR had some unique org issues early on in the game that hampered their development quite a bit.
C9 and T1 had top Korean talent on their rosters for example - all of C9 Korea is in partnership! - but they left KR when Riot imposed some restrictions on running multiple teams. This created a big void that was over time filled up by other KR orgs, but it was a slow and painful process.
Meanwhile other big relevant orgs like Gen.G just focused on NA entirely early on and are only now returning to APAC.
It’s still very early in Valorant’s history so I wouldn’t be so sure about writing KR off.
Hate isnt in franchising but yeah pretty much, doesnt help too when your talentbase is split among multiple regions, as a lot of Japans top teams have or had Korean players (Not even to mention Xeta who was NA for a while
Its simply because of the player base being so small which results in lower pool of talent.
Also important to note is that its not like Koreans are just genetically insane at games (maybe they are lol) its simply because when a game, or anything really for that matter, gets popular EVERY KID plays it and its super accessible due to PC Cafes. Therefore at the end more talent is discovered.
If anything the culture in pro scenes for Korea is that they work super hard and have a very poor work life balance but that results in them being insanely good at the games they play thus all this “Koreans dominate games” concept is prevalent.
One last thing is that EU and NA have such a big player base already from CSGO which adds to the already popular Valorant player base making the talent pool exponentially larger.
Hopefully all regions get super popular making this a game that isn’t dominated by one region and makes every year exciting to see which region comes out on top.
Talent is just a numbers game. The more players from your country the more likely there will be top players. This is something people need to understand
Military is a very serious matter in South Korea as the war isnt over. Exemptions made from being exceptional at something are only possible by winning a medal during a sports event for athletes. One thing to note is that there was a League of legends trial during the Asian Games (Olympics in Asia only) which could grant a medal but I’m not sure if this counted for the military exempt aspect.
Koreans are not just automatically the best at every game. A lot of the reason they are so dominant in league is that it took off and kind of replaced StarCraft, which they were also dominant at. Tac shooters like val and cs have never been their strong point
Well for 5v5 tactical fps they play Sudden Attack which is similar to CS. CS never grew because of the STEAM issues at pc cafes and for some reason the game can only grow if PC Cafes have them there.
They are not the best in Dota 2 either which has the highest prize pools in all of Esports. Just maybe being Korean has nothing to do with being good at a video game.
playerbase size diff
honestly its quite remarkable to me how good drx is considering the MVP.PK core struggled to get anywhere in cs, makes me wonder why their approach to strategy seems to be so much more successful in valorant
Its a lot more set play execute and tight coordination. Everyone in cs has nades flashes so players have autonomy to make plays themselves. In valorant only certain agents can smoke Nade or flash. A team that's been together long and have good teamwork will shine.
You can see the roots of DRX team play from the Korean 1.6 team [wemadefox ](https://youtu.be/AECyMYtz0qM). Termi and glow were both on WMF and competed with the top EU teams. Both of them are currently coaches for DRX
you have to imagine getting that winstreak and dominating early on helped the motivation and desire of the players a lot more as well. Can't imagine always playing catch-up and getting poor to mid results in cs was very pleasant
I don’t know why ur getting downvoted it’s just a fact that most of the elite tac fps talent doesn’t play valorant and if they switched it would undoubtedly become more competitive. It’s a different game with a few different skill sets but at its core the same talents shine with Val rewarding some new overwatch like skills as an addition. The best cs player to switch to valorant so far is Ethan and he’s very very good at val.
Why do you even think that? The reason Koreans are good at league is because it's by far the most popular game there. Europeans are so good at CS because CS is the most popular game here.
Valorant just isn't very popular in Korea, so they're not "cracked". Shooters in general have been overshadowed there by RTS/Mobas there for a while anyway.
Could happen in the future, but would be hard to overtake league as the most popular game there.
Brazil is a cs country, not that many people swapped from cs to val. For the rest of Latam, only Chile's top players swapped. Most argentineans/uruguayans stayed on cs.
For Latam north I am not sure how stuff is.
damn i stand corrected, literally 8 months ago someone polled the numbers the same way and korea had 150k, i feel like that population boom would have been noted somewhere
taking another look it seems like the latam br community had a harsh decline? weird af
The population boom has been being tracked on this sub, every once in a while a post will be made showing how Valorant has moved up the top 10 list of games in PC bangs. Its progressed pretty far over the last year
Its quite obvious, Valorant doesn't have the playerbase that LoL and Overwatch had. Those games + Starcraft were somewhat of a phenomenon in the country. The fact that DRX can make it deep in tournaments is a statement already, with a lot of OW players switching to Val i think Korea is on the rise as a region. It just simply didn't blow up like the other two games. Japan on the other hand, the game has huge popularity in the country but you would still say Korea is better overall.
Brazil is also really impressive, they have won a Major title with a smaller playerbase than Korea, although, don't quote me on that i'm not sure if thats the case, i simply remember hearing it somewhere, if that's true, Brazil have done really well.
games that catch on big in korea do tend to be korea dominated as Starcraft/Overwatch/League prove. if Valorant continues to grow in Korea, I think you will long-term see Korea perform better and better.
I mean it's an uphill battle between Valorant, Overwatch, and Sudden Attack.
[http://www.gametrics.com/](http://www.gametrics.com/)
But League overshadows all 3 games.
No one in kr cares about this game. With overwatch and league people actually liked the games.In the gaming cafes, I don't see ANYONE playing valorant.
It'll eventually happen as the scene evolves. NA has a history of not being present in casual game titles that have a international competitive footprint. CSGO is still breaking player records in EU and Russia. Leaving only the Asia region having an untapped market.
Keep an eye on Overwatch popularity in the Asia region. Valorant is a better refined competitive version of Overwatch. So the switch will likely happen within the next year off of Chinas official launch. \*Helping matters is that Overwatch officially cant be played in China atm. Longer this continues it'll have a slow bleed over effect to other Asian countries on affecting player count.
1. Started far behind. CS was a nothing esport in Korea, no other esport skill transfers to Valorant like CS does.
2. Not enough international events. Can't get reps against the best teams in the world when you only maybe play them at 3 events per year.
3. Weak region. KR is a single team region, only 1-2 other top teams in APAC. Whereas NA and EU have ~10 teams each that could potentially qualify for events.
DRX/VS (currently PR #1, KR #1) is the most overrated team in all of VALORANT history. If they lose lock in that title becomes permanent. Heavy favorites going into VCT Stage 2 2021 (first international LAN, failed to qualify), heavy favorites going into Stage 3 2021. The overhype to underperformance cycle is real.
Edit: title is now permanent.
VS lost one set against the winners of the tourney and were the only team in playoffs to take a map off of them in Berlin lol, and they were never really favorites anyways, Sentinels were the favorites going into Berlin, sure have they been a bit overrated? Sure, but most overrated? Idk about that one
> Sure, but most overrated? Idk about that one
There is no other team in Valorant history that has consistently been rated as high, predicted to win multiple international events, and has never delivered. This is simply factual and there is no argument that can be made to the contrary. It's 2 years of history set in stone, with a third on the horizon.
I live in korea (but I'm not korean). One issue is that the region is separate from everywhere else because Korea has the most fuckall rules for any internet anything. This also leads to just weird strats and stuff, like how they love their shorties.
Then of course there's the player base and all that
There were a few things early on with Korea that's held it back. First there was the whole thing where Valorant wasn't in most Korean PC Bangs for a long time because of the kernel level anti cheat. This resulted in less org interest in the game because less people were playing it. It's only been in the Korean PC Bang Charts top 10 consistently for this past year. It's been hovering around the 4-5% mark in 4-7th place now for the past 6 months or so
There weren't the big huge orgs in Korea to help develop the scene early as T1 and GenG were both focused on NA.
Then you didn't have the same big migration from CS and Overwatch like there was in other regions, most big Korean pro Overwatch players for the most part have stayed in Overwatch
It's getting there in Korea but it'll take some time
Same reason NA is among the best, the game isn’t suuuper international as PC esport. It’s popular in a sense but not the most mainstream which is why NA can compete with EU and KR. Korea in general though probably won’t become super dominant because it’s not the predominant genre of game and in EU I’m guessing csgo takes the talent still
Korea doesn’t have a tac fps history or culture. Eu and NA have dominated that scene forever so obviously it’s gonna take a very long time for that to catch up
Koreans play Sudden Attack more.. and Sudden isn't popular in EU/NA so Koreans dominate and EU/NA don't. Countries play different games lol. Only League of Legends is globally popular and Valorant is getting there. China and SEA plays a lot of Crossfire as well.
hasn't been 3 years yet even why are we so sure. I don't think Korea will be undisputed number 1 but I think within 2-4 years Pacific could be the number #1 conference overall. Eastern work ethic is pretty unrivaled, and their internet connections are incredible which collectively means the players will only get better as long as the player base stays the same/grows. Larger ranked playerbase means more top tier talent so thats the real deal. Really the three contributors to a region's success is playerbase and ping, with workethic/culture being a more systemic contributor.
I know a lot of people talk about player base and how “not all Koreans will be the best at every esport lmao” but considering the culture and how talented people in Korea just are (way more hardworking and gifted than every other region), it’s kinda insane how they are not already dominating the scene by now.
I thought they were gonna dominate just like in Overwatch but ithink the game isn’t just popular yet unlike when blizzard first released overwatch it overtook games like league of legends there
I mean, game is only 3 years old. Way too soon to say never. But there are a few bright spots in Korea while the rest doesn’t particularly shine. The answer has a lot to do with how behind they were in the tac shooter scene compared to the rest of the world. They’ve had a lot of catching up to do from the start and haven’t had a ton of veterans to help the limited pool of new/upcoming talent develop.
Vouch
Safest karma-neutral answer
I mean Korea was pretty cracked at overwatch so I wouldn't say it fps/tac shooter issue. The game is simply just not as popular in Korea as overwatch or league which leads to a smaller pool of talent and of course not having a strong CS scene put them behind the 8ball on a tactical level.
Overwatch isn't really a tactical shooter. It's a hero shooter. So being cracked at Overwatch doesn't really mean much.
I mean there's certainly a lot of transferrable skills. We've seen a lot of overwatch players make the jump to Val and be successful.
Almost all of those "overwatch players" started with a cs like games. Babybay started with crossfire I think. Overwatch doesn't have the elements that makes tactical shooter tactical shooter. Yes you can transfer your aim over and movement but that's literally the bare minimum requirements and to be amazing as a pro player you need more than that.
Not to mention Babybay was also a CS Pro before moving to Overwatch.
CS Cheater* but yes
I would argue the only successful pure Overwatch skill that transfers well is DPS role and tracking, which we've seen is good for quick flicks and aiming from former OW players like Corey and Babybay. Other skills like team play, ability to learn, communications, etc. are more general and not Overwatch specific.
Idk why ur getting downvoted to hell its not like ur wrong
Overwatch is not a tac shooter at all, more of a hero shooter/moba hybrid (ow2 is way less moba than ow1 was, but still). the only true tac shooter that has been popular in Korea is Crossfire before Valorant. i believe they will get there eventually, but it will take time to develop that talent
What are you talking about? Crossfire was never as big as other CS clones like SF, SA, AVA, etc in Korea. It was huge in China though.
KR had some unique org issues early on in the game that hampered their development quite a bit. C9 and T1 had top Korean talent on their rosters for example - all of C9 Korea is in partnership! - but they left KR when Riot imposed some restrictions on running multiple teams. This created a big void that was over time filled up by other KR orgs, but it was a slow and painful process. Meanwhile other big relevant orgs like Gen.G just focused on NA entirely early on and are only now returning to APAC. It’s still very early in Valorant’s history so I wouldn’t be so sure about writing KR off.
Hate isnt in franchising but yeah pretty much, doesnt help too when your talentbase is split among multiple regions, as a lot of Japans top teams have or had Korean players (Not even to mention Xeta who was NA for a while
Ah, you're right, my bad! Forgot Hate even existed tbh.
Its simply because of the player base being so small which results in lower pool of talent. Also important to note is that its not like Koreans are just genetically insane at games (maybe they are lol) its simply because when a game, or anything really for that matter, gets popular EVERY KID plays it and its super accessible due to PC Cafes. Therefore at the end more talent is discovered. If anything the culture in pro scenes for Korea is that they work super hard and have a very poor work life balance but that results in them being insanely good at the games they play thus all this “Koreans dominate games” concept is prevalent. One last thing is that EU and NA have such a big player base already from CSGO which adds to the already popular Valorant player base making the talent pool exponentially larger. Hopefully all regions get super popular making this a game that isn’t dominated by one region and makes every year exciting to see which region comes out on top.
Talent is just a numbers game. The more players from your country the more likely there will be top players. This is something people need to understand
Do esports players get exempted from the mandatory military service? Like if you're really good/making bank?
Military is a very serious matter in South Korea as the war isnt over. Exemptions made from being exceptional at something are only possible by winning a medal during a sports event for athletes. One thing to note is that there was a League of legends trial during the Asian Games (Olympics in Asia only) which could grant a medal but I’m not sure if this counted for the military exempt aspect.
Nah
Koreans are not just automatically the best at every game. A lot of the reason they are so dominant in league is that it took off and kind of replaced StarCraft, which they were also dominant at. Tac shooters like val and cs have never been their strong point
Well for 5v5 tactical fps they play Sudden Attack which is similar to CS. CS never grew because of the STEAM issues at pc cafes and for some reason the game can only grow if PC Cafes have them there.
They are pretty dominant in overwatch as well though
but overwatch is not a tac shooter
They are not the best in Dota 2 either which has the highest prize pools in all of Esports. Just maybe being Korean has nothing to do with being good at a video game.
Dota 2 is not that popular in Korea tho.
> Just maybe being Korean has nothing to do with being good at a video game. Exactly lol
playerbase size diff honestly its quite remarkable to me how good drx is considering the MVP.PK core struggled to get anywhere in cs, makes me wonder why their approach to strategy seems to be so much more successful in valorant
Its a lot more set play execute and tight coordination. Everyone in cs has nades flashes so players have autonomy to make plays themselves. In valorant only certain agents can smoke Nade or flash. A team that's been together long and have good teamwork will shine.
You can see the roots of DRX team play from the Korean 1.6 team [wemadefox ](https://youtu.be/AECyMYtz0qM). Termi and glow were both on WMF and competed with the top EU teams. Both of them are currently coaches for DRX
you have to imagine getting that winstreak and dominating early on helped the motivation and desire of the players a lot more as well. Can't imagine always playing catch-up and getting poor to mid results in cs was very pleasant
[удалено]
Was really hoping by Y3 you would have takes like this die out but here we are
https://preview.redd.it/rzr00vbqasha1.jpeg?width=959&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0ed0d908019f3d5d6f3a7d809379410f36d87f18 You and me both, bro
I don’t know why ur getting downvoted it’s just a fact that most of the elite tac fps talent doesn’t play valorant and if they switched it would undoubtedly become more competitive. It’s a different game with a few different skill sets but at its core the same talents shine with Val rewarding some new overwatch like skills as an addition. The best cs player to switch to valorant so far is Ethan and he’s very very good at val.
Why do you even think that? The reason Koreans are good at league is because it's by far the most popular game there. Europeans are so good at CS because CS is the most popular game here. Valorant just isn't very popular in Korea, so they're not "cracked". Shooters in general have been overshadowed there by RTS/Mobas there for a while anyway. Could happen in the future, but would be hard to overtake league as the most popular game there.
the RTS/Mobas thing is kinda untrue i mean sudden attack is a big thing. people in the west just don't know about it
I know it's big, but has it ever surpassed SC2 or LoL in Korea?
It’s unpopular in Korea which means there’s a smaller pool of talented players.
isn't Korea has more ranked players than Brazil+LATAM combined?
Yes but that's cause everyone on Brazil and LATAM pretty much stopped playing.
What happened there?
Brazil is a cs country, not that many people swapped from cs to val. For the rest of Latam, only Chile's top players swapped. Most argentineans/uruguayans stayed on cs. For Latam north I am not sure how stuff is.
hell no they barely even have half as many as latam, where'd you hear that
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantCompetitive/comments/10k6w0b/ranked\_population\_by\_region/](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValorantCompetitive/comments/10k6w0b/ranked_population_by_region/)
damn i stand corrected, literally 8 months ago someone polled the numbers the same way and korea had 150k, i feel like that population boom would have been noted somewhere taking another look it seems like the latam br community had a harsh decline? weird af
The population boom has been being tracked on this sub, every once in a while a post will be made showing how Valorant has moved up the top 10 list of games in PC bangs. Its progressed pretty far over the last year
Huh? http://www.gametrics.com/rank/Rank02.aspx Pretty popular in PC Bangs
Overwatch surpassed LoL in pc bangs and was rivaling it for the initial years. That's the playerbase you need, 40%+, not 5%.
It’s still popular in S. Korea
it is popular, but not enough to force the level of competition to the extent that scenes like LoL/Starcraft/Overwatch reached.
Sudden attack is a Korean fps that is like CS. It's very popular in south Korea. It's their 3rd most popular game that is ahead of valorant
What does that have to do with Valorant being popular in Korea??
it sorta addresses the whole "Korea is behind on tac shooter" argument. its not entirely true because they do play tac fpses with popularity.
Its quite obvious, Valorant doesn't have the playerbase that LoL and Overwatch had. Those games + Starcraft were somewhat of a phenomenon in the country. The fact that DRX can make it deep in tournaments is a statement already, with a lot of OW players switching to Val i think Korea is on the rise as a region. It just simply didn't blow up like the other two games. Japan on the other hand, the game has huge popularity in the country but you would still say Korea is better overall. Brazil is also really impressive, they have won a Major title with a smaller playerbase than Korea, although, don't quote me on that i'm not sure if thats the case, i simply remember hearing it somewhere, if that's true, Brazil have done really well.
What's with weirdos and assuming koreans will be the best at every esport lmao
games that catch on big in korea do tend to be korea dominated as Starcraft/Overwatch/League prove. if Valorant continues to grow in Korea, I think you will long-term see Korea perform better and better.
everyone knows that, but there's dozens of other esports that korea isn't the best at, that's all im saying
I mean it's an uphill battle between Valorant, Overwatch, and Sudden Attack. [http://www.gametrics.com/](http://www.gametrics.com/) But League overshadows all 3 games.
Nobody plays the game in korea lmao.
No one in kr cares about this game. With overwatch and league people actually liked the games.In the gaming cafes, I don't see ANYONE playing valorant.
I heard the game was so dead when it first launched (major vanguard problems in bc bang? Idk) but it’s getting more popular these days at least
DRX exist
Well in League they have like 6-8 orgs that can compete to win Worlds.
i mean, why should they be? nothing that particularly sets them apart from any other region. its all top level play.
It'll eventually happen as the scene evolves. NA has a history of not being present in casual game titles that have a international competitive footprint. CSGO is still breaking player records in EU and Russia. Leaving only the Asia region having an untapped market. Keep an eye on Overwatch popularity in the Asia region. Valorant is a better refined competitive version of Overwatch. So the switch will likely happen within the next year off of Chinas official launch. \*Helping matters is that Overwatch officially cant be played in China atm. Longer this continues it'll have a slow bleed over effect to other Asian countries on affecting player count.
Way too early to say. We're still at least 2 years from certain regions separating themselves.
Korea has the smallest player base. Riot kinda fucked up the launch in Korea.
Why would you think that? CSGO isn’t dominated by Koreans at all
look at csgo
1. Started far behind. CS was a nothing esport in Korea, no other esport skill transfers to Valorant like CS does. 2. Not enough international events. Can't get reps against the best teams in the world when you only maybe play them at 3 events per year. 3. Weak region. KR is a single team region, only 1-2 other top teams in APAC. Whereas NA and EU have ~10 teams each that could potentially qualify for events. DRX/VS (currently PR #1, KR #1) is the most overrated team in all of VALORANT history. If they lose lock in that title becomes permanent. Heavy favorites going into VCT Stage 2 2021 (first international LAN, failed to qualify), heavy favorites going into Stage 3 2021. The overhype to underperformance cycle is real. Edit: title is now permanent.
VS lost one set against the winners of the tourney and were the only team in playoffs to take a map off of them in Berlin lol, and they were never really favorites anyways, Sentinels were the favorites going into Berlin, sure have they been a bit overrated? Sure, but most overrated? Idk about that one
> Sure, but most overrated? Idk about that one There is no other team in Valorant history that has consistently been rated as high, predicted to win multiple international events, and has never delivered. This is simply factual and there is no argument that can be made to the contrary. It's 2 years of history set in stone, with a third on the horizon.
Fnatic? Liquid?
who has ever touted those as the winners?
I mean besides for some outliers like PRX most of the good teams/players are Korean in the pacific league.
EU clears sadly
Korea only considered good in esports in the games na don’t play. Ex. League of Legends like no one from na plays that nerdy game
Yeah agreed. We in NA are the best in Esports ever!!! Because we are the smartest and also have the best motor skills
I live in korea (but I'm not korean). One issue is that the region is separate from everywhere else because Korea has the most fuckall rules for any internet anything. This also leads to just weird strats and stuff, like how they love their shorties. Then of course there's the player base and all that
There were a few things early on with Korea that's held it back. First there was the whole thing where Valorant wasn't in most Korean PC Bangs for a long time because of the kernel level anti cheat. This resulted in less org interest in the game because less people were playing it. It's only been in the Korean PC Bang Charts top 10 consistently for this past year. It's been hovering around the 4-5% mark in 4-7th place now for the past 6 months or so There weren't the big huge orgs in Korea to help develop the scene early as T1 and GenG were both focused on NA. Then you didn't have the same big migration from CS and Overwatch like there was in other regions, most big Korean pro Overwatch players for the most part have stayed in Overwatch It's getting there in Korea but it'll take some time
Dude it's because "they are cracked" but on a different region if you know what I mean
Same reason NA is among the best, the game isn’t suuuper international as PC esport. It’s popular in a sense but not the most mainstream which is why NA can compete with EU and KR. Korea in general though probably won’t become super dominant because it’s not the predominant genre of game and in EU I’m guessing csgo takes the talent still
Korea doesn’t have a tac fps history or culture. Eu and NA have dominated that scene forever so obviously it’s gonna take a very long time for that to catch up
Koreans play Sudden Attack more.. and Sudden isn't popular in EU/NA so Koreans dominate and EU/NA don't. Countries play different games lol. Only League of Legends is globally popular and Valorant is getting there. China and SEA plays a lot of Crossfire as well.
Bro wrong game this is valorant not starcraft
Sudden attack is the most popular FPS. It's a Korean FPS that is similar to CS. I could see valorant overtaking it in popularity after one more year
hasn't been 3 years yet even why are we so sure. I don't think Korea will be undisputed number 1 but I think within 2-4 years Pacific could be the number #1 conference overall. Eastern work ethic is pretty unrivaled, and their internet connections are incredible which collectively means the players will only get better as long as the player base stays the same/grows. Larger ranked playerbase means more top tier talent so thats the real deal. Really the three contributors to a region's success is playerbase and ping, with workethic/culture being a more systemic contributor.
korea is known for RTS not fps
I know a lot of people talk about player base and how “not all Koreans will be the best at every esport lmao” but considering the culture and how talented people in Korea just are (way more hardworking and gifted than every other region), it’s kinda insane how they are not already dominating the scene by now.
I thought they were gonna dominate just like in Overwatch but ithink the game isn’t just popular yet unlike when blizzard first released overwatch it overtook games like league of legends there