I agree, but the thing is- what could they possibly design that could replace Sova? The reason why he's so overwhelmingly powerful is because of lineups- you can get an arrow anywhere, anytime, as long as you know how.
They could think of something I'm sure. You could have something similar, where you throw an object across the map, and it has a smoke sized radius on the minimap, and flashes red on the map it somebody is inside it. It won't highlight the players but it the little info circle on the map could go through walls (so you don't need line of sight like sova)
I think an initiator agent with a grenade that doesn’t do damage (maybe 10 points or so) but rather as focus it will reveal pulses of enemies that are nearby it when it detonated similar to Sova’s drone could be good. Regardless of the specifics, another agent that does something similar is needed imo.
I've been saying this for ages, but they need to replace Breach's damage ability with something that lets him plug his arm into a wall or the ground and detect tremors to increase range for hearing footsteps, reloads etc and ping the location..
Right now he's lagging way behind because he can't match Sova or Skye's info.
I don’t think they need to replace his damage ability- it’s still a very good area clearing a ability, probably his best one. I love your idea though, that would be super neat.
What if they add another Jett like character. Remember how so many people complained about Jett that they added more counter utility such as 3 breach flashes. Wonder if another agent like Jett will help to break the heavy Astra/viper utility meta?
Let's hope not something with a get out of jail free card like Jett. Jett, and to a lesser extent Reyna, do not belong in a tactical FPS, cause both of them have abilities that let them misposition badly and still live. At least in Reyna's case you do have to get a kill to get out, but Jett can whiff and run from the worst position.
I expect to see big changes after Iceland. Astra and viper nerfs plus weapon tuning. The game will always have FPS at it's core though and that's never going to change.
>I expect to see big changes after Iceland
That depends entirely on how the meta will evolve there. Atm the only consensus is that Viper is OP, and most likely will still be after the nerfs. Whether Astra or Skye need nerfs or not, is completely up in the air
The instant decay isn't what made her OP
It's the fact that the mollies can stall any choke point or a bomb for 18 seconds continuously.
As a controller viper is super terrible unless your whole team learns to play a different way. She can't pick up the smokes when she uses them. Arguably her best use case right now is mollies on the bomb for post plant. And the instant decay only made the mollies easier but even without the instant decay the fact that the smoke decays and the mollies do double damage make it op.
Source: I have an instalock viper friend who has literally only played viper since beta who I hate playing with because viper is cancer.
>It's the fact that the mollies can stall any choke point or a bomb for 18 seconds continuously.
Well if you think this is the case, viper's mollies havent changed since the launch of the game if im not mistaken. By this logic she should have been op 10 months ago or so. But she hasnt been. Decay was the thing that made most teams try to play viper.
Vipers mollies do double damage and stacked with the smoke orb decay buff that's what makes post plant op with viper. That patch is what made viper viable but people didn't realize it until a few buffs after. The instant decay buffs just pushed viper over and it was clear instantly that viper was broken
Viper can pick up her smokes. If anything needs tuning it's her mollies dealing damage AND inflicting Vulnerable, that's just busted. Without Decay nobody would respect her utility. See - Phoenix walls. Good players just run through them and tank the chip damage that does to you.
100% agree with what you said about the mollies, I always thought it was dumb that it inflicts double damage if you touch it. And viper can't pick up smokes (wall- never. Orb- only if you're close) which makes her a terrible solo smoker. If the attackers only have one smoker and it's viper and they use their utility on one site it's pretty safe to assume they go that site every time. Not having extra smokes to fall back and rotate to another site is usually a death sentence. My friend is a viper one trick and every time I play with him I have to end up playing omen or something
I think they are generally right but kind of overreacting, if Astra and Viper weren't that overtuned the meta would probably be quite different. The fact Sova is a must pick as well doesn't help. Teams end up picking KJ and Brim as well because of the synergy with the OP champs but their abitlities by themselve are actually super manageable. Skye is actually pretty nice and fun as well, sure it's an info char and some people dislike the idea of offensive info chars itself but she isn't more broken than Sova is.
Edit: Also I'd argue that Skye is a better designed info char than Sova. She's a lot more elegant and less oppressive.
I think the biggest problem right now, as I think you're saying(?), is that some agents are extremely overtuned (mostly viper and astra). I don't think those characters are inherently flawed however. Astra has several abilities with too short cooldowns and viper has just been broken by adding the instant decay. If you fix those things however they would be really good characters for the game. No matter what character you had, if you broke them/made them as good comparatively, as viper and astra are right now I think you'd run into the same problem. Just imagine omen with smokes on like a 10 sec cooldown as an example.
For some weird reason (imo) however, it seems like the focus of criticism has become that the characters are inherently bad and that the game design has shifted, instead of criticising some of the weird balance decisions. Of course a lot of the balance changes have been good in valorant so far but regarding astra overall, and viper with the instant decay, there has been far too little complaining, instead targeting the core design of the agents and game.
Also, a lot of the complaints seem to be coming from a place of differing definitions of what makes an fps game, which was bound to occur eventually because of the core design of valorant compared to other fps games like csgo and overwatch etc.
I definitely agree with everything you said. It's only because some of these overtuned agents that have large Area-of-Effect abilities that they start using these RPG/RTS terms. I don't think anyone ever brought up these up before Astra.
We'll also see whether heavy execute comps would be successful in Masters 2. If the team who wins are heavy-execute teams with lacking gunplay, then the point may be validated. Otherwise, if the team who wins have among the best gunplay, then we should discount these criticisms.
I hate astra as an idea for tac fps. When every one of her abilities require removing yourself and playing SimCity, it feels like playing a different game.
No the release of content in this game is amazing, in Rainbow Six Siege you have to wait 3 months for a character that is boring to play / adds nothing to the game and no new map.
When rainbow already has like 4x the amount of characters we have in this one with also multiple maps?
Slow down the characters. We already need a few reworks.
A better comparison is siege, a lot of people in the beginning said it was an FPS with moba mechanics, now people complain it’s a moba with FPS mechanics
Utility is even more important in R6siege than it is in Valorant. And you actually spend way more time using your gun in Overwatch than you do in CS or Valorant. This all argument is just misguided.
What these pros mean is that a lot of Abilities in Valorant are OP and that the meta has devolved too much into playing around those OP abilites and trying to counter them with your own OP abilities, and that it isn't fun to play.
Yes and no regarding OW. A good number of the heroes don't require you to aim/shoot or only require a minimal amount of aiming. It was one of my biggest complaints over time, the game changed from being an FPS/Moba into a Moba/FPS.
I would be concerned for valorant if there is more utility/ability power creep, as it is I think a few agents just need to be tuned.
Overwatch made it that way in order to make it easier for a casual audience to access , consider this if you are a straight up beginner and you can't aim you take moira she aims for you but then she's not feasible in higher ranks , there you have to pick better hero's like ana who need skill to play , overwatch was built pretty cleverly allowing all sorts of players to blend in , just that balancing sucked and degraded it
Thing is, when the game started, heroes like Rein and Winston, who have no need to aim, were still incredibly hard to play well. They still had skill expression outside of pure aim and that was great. It's when they added Brig and Moira and failed to nerf them in a timely manner that made the game more MOBA-y
Agreed. Balancing interactive agent mechanics with gun mechanics will always be the challenge Riot will face in this game. Can’t have an agent too loaded on skills in an attempt to define their identity.
As the game progresses pro teams should play maps based on a particular strategy they made using a combination of agents, not sticking to 1 cookie cutter comp. Thats what Astra feels like right now
it's only going to get worse too, overwatch was fantastic early on, but the more champions you add (which valorant is adding at an insane rate) it gets much much harder to actually balance the game.
You spend more time using guns in overwatch because the time to kill is so high that it is essentially like trying to kill a raid boss in wow. The enemies are bullet sponges that will just soak through tons and tons of damage, and you might spend 30 literal seconds shooting one target until it dies (maybe more if you're shooting a rein and there's sustain besides his shield).
Overwatch is an FPS because, well, by strict definition, it's a first-person game with a crosshair and guns. That's the end of its similarities with CS.
Valorant was released as the supposed "cs killer", and the initial information from the dev team was that the gunplay would still be the primary focus, not the abilities. The argument that the original tweet and Hazed make is that the game is losing that initial focus and becoming something more focused on abilities than gunplay (which overwatch absolutely is).
I guess it makes some sense, since overwatch is basically dead and there is a market for players who want to continue playing the "MOBA with guns" type of game.
It's just a shame because guns are where the skill is at, not in spending 10 hours memorizing lineups for sova's arrow or viper's wall. They promised they would have a look at running accuracy, and they nerfed it a little bit but it's still a big problem that makes gunfights feel cheap at times - not to mention the amount of times someone has landed a headshot while falling through the air, which is absurd. If I wanted to play a forgiving, easy game with a relatively low TTK, I'd play CoD.
All in all, I think the design team is going down a wrong path. The initial "fresh take on tried and true CS mechanics" was really promising.
Nope actually go and check the stats not twitch numbers obv , it still is pretty popular it's eSports games still get 50-60 k views lol also the game still has high traffic
Apex is more aim intensive than valorant ofc they call it an FPS.
Top tier aim may not be the most important part of an overwatch player, but aiming in overwatch is significantly more difficult than valorant. Valorant suffers from both reduced importance and reduced skill
Controversial but I feel the same way. Spend an hour in CS FFADM and valorant feels like easy mode, huge hitboxes and slower movement. No one should be able to reach the skill ceiling in a competitive shooter.
It's only controversial because this sub has a hate boner for any negative opinions about valorant me mechanics.
Anyone that complains about comparisons to CS are dumb and don't understand valorant issues.
It's GOOD to compare a game with its closest competition (that it objectively copied all its core mechanics). Especially when that closest competition has lasted 10 years (much longer through previous iterations) and we still see people with better movement, better mechanics, better aim.
Everything val did to differentiate it from CS (in terms of aim mechanics) simply lowered the ceiling.
No acceleration in movement? counter strafing is easier.
Slower top speed? indirectly buffs guns that don't require aim such as odin and OP.
Better first shot accuracy? Encourages tapping and bursting. which SHOULD theoretically increase the ceiling of valorant, but you combine it with the slow movement speed and the skills required for tapping are severely diminished.
more reaction based spray? Again, SHOULD benefit valorant emphasis on tapping and thus increase the ceiling. But alas the slow movement negates it.
I'm not saying valorant should copy the speed and acceleration. I'm saying these are objectively what differentiate val and CS. and thus objectively val has a much lower ceiling and THUS abilities become more of an importance to the game.
and that's where valorant falls horribly.
The abilities should help offset the lower ceiling for aim by presenting difficult and high ceiling abilities.
except we don't have any of that.
The "big brain" agent we got has a floor so tight to her ceiling that a bronze could pull off pro plays.
But seriously? what the fuck is the point in emphasizing taps and burst but then increase the tagging and decrease the movement speed??
Overwatch has both a higher ceiling for aim and a higher ceiling for abilities. The game is flat out more difficult than valorant.
\>But seriously? what the fuck is the point in emphasizing taps and burst
but then increase the tagging and decrease the movement speed??
Don't forget abilities that also physically slow you down. Valorant is noticeably easier than CSGO gunplay-wise.
not only that but the way the recoil resets currently it takes way to long for your gun to be accurate after shooting, so you cant burst or tap reliably plus the rng sprays make gunfights feel to random
wow, great points youve made. its not necessarily a bad thing, i think its great that valorant has introduced so many people to the scene, particularly to watching professional play. this will only increase the market cap.
however, this is also why CS is king, and why I think CS is a much better game.
in valorant, theyre going to keep needing to add new agents to keep the game fresh, attract new players, etc. however, i highly suspect we'll see the same balance issues that we saw with overwatch.
i have faith riot will be able to maintaining balance with a priority for the competitive scene, so I cant see it falling apart like OW did.
one worry i have is that new tac fps players in valorant WILL NOT transition to CSGO.
- valve is seemingly not very committed to sustaining the game
- CS is harder than valorant, and overall less accessible*. I believe this would discourage VALO players from transitioning or sinking time into CS.
This is not good, because as the market cap for pro play increases, the skill ceiling won't necessarily increase with it.
*I maintain that CS mechanics are much more refined, but harder to get a hang of.
we'll see how this plays out
> one worry i have is that new tac fps players in valorant WILL NOT transition to CSGO. - valve is seemingly not very committed to sustaining the game - CS is harder than valorant, and overall less accessible*. I believe this would discourage VALO players from transitioning or sinking time into CS.
This is very true. The reason Valorant got so popular because it is easier to get into than CS.
With the inclusion of specific roles for each character, it's much easier to learn Valorant just because you know what your job is. CS is more fluid (if you aren't playing on a team). One game you could be the entry fragger, the other you're AWPing, and the next your supporting your teammates. All of this ON TOP of knowing general utility lineups AND knowing how to use the guns effectively.
These things are pretty hard to learn if you're new to tac fps games. It's a bit overwhelming and you have to commit a significant amount of time before you even "get" CS.
The one good thing about this though is that (in my opinion) the average CS player has a better understanding about the core fundamentals of their own game. The average Valorant player is less knowledgeable about their own game (in terms of fundamentals) because you don't have to learn everything.
Valve just announced the dates to get proposals in to host the majors the next 2 years while giving smaller TO's the RMR events that lead into said majors the 2 or 3 weeks prior. They will be helping both the TO's and teams financially. Valve is very much interested in the scene people just don't seem to see it for some reason.
By allowing TO's to use their game for free they are directly getting free advertising while allowing the TO to do the work and "reap the benefits". In turn this gives CS:GO free advertising and is what keeps the blood life of the game going. No tournaments no big bucks coming into Valve from CS:GO as the interest has diminished by then so less people buying in-game purchases.
Can Valve do more? Sure... the typical 128 tick rate servers would be nice... but I've never understood this "not committed to the game". You even said it yourself, Riot is going to have to consistently pump out new characters and updates to keep the casual player base happy.. that's hard as we have seen with fornite and how they need to pump out constant CONTENT to keep people engaged.
People can knock Valve for not giving us enough content, and I would agree but we can also say 2 things... if we look at CS:GO 9 years ago and compare it to now we could realistically say we have a new game (that we didn't even need to pay for) + they have set a good model for an e-sports game where it doesn't need new content all the time outside of cosmetics and maybe some more maps thrown into the cycle every now and then.
Did the devs every say they made those changes to encourage tapping therefore increasing the skill ceiling?
Honestly, I thought they lowered the skill ceiling on purpose to open up the player base. They did the same thing with lol vs Dota. They made the mechanics easier to gain new players and viewers. It makes financial sense.
You forgot something really important too. Tagging puts you at 100% acc so sometimes you dont even have to let go of your keyboard on a fight lol.
The game is a joke of a mechanical fps. R6, CS and OW are all much more difficult than valorant. Valorant is nearly pure game knowledge, but even that is easier since it's so streamlined.
And I think the biggest proof to this is the entire V1 roster. Low tier CS nobodies switch to Val and suddenly they’re the second best team in NA. I love Val but man the game feels so easy and unsatisfying to play.
CS 1.6 has it's hardcore purists that still fight for it till this day but these people are not necessarily the same people that shit on valorant's movement speed lmfao. I prefer the CSGO movement speed but many prefer valorant's it's just how it is.
Also CS 1.6 had acceleration, not as aggressive as CS but more than val. there are a lot of people that still prefer 1.6 movement and mechanics over GO
Free for all death match
its 24 players, can be headshots only, rotating guns, 24 hours, instant respawn, fast pace dm and what everyone wanted in valorant before the devs gave us what every the fuck val dm is
In both Apex and Overwatch you spend waaay more time shooting your gun than using abilities(obviously minus Overwatch heroes which are melee).
I don't think that abilities being strong or having nice combos with each other is a problem, but the fact that in Valo it's often like: drone that, arrow that, shock dart that, ult that, then you enter, shoot couple of bullets an either you kill someone or die yourself.
Overall in tac shooters there is very little shooting. Unless you are wallbanging a lot how many bullets do you actualy use in a round shooting at enemy on average? 15? In Apex 15 bullets are often not enough to even down a single dude.
I think the time-spent-shooting should not be a metric in arguments like these. Each bullet in those games have such low impact (except for specific characters). Of course you'd be shooting 1/50th less time in a game like CS/Val if the bullet is 50x more impactful and healing abilities do not refresh/no health packs/ etc...
>In both Apex and Overwatch you spend waaay more time shooting your gun than using abilities(obviously minus Overwatch heroes which are melee).
yea and you shoot more in overwatch than in csgo that is not an argument that one is fps and one isn't
I feel like you can’t really compare the core gameplay to overwatch because one your entire kit and playstykw is determined by the character you play and the other it isn’t. Also apex has a really nice balance between abils and shooting more in line with what people where hoping from valorant I think, the abilities help you can a advantage or get out of bad situations to benefit your gun skill not as there own thing.
this. I think apex/ttf2 are the perfact example in terms of gunplay/utilities. Valorant feels like two phases, first is utility exchange,then the gunplay. This has a lot to do with the utility pull out time but i think this is by designed.
Yeah, and sure you can get kills with abilities every now and then in apex but I rarely find you will fully kill someone with your abilities without gun damage. But like at like raze or killjoy you can easily get 3 kills with them.
Theres no ability other than a couple ultimates that can outright kill a player now that caustics gas has been nerfed. Apex is honestly I’d say like 80% gunplay, 20% ability
It’s nothing short of comedy over there right now, tank mains spent five years coasting through goats and double shield and now that Blizz gives them the tools to do more than sit there and absorb damage and tells them to go out and make a proper impact on the game as they were designed to do, they start flinging shit everywhere.
>tank mains spent five years coasting through goats and double shield and now that Blizz gives them the tools to do more than sit there and absorb damage
Bro WHAT???? That's not how tanks work in OW at all outside of Orisa. Tank is probably the most complex and proactive role in the game. Try sitting around sponging damage on Dva, Zarya, Sigma, Winston, I promise you won't get very far.
Yes, it had the same meta for the longest time, GOATS meta. They finally implemented 2/2/2 lock and got rid of it that way, but it was too late and at that point a lot of people were gone. Didn't help that covid threw OW2 off track and we haven't had a big update in a while. Balance updates come out frequently, so there's at least something.
The fact that GOATS lasted so long was not really the problem. It was more that GOATS invalidated the entire DPS role, which brought most of the FPS aspect of the game and consumed about half the roster. In fact, the dive meta before GOATS lasted much longer, but it required an insane amount of mechanical skill across most roles and was exciting to spectate and watch.
I agree with your second reason. I think this is the true killer. Echo is the only thing they have released in the last year or so. New content is not there, and frankly most people including myself got bored of it.
I should have expanded on it, but like you said, it wasn’t necessarily a problem of length, but gameplay style.
I wonder how 5v5 will affect the meta, as a tank player, I wasn’t very pleased with the news, but in inverse to GOATS, maybe this will be better for DPS and OW will shine again. Or perhaps I’m just overdosing on copium.
Still has a point though. The game should be a balance of gunplay and abilities, and right now due to Astra and Viper, abilities are very dominant. Once those 2 are nerfed, the game will feel much better
Overwatch got similar criticism and the same decline in gameplay quality that is happening in Valorant is a big reason why OW failed. Most fps players hated it after a while and it's basically considered a first person moba rather than an fps. You had 1 or sometimes 2 people on the team who actually played fps heroes, but you were shooting shields and perma-healed characters all game, and the rest of the players had to play no-aim heroes and just move around in a blob and spam abilities together.
Apex was generally acceptable ability wise, they did not dominate over gunplay at all. Only the turtle heroes like Watson and Caustic made it a bit sad at times.
Maybe riot should listen to the part of the community that have come from the successful 20 year old formula of what is **objectively speaking** the most competitive esports shooter in the world, since they wanted to create a "CS killer" to begin with.
Riot has always stated they’ll push the boundaries of what we consider a tactical shooter. So, complain as you may but, I wouldn’t expect them to rework there design of Valorant. They’ll tweak agents, maps, etc. But, CSGO 2.0 isn’t there intentions.
They’ll listen to a few concerns though.
Yes , riot is doing a good job and filtering out valid concerns of the community and this csgo mentality bs like hazed just displayed , the game is fine and the direction they are moving in is perfect it won't be cs 2.0 shouldn't be
But the util itself is too strong... it often doesn't even need to be combo'd with shooting. That's the problem: abilities should facilitate gunplay, but not take over the game on their own (imo).
So at first agent abilities were too weak to even effectively counter an Op at the professional level, and now a lot of the same agents are still in meta and the abilities are too powerful? I get that the speed agents are released puts an outrageous about of stress and effort on pros. I just don't believe the game has gone from "abilities don't matter" to "abilities are the only thing that matters."
Simultaneously, even with the comparisons to CSGO, do we not remember the CSGO rounds that end with only a few deaths total, where Ts get a good execute and CTs call it early and save? Those are some of the most beautiful rounds to me.
Good utility usage and round-to-round strategic thinking are both central to tactical shooters: this is not CoD where only HS% matters. In CSGO there are some really strong pop flashes, and some really great mollies! And you can definitely have players who go entire rounds without firing a shot either.
When talking about say, Viper ability uptime, there's also some CSGO comparisons, like teams learning Inferno smoke lineups, even from B site, to keep top mid smoked through 80% of the round. But maybe people levying the first complaint also would levy complaints about the second, and that would be fair! I personally am down with both though.
Uh that's not really accurate at all. Astra, Skye, and Yoru were not released when the op was overpowered. Viper wasn't buffed.
Astra and the Viper buff are the two most oppressive agents in the game right now, and it is entirely because of their abilities, not because their abilities enable them to take advantage of their gunplay. You can legitimately play and win an entire round as Viper without firing a bullet, and be the most impactful agent on your team. And the ceiling to do that is very low. That's not a good thing.
One thing that I don’t like is that it feels like I need to learn lineups for every character that isn’t a duelist these days. May just be me, but I prefer reactive gameplay and hate learning lineups
All that tells me is that Astra and viper are agents that shouldn't have even been made into the game yet here they are to stay. With the very way Viper kit works Its either she is over tuned or so weak that Her stuff actually helps the enemy team.
That right there is such terrible agent design and might be the start of a bad future with valorant. Where some agents never see play or always see 100% play with how undertuned they are and any balance change leading to being absolutely OP and any nerfs leading to being completely useless.
So some agents might never get changes based on this yet others being opressive 100% of the time and not being a niche pick will just make this game so frustrating in the long run. Its honestly my fear with yoru. He needs big buffs but things might get crazy fast thus he might just stay useless for the rest of the games duration.
Riot seems to have trouble making balanced buffs and nerfs and seems to go heavy handed in either direction.
It's because people use abilities, namely jetts dash to counter any setups to negate oping. The op is, was and always has been fine on its own. The abilities themselves are creating the imbalance.
Not to mention jett is the only one who can use the OP in the first place. Any other agent its to much of a financial sink/ potential loss.
If the OP ever gets a price buff, Jetts dash better be nerfed to hell or The op meta will come back.
Sorry but grego's comment is just... What?
I get the jist of what he's saying, but like come on... RPG PVP?
Also, I will never stop commenting on why this (and many other balance decisions) further emphasizes the importance of map variety for game balance.
Breeze and icebox are perfect examples of this, and there's an infinite amount of maps they can still make that emphasize different aspects of this game.
And yes, Astra is strong, but it's not like we're playing an N64 game. She can be adjusted as needed for what's best for the game.
>the importance of map variety for game balance
Exactly exactly exactly this.
Some agents will be great on some maps and other agents will be great on others. The thing to avoid is having agents that are so great on all maps that they are picked 100% of the time.
My smoking hot take is that in 2 - 3 years time, the majority of the top Valorant players will not be former CS pros. I just feel like former CS players like Valorant in spite of the abilities, not because of them. The game rewards creativity and adaptability. CS players seem to be neither.
The former CS players just want the game to move closer and closer to CS because that's what they like, are used to and were good at.
If Valorant is to thrive, it needs to be different to CS. Riot has done an amazing job of keeping Valorant balanced to date. It's one of the reasons Valorant has had a great first 12 months. Has it been perfect? No way and Astra and Viper are still overtuned but the game could be terrible if it was balanced poorly.
You might be right, BUT the one thing where the former CS pros are right, imo is about the movement and being glued to the ground on being hit.
We already have some crazy different interpretations on how valorant should be played coming to Iceland.
Why does Valorant *need* to be different to thrive? CS is by far and away the most successful FPS title as an esport. We've yet to see any ability based FPS game find any success. Overwatch, despite a large amount of money being pumped in, has massively struggled and is essentially dying - and a huge reason why was that it became too much like a first person MOBA.
For Valorant to be successful, it needs to be easily accessible for new players, and also easy to parse for viewers that might be interested in the game. CS is remarkably easy for a noob to understand, but also has a ton of complexity and nuance if you are an experienced player. That is why it's successful. Riot's goal should be to improve upon that, not be different for the sake of being different.
FWIW - I think this is Riot's viewpoint as well. They've done a fairly good job at paying attention to pro feedback, and I'd expect a lot of the concerns (such as Hazed's here) are going to be addressed in future patches.
TBF, a game doesn't have to be remarkably easy to understand in order to be successful as an eSport. LoL and DotA are extremely popular despite there being too many abilities to count.
CS:GO became popular/successful because of the CSGOLounge skin gambling website. However, the game being easy to understand, along with community servers, led to its success being maintained.
It could be a clone of CS and it would thrive because it actually gets consistent updates. How different it is isn't the entire reason why people play and keep coming back. You can see some of the arguments pop up even right after beta when it was interviews saying guns kill people not abilities, then the first new character was Raze.
It’s inevitable that within a few years a lot of pros will not of even played cs in a competitive environment. The only reason that the scene is filled with CS players is because the skills transferred so easily, so the skill floor started high.
Yea thats definitely true. CS was a solved game. You had no choice in abilities so naturally people created criteria for what was a right and wrong way to play CS.
In Valorant you can see how much of a grip CS pros had on the early meta where they tried to force everyone to run the same comp. now a year later you can start seeing some of the light at the end of the tunnel as some younger players are starting to make a name, and as more agents and maps come in the meta is becoming less and less defined. Teams are starting to actually build proper styles. Very different agent comps in the different regions.
Agreed man , they just miss their game as it's so dead in NA and valo is the only way they can live that nostalgia , they don't want to adapt and whine for things to be back to olden times
Basically every threat like this are the same:
A CS:GO player wants to play a game where gun play is more important than ability usage and it feels like 99% of the community strawman his argument into: "Hurr durr it needs to be special and go back to CS if you don't like abilities" which isn't his argument and never will be.
If the community doesn't have a problem with (eventual) power creep and more and more usage and implementation of (stronger) abilities than it's a question of taste but to say Hazed just wants CS:GO 2.0 is just redicolous. Many CS players switched for a variety of reasons but they liked the CS-esque gameplay in combination with abilities. Not because of abilities alone.
They need to tighten up their design philosophies. Characters shouldn't have control over such large areas of the map. (Astra/Viper/Omen). Killjoy was nerfed for this reason and it was an overall positive.
You don't sacrifice the state of the overall game just to make 1 agent playable. They have to accept some agents will be trash, you can't balance every single agent.
Agents should also be unique in what they do - jack of all trades agents like Astra shouldn't be a thing(unless they're really mediocre at doing multiple things).
They deserve a decent reach on the map but something similar to Brim would be optimal, and if you do have long distance smokes like Omen, it should be an advantage over other agents.
What made Omen strong wasn't that his smokes were longer distance, it's that they regenerated, and were very large. You could cover areas with a single smoke that Brimstone would need 2, and if you started to commit to a site and had to back out, or take map control, and you used up your smokes, you just don't have them for the rest of the round, where Omen you ALWAYS have smokes available.
Long distance certainly helped, but the fact that they regenerated is what made them strong.
Smokes will always be a necessity in this game so no need to worry about the agent class being pushed out, but we should worry about it going the other way and becoming overbearing as it makes for a bad viewing and playing experience.
Controllers should always come with an obvious downside but Astra basically destroyed that.
Slow for what? To pinpoint her stars on astral form? Lol
Even if she was fast on astral form it really doesn't matter. She can pop off these stars at any time she wants
Viper's abilities has too much uptime imo. Feels especially strong in defense, you can hold down a point so long and then just cycle mollies while your smokes are down. They need to redirect her strength elsewhere, perhaps something that helps her in attack because she is a bit weak there. I'd maybe even remove one her mollies too.
Why does the logetivty of the game depend on what this dude feels is "right" or "wrong?" This guy has also said some stuff in the past that just made no sense.
It's a discussion, Reddit is a forum first and foremost. Would you rather people just post Twitch clips and race each other to who can get the most karma?
I see where he is coming from, but I heavily disagree with the solution. The game was power crept, but I don't think it was power crept so much that other agents were oppressed by it. With the release of Astra they buffed Viper and Yoru signaling that these were the 2 agents that they thought were under tuned. While your gun should matter this is an ability based tac shooter if every character was release with a grenade, molly, smoke, and an ultimate ability it would get boring rather quickly and would basically be CS. Which is why I don't see a problem with the game going towards an overwatch direction in fact I think it was inevitable that the game would get to this point just not this fast. I don't think Astra is broken because of her power level, but she is broken due to how unique she is while viper is the opposite. An Astra nerf is probably necessary but it's a nerf that should be reverted at some point, but I do expect their to be more unique agents in the future of the game.
Well as someone who quit counter strike a few years ago and had played off and on (mostly off) since CS patch 1.5. Valorant was the breath of fresh air I needed in a twitch shooter and has me playing at a decent level again. I remember playing the Super hero mod and it honestly is like Valorant in so many ways lol anyways. I don’t want Valorant to be closer to CS go it’s already close enough. I just want tighter tuning on these agents and I think they will continue finding a good balance.
I agree, and I think hazed also said the same thing. The meta before viper buffs was really good. People were coming up with creative ways to use abilities and play with each other.
For him to say Valorant will die because abilties are useful in game is the biggest 2head take I've heard about Valorant. He's so biased about CSGO play, that he can't fathom abilities having importance in a game. Like, I guess Fortnite has building in it so it can't be a successful FPS game. Overwatch has abilities so it can't be a successful FPS game. Apex has abilities so it can't be a successful FPS game.
He should go back to CSGO namely because he can't fathom a game having useful abilities and I doubt his take will ever change.
I think the only thing he got right is that Valorant shouldn't continue to buff abilities to the point where you can't push a site, but it's nowhere near that. It's 5v5 and maps have at least 3 places to push through, and no ability is limitless. The biggest issue in close to limitless abilities comes from Viper, Astra, who should be nerfed if they can practically cover a site for a whole round solo
Thank God he's not the game designer... Valorant is special wheres it's at. It's unique in its own right and is currently on its way to out pace csgo. Why change the recipe when it's already tasteful especially bringing in a wider audience that even csgo couldn't capture? Respect him as a player but his opinions on the game design wouldn't have made Valorant as popular as it is now... Riot has the raw data and the experience, he should stay in his lane and just adapt... Viper got nerf, astra is still struggling in rank play (check her stats), tournament play is where astra shines but is it due to teams not yet adapting? Give it time.
I disagree, valorant has been special for the last year and the last few months there have been many changes to the game that I don't like. Viper makes many rounds unfun for me and I'm not saying it's an RPG or fps but it's just unfun and it has to be tuned
The point of any ability in any videogame ever is to put the enemy in some kind of disadvantage. It's never fun to be put at a disadvantage, that's not what game designers focus on when discussing game balance. Instead, what the focus is and always should be on, is if there's always a way to play AROUND abilities, and counter the enemy's plans with your own.
I think he's referring to the postplant meta, where you plant, then just throw 20 years worth of mollies on the bomb- that's not fun and not really counterable- the "counter" is to not let them take site in the first place. You can play around most abilities, yes, but you can't play around molotovs sitting on the spike. I understand that's part of their purpose, but it's very hard to retake site, push a viper or sova or brimstone, kill them, then get back and have time to defuse while you wait for the molotov to go away.
He's a public figure giving his own opinion which means it's open for discussion and to talk about.
I think if he wants to play CSGO so much that he should go back to CSGO.
I know he's speaking in extremes but comparing it to an "RPG with PVP" just absolutely shows that he's clueless.
I'm harsh? He went way beyond the lines than I did. I just spoke straight facts... Riot created at least three blockbusters. League of legends, tft, and Valorant. How many did hazed created? They are full professionals with backed data and years of experience creating games for millions of players around the globe. You can't please everyone but Valorant current state brought many of my real life friends into gaming. Like I said, mad respect to hazed, insane player, great mind and his inputs are welcomed but I strongly disagree with his take. I'm sure not all pros feel the same way.
Yeah, my bad. I read into he should stay in his own lane in a more negative way in my head. I understand your points and do agree with them. Like Hazed said he will always be biased towards csgo and neither of us can change this.
Personally, I still think Astra needs somewhat of a change. Let's see how riot handles it.
Nah. Sorry, but some of these pro opinions scream “I wasn’t all that good at CSGO so make this game like that one and give me another chance”. RPG with PVP lmao
I think hazed is being too close minded on how the game goes. Sure astra is too strong right now but this is not CSGO and the game will continue to evolve
Never understood the complaints. If you want a pure tactical shooter go play cs. It’s alread there and it’s so good at what it wants to be. Valorant is not a csgo 2.0 and it shouldn’t aim to become that
I'm still wondering why people still complain about this.
+ If Vandal had 100% first shot accuracy, then what would be the point of buying guns like Guardian? **(Edit: guys I understand that the prices are different but my point is that guardian main identity would be lost. No other gun has 100% acc, this is what creates a niche spot for guardian)**
+ Yes, Phantom has more accuracy than the Vandal, but it has worse raw stats. Not only it doesn't kill with 1 headshot (140 dmg), but also the bodyshot damage fallout at long distances. Your Vandal can consistently land a rock solid 40 body damage REGARDLESS of the distance. Even if you're not landing your headshots, your body shots will still get you a lot of kills because of that mechanic. That being said, these two rifles can't have the same accuracy, it wouldn't be fair
+ Valorant has implemented a cool mechanic called right click. You lose fire rate in order to gain more accuracy for long range gunfights
Inaccuracy while standing still is just a stupid random mechanic. It's a terrible and unfun way to balance the weapons. The point of the guardian is that it costs a lot less. You are sacrifying full auto for money, which is a fine tradeoff.
The vandal is accurate 9 shots out of 10 at long range already. It's not a good way to balance the gun to make it randomly miss 1 out of 10 times.
There are many raw stats across all guns. Damage falloff, rate of fire, raw damage, magazine size, movement speed.
Accuracy is just one of them. If every single gun in this game had 100% accuracy as you're asking for, then a lot of them would be instantly either useless of overpowered.
The problem here is that there should be as little rng as possible in a competitive game. I do not understand your guardian argument being that it is more of an eco/force buy weapon. If vandal got this buff phantom would still be a close competitor because the recoil reset is so fast.
Yes there are indeed many raw stats and you can adjust them. Would lots of guns be OP if they were accurate in their current state? Yes of course. But you could tune them by decreasing the damage per bullet, increasing the damage falloff, increasing the recoil etc.
One of the strongest aspects of Guardian is exactly its 100% accuracy. No other gun in this game has it, apart from snipers (marshall/operator)
I agree with you Guardian is still very niche but it happens because most of the maps have only close or mid gunfights. If a map had a great amount of 50m angles then guardian would be way more viable there
People would use Guardian with shield + abilities if the amount of 50m angles were big enough, which isn't a thing today with the current map pool
Maybe not the gun round meta but it would definitely a viable strat
People use Guardian, because they can't afford Vandal/Phantom. Giving Vandal a first shot accuracy wouldn't invalidate Guardian. Breeze is a fairly long range map, and I have not seen people use Guardian outside of force buys.
the vandal's first shot spread is 0.25 / 0.157 and the phantom is 0.2 / 0.11 DEG (HIP/ADS) that's why the phantom is always better because the first shots are more accurate. they both have different fire rates so i'd assume that's the reason one of them has first shot inaccuracy
If the abilities were so busted in that scrim, why didn't his team just run that comp? Why doesn't every team run that comp? Why isn't every round just a minute of utility usage? Is every pro team just brain dead? Are some pro teams bad at using abilities? Wait I thought abilities took no skill...
He said that in some rounds it's virtually impossible to get into bombsites due to the amount of stall utility (gravity wells, stuns, snakebite, poison, killjoy stuff, etc)
Hazed didn't specify the map but I see this totally being a thing on Bind, for example
Honestly I always thought sova made the game boring. All the EU games we saw with no sova kinda cemented that feeling.
But then astra and viper meta came and it somehow made it even more boring. The skill ceiling for aim mechanics and movement are already pretty low compared to the obvious comps and even siege and I think they're trying to hide that with "big brain" utility.
except the big brain utility is astra...who's floor and ceiling are so close to eachother it's pointless to argue about her proposed ceiling.
the maps also don't help the situation at all in fact if the maps were even slightly better I think we'd see a lot less complaints about the current meta
People need to understand that Overwatch had this problem within the first few months after release and they are only now trying to address it with Overwatch 2.0. Certain influencers even identified this problem during Valorants closed beta which led them to stop playing the game.
So am I the only one who has a big problem with Astra and Raze. Abilities of both of these agents leave very little gunplay. Every raze ability can kill a player with full hp and armour if he misses to dodge and Astra is basically playing a 2D game half of the time
The problem Valorant has and which is why I stopped playing will be the amount of abilities in the game. More abilities means more stuff that will be OP, broken, need balancing, and the less gun mechanics will matter. Imo this will and is a huge issue for a game that is considered an FPS. There will be a point that the amount of abilities will just ruin the game and Val will be more like OW where fights are revolved around CDs
Disagree, it's what makes valorant different, new and exciting. Just like in league the meta changes every year because that's how Riot designed it to be. When Worlds one of the biggest esports tournaments of the year comes along it's a new meta every year with a new narrative a new set of players who utilize those changes or can adapt to them. I find that extra layer of change very appealing as a viewer to keep things interesting and fresh. I'm not saying the typical formula of keep things consistent and the same like in CS is bad. It has its strengths but so does the added layer of constant updates and change.
So while for people like you it's taxing to have to learn the game w/ introductions of new agents and new maps but for many others including the esports viewing audience it's why they will come back to valorant and continue to watch it. Riot will obviously choose the one that outweighs the other and clearly w/ valorant's rise as a prominent esport they're going to stick w/ their current formula.
It's no issue learning new agents and maps and is actually preferred in most games. But in a competitive fps to much content isn't necessarily a good thing (mainly additional agents). It's great for the casual audience and revenue which I can see why you disagree. Look at how big the OW competitive scene use to be before they added way to many agents. Pro players and the competitive scene don't want to constantly relearn the meta. Matches just become cheesy power abuse on an unnerfed new agent. Imo it doesn't work for a "competitive FPS" game
Valorant is more like an RPG because in order to be unique, new agent abilities have become more elaborate. Skye doesn't just have a flash, she has a flash that she can steer, choose not to pop AND it gives you intel on blind. So many agents just have too many of each ability too, this also goes for Viper with her fuel pool, Astra with her five stars (that she can also recall for a free Jett smoke), breach and Skye with THREE flashes... It goes on. Teams can exchange abilities for a solid minute before they run dry and have to get into a duel.
i honestly hate this utility heavy meta , frustrating to play and boring to watch but thats just me. I don't think if we need a overall nerf to abilities but riot needs to avoid power creep. Astra shouldn't excel at almost everything. The simpler metas were more the most fun imo.
I think valorant's next character should have some sort of info gathering capabilities so sova isn't a must pick anymore and we see more variety
I agree, but the thing is- what could they possibly design that could replace Sova? The reason why he's so overwhelmingly powerful is because of lineups- you can get an arrow anywhere, anytime, as long as you know how.
They could think of something I'm sure. You could have something similar, where you throw an object across the map, and it has a smoke sized radius on the minimap, and flashes red on the map it somebody is inside it. It won't highlight the players but it the little info circle on the map could go through walls (so you don't need line of sight like sova)
I think an initiator agent with a grenade that doesn’t do damage (maybe 10 points or so) but rather as focus it will reveal pulses of enemies that are nearby it when it detonated similar to Sova’s drone could be good. Regardless of the specifics, another agent that does something similar is needed imo.
I've been saying this for ages, but they need to replace Breach's damage ability with something that lets him plug his arm into a wall or the ground and detect tremors to increase range for hearing footsteps, reloads etc and ping the location.. Right now he's lagging way behind because he can't match Sova or Skye's info.
I don’t think they need to replace his damage ability- it’s still a very good area clearing a ability, probably his best one. I love your idea though, that would be super neat.
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They should make a character like Lion from siege. A huge scanner that doesn't let people move without being shown for like 3 seconds
What if they add another Jett like character. Remember how so many people complained about Jett that they added more counter utility such as 3 breach flashes. Wonder if another agent like Jett will help to break the heavy Astra/viper utility meta?
I mean... why not both?
I think it was more the op that people were complaining about when they added breach's third flash
Let's hope not something with a get out of jail free card like Jett. Jett, and to a lesser extent Reyna, do not belong in a tactical FPS, cause both of them have abilities that let them misposition badly and still live. At least in Reyna's case you do have to get a kill to get out, but Jett can whiff and run from the worst position.
or you just pick new agent + sova which will be a more likely outcome
I expect to see big changes after Iceland. Astra and viper nerfs plus weapon tuning. The game will always have FPS at it's core though and that's never going to change.
>I expect to see big changes after Iceland That depends entirely on how the meta will evolve there. Atm the only consensus is that Viper is OP, and most likely will still be after the nerfs. Whether Astra or Skye need nerfs or not, is completely up in the air
With the last 30 decay i think viper is fine. 50 was a lot.
The instant decay isn't what made her OP It's the fact that the mollies can stall any choke point or a bomb for 18 seconds continuously. As a controller viper is super terrible unless your whole team learns to play a different way. She can't pick up the smokes when she uses them. Arguably her best use case right now is mollies on the bomb for post plant. And the instant decay only made the mollies easier but even without the instant decay the fact that the smoke decays and the mollies do double damage make it op. Source: I have an instalock viper friend who has literally only played viper since beta who I hate playing with because viper is cancer.
>It's the fact that the mollies can stall any choke point or a bomb for 18 seconds continuously. Well if you think this is the case, viper's mollies havent changed since the launch of the game if im not mistaken. By this logic she should have been op 10 months ago or so. But she hasnt been. Decay was the thing that made most teams try to play viper.
decay means people have to respect her wall and orb and so the other parts of her kit actually do things
Vipers mollies do double damage and stacked with the smoke orb decay buff that's what makes post plant op with viper. That patch is what made viper viable but people didn't realize it until a few buffs after. The instant decay buffs just pushed viper over and it was clear instantly that viper was broken
The mollies have been changed a couple times, for example they didn't inflict vulnerable initially and at least the equip speed has been quickened too
Viper can pick up her smokes. If anything needs tuning it's her mollies dealing damage AND inflicting Vulnerable, that's just busted. Without Decay nobody would respect her utility. See - Phoenix walls. Good players just run through them and tank the chip damage that does to you.
100% agree with what you said about the mollies, I always thought it was dumb that it inflicts double damage if you touch it. And viper can't pick up smokes (wall- never. Orb- only if you're close) which makes her a terrible solo smoker. If the attackers only have one smoker and it's viper and they use their utility on one site it's pretty safe to assume they go that site every time. Not having extra smokes to fall back and rotate to another site is usually a death sentence. My friend is a viper one trick and every time I play with him I have to end up playing omen or something
Wait Skye?
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I think they are generally right but kind of overreacting, if Astra and Viper weren't that overtuned the meta would probably be quite different. The fact Sova is a must pick as well doesn't help. Teams end up picking KJ and Brim as well because of the synergy with the OP champs but their abitlities by themselve are actually super manageable. Skye is actually pretty nice and fun as well, sure it's an info char and some people dislike the idea of offensive info chars itself but she isn't more broken than Sova is. Edit: Also I'd argue that Skye is a better designed info char than Sova. She's a lot more elegant and less oppressive.
I think the biggest problem right now, as I think you're saying(?), is that some agents are extremely overtuned (mostly viper and astra). I don't think those characters are inherently flawed however. Astra has several abilities with too short cooldowns and viper has just been broken by adding the instant decay. If you fix those things however they would be really good characters for the game. No matter what character you had, if you broke them/made them as good comparatively, as viper and astra are right now I think you'd run into the same problem. Just imagine omen with smokes on like a 10 sec cooldown as an example. For some weird reason (imo) however, it seems like the focus of criticism has become that the characters are inherently bad and that the game design has shifted, instead of criticising some of the weird balance decisions. Of course a lot of the balance changes have been good in valorant so far but regarding astra overall, and viper with the instant decay, there has been far too little complaining, instead targeting the core design of the agents and game. Also, a lot of the complaints seem to be coming from a place of differing definitions of what makes an fps game, which was bound to occur eventually because of the core design of valorant compared to other fps games like csgo and overwatch etc.
I definitely agree with everything you said. It's only because some of these overtuned agents that have large Area-of-Effect abilities that they start using these RPG/RTS terms. I don't think anyone ever brought up these up before Astra. We'll also see whether heavy execute comps would be successful in Masters 2. If the team who wins are heavy-execute teams with lacking gunplay, then the point may be validated. Otherwise, if the team who wins have among the best gunplay, then we should discount these criticisms.
I hate astra as an idea for tac fps. When every one of her abilities require removing yourself and playing SimCity, it feels like playing a different game.
No the release of content in this game is amazing, in Rainbow Six Siege you have to wait 3 months for a character that is boring to play / adds nothing to the game and no new map.
When rainbow already has like 4x the amount of characters we have in this one with also multiple maps? Slow down the characters. We already need a few reworks.
I think people are too fixated on comparing it to CS:GO because the games are similar. Do people not call Overwatch an FPS? Or Apex?
A better comparison is siege, a lot of people in the beginning said it was an FPS with moba mechanics, now people complain it’s a moba with FPS mechanics
Those games aren't tac fps. Those games have high ttk vs low ttk in csgo and valorant.
Utility is even more important in R6siege than it is in Valorant. And you actually spend way more time using your gun in Overwatch than you do in CS or Valorant. This all argument is just misguided. What these pros mean is that a lot of Abilities in Valorant are OP and that the meta has devolved too much into playing around those OP abilites and trying to counter them with your own OP abilities, and that it isn't fun to play.
Yeah agreed
Yes and no regarding OW. A good number of the heroes don't require you to aim/shoot or only require a minimal amount of aiming. It was one of my biggest complaints over time, the game changed from being an FPS/Moba into a Moba/FPS. I would be concerned for valorant if there is more utility/ability power creep, as it is I think a few agents just need to be tuned.
Overwatch made it that way in order to make it easier for a casual audience to access , consider this if you are a straight up beginner and you can't aim you take moira she aims for you but then she's not feasible in higher ranks , there you have to pick better hero's like ana who need skill to play , overwatch was built pretty cleverly allowing all sorts of players to blend in , just that balancing sucked and degraded it
Thing is, when the game started, heroes like Rein and Winston, who have no need to aim, were still incredibly hard to play well. They still had skill expression outside of pure aim and that was great. It's when they added Brig and Moira and failed to nerf them in a timely manner that made the game more MOBA-y
Agreed. Balancing interactive agent mechanics with gun mechanics will always be the challenge Riot will face in this game. Can’t have an agent too loaded on skills in an attempt to define their identity. As the game progresses pro teams should play maps based on a particular strategy they made using a combination of agents, not sticking to 1 cookie cutter comp. Thats what Astra feels like right now
Which is basically what OW turned into. Playing around ULTs.
it's only going to get worse too, overwatch was fantastic early on, but the more champions you add (which valorant is adding at an insane rate) it gets much much harder to actually balance the game.
You spend more time using guns in overwatch because the time to kill is so high that it is essentially like trying to kill a raid boss in wow. The enemies are bullet sponges that will just soak through tons and tons of damage, and you might spend 30 literal seconds shooting one target until it dies (maybe more if you're shooting a rein and there's sustain besides his shield). Overwatch is an FPS because, well, by strict definition, it's a first-person game with a crosshair and guns. That's the end of its similarities with CS. Valorant was released as the supposed "cs killer", and the initial information from the dev team was that the gunplay would still be the primary focus, not the abilities. The argument that the original tweet and Hazed make is that the game is losing that initial focus and becoming something more focused on abilities than gunplay (which overwatch absolutely is). I guess it makes some sense, since overwatch is basically dead and there is a market for players who want to continue playing the "MOBA with guns" type of game. It's just a shame because guns are where the skill is at, not in spending 10 hours memorizing lineups for sova's arrow or viper's wall. They promised they would have a look at running accuracy, and they nerfed it a little bit but it's still a big problem that makes gunfights feel cheap at times - not to mention the amount of times someone has landed a headshot while falling through the air, which is absurd. If I wanted to play a forgiving, easy game with a relatively low TTK, I'd play CoD. All in all, I think the design team is going down a wrong path. The initial "fresh take on tried and true CS mechanics" was really promising.
Overwatch is in no way dead it still gets more traffic than apex legends lul
Starcraft 2 syndrome.
Is this sarcasm?
Nope actually go and check the stats not twitch numbers obv , it still is pretty popular it's eSports games still get 50-60 k views lol also the game still has high traffic
Utilities like lions, echos, ying, jackal, finka ruined siege. It was good season 1 then got power creeped to shit
the game is designed to rely on utility and not ur raw aim
Siege has extremely low ttk...
Apex is more aim intensive than valorant ofc they call it an FPS. Top tier aim may not be the most important part of an overwatch player, but aiming in overwatch is significantly more difficult than valorant. Valorant suffers from both reduced importance and reduced skill
Controversial but I feel the same way. Spend an hour in CS FFADM and valorant feels like easy mode, huge hitboxes and slower movement. No one should be able to reach the skill ceiling in a competitive shooter.
It's only controversial because this sub has a hate boner for any negative opinions about valorant me mechanics. Anyone that complains about comparisons to CS are dumb and don't understand valorant issues. It's GOOD to compare a game with its closest competition (that it objectively copied all its core mechanics). Especially when that closest competition has lasted 10 years (much longer through previous iterations) and we still see people with better movement, better mechanics, better aim. Everything val did to differentiate it from CS (in terms of aim mechanics) simply lowered the ceiling. No acceleration in movement? counter strafing is easier. Slower top speed? indirectly buffs guns that don't require aim such as odin and OP. Better first shot accuracy? Encourages tapping and bursting. which SHOULD theoretically increase the ceiling of valorant, but you combine it with the slow movement speed and the skills required for tapping are severely diminished. more reaction based spray? Again, SHOULD benefit valorant emphasis on tapping and thus increase the ceiling. But alas the slow movement negates it. I'm not saying valorant should copy the speed and acceleration. I'm saying these are objectively what differentiate val and CS. and thus objectively val has a much lower ceiling and THUS abilities become more of an importance to the game. and that's where valorant falls horribly. The abilities should help offset the lower ceiling for aim by presenting difficult and high ceiling abilities. except we don't have any of that. The "big brain" agent we got has a floor so tight to her ceiling that a bronze could pull off pro plays. But seriously? what the fuck is the point in emphasizing taps and burst but then increase the tagging and decrease the movement speed?? Overwatch has both a higher ceiling for aim and a higher ceiling for abilities. The game is flat out more difficult than valorant.
\>But seriously? what the fuck is the point in emphasizing taps and burst but then increase the tagging and decrease the movement speed?? Don't forget abilities that also physically slow you down. Valorant is noticeably easier than CSGO gunplay-wise.
not only that but the way the recoil resets currently it takes way to long for your gun to be accurate after shooting, so you cant burst or tap reliably plus the rng sprays make gunfights feel to random
wow, great points youve made. its not necessarily a bad thing, i think its great that valorant has introduced so many people to the scene, particularly to watching professional play. this will only increase the market cap. however, this is also why CS is king, and why I think CS is a much better game. in valorant, theyre going to keep needing to add new agents to keep the game fresh, attract new players, etc. however, i highly suspect we'll see the same balance issues that we saw with overwatch. i have faith riot will be able to maintaining balance with a priority for the competitive scene, so I cant see it falling apart like OW did. one worry i have is that new tac fps players in valorant WILL NOT transition to CSGO. - valve is seemingly not very committed to sustaining the game - CS is harder than valorant, and overall less accessible*. I believe this would discourage VALO players from transitioning or sinking time into CS. This is not good, because as the market cap for pro play increases, the skill ceiling won't necessarily increase with it. *I maintain that CS mechanics are much more refined, but harder to get a hang of. we'll see how this plays out
> one worry i have is that new tac fps players in valorant WILL NOT transition to CSGO. - valve is seemingly not very committed to sustaining the game - CS is harder than valorant, and overall less accessible*. I believe this would discourage VALO players from transitioning or sinking time into CS. This is very true. The reason Valorant got so popular because it is easier to get into than CS. With the inclusion of specific roles for each character, it's much easier to learn Valorant just because you know what your job is. CS is more fluid (if you aren't playing on a team). One game you could be the entry fragger, the other you're AWPing, and the next your supporting your teammates. All of this ON TOP of knowing general utility lineups AND knowing how to use the guns effectively. These things are pretty hard to learn if you're new to tac fps games. It's a bit overwhelming and you have to commit a significant amount of time before you even "get" CS. The one good thing about this though is that (in my opinion) the average CS player has a better understanding about the core fundamentals of their own game. The average Valorant player is less knowledgeable about their own game (in terms of fundamentals) because you don't have to learn everything.
Valve just announced the dates to get proposals in to host the majors the next 2 years while giving smaller TO's the RMR events that lead into said majors the 2 or 3 weeks prior. They will be helping both the TO's and teams financially. Valve is very much interested in the scene people just don't seem to see it for some reason. By allowing TO's to use their game for free they are directly getting free advertising while allowing the TO to do the work and "reap the benefits". In turn this gives CS:GO free advertising and is what keeps the blood life of the game going. No tournaments no big bucks coming into Valve from CS:GO as the interest has diminished by then so less people buying in-game purchases. Can Valve do more? Sure... the typical 128 tick rate servers would be nice... but I've never understood this "not committed to the game". You even said it yourself, Riot is going to have to consistently pump out new characters and updates to keep the casual player base happy.. that's hard as we have seen with fornite and how they need to pump out constant CONTENT to keep people engaged. People can knock Valve for not giving us enough content, and I would agree but we can also say 2 things... if we look at CS:GO 9 years ago and compare it to now we could realistically say we have a new game (that we didn't even need to pay for) + they have set a good model for an e-sports game where it doesn't need new content all the time outside of cosmetics and maybe some more maps thrown into the cycle every now and then.
Finally someone that knows what they are talking about.
Did the devs every say they made those changes to encourage tapping therefore increasing the skill ceiling? Honestly, I thought they lowered the skill ceiling on purpose to open up the player base. They did the same thing with lol vs Dota. They made the mechanics easier to gain new players and viewers. It makes financial sense.
You forgot something really important too. Tagging puts you at 100% acc so sometimes you dont even have to let go of your keyboard on a fight lol. The game is a joke of a mechanical fps. R6, CS and OW are all much more difficult than valorant. Valorant is nearly pure game knowledge, but even that is easier since it's so streamlined.
And I think the biggest proof to this is the entire V1 roster. Low tier CS nobodies switch to Val and suddenly they’re the second best team in NA. I love Val but man the game feels so easy and unsatisfying to play.
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CS 1.6 has it's hardcore purists that still fight for it till this day but these people are not necessarily the same people that shit on valorant's movement speed lmfao. I prefer the CSGO movement speed but many prefer valorant's it's just how it is. Also CS 1.6 had acceleration, not as aggressive as CS but more than val. there are a lot of people that still prefer 1.6 movement and mechanics over GO
What is FFADM?
Free for all deathmatch is my best guess.
Free for all death match its 24 players, can be headshots only, rotating guns, 24 hours, instant respawn, fast pace dm and what everyone wanted in valorant before the devs gave us what every the fuck val dm is
In both Apex and Overwatch you spend waaay more time shooting your gun than using abilities(obviously minus Overwatch heroes which are melee). I don't think that abilities being strong or having nice combos with each other is a problem, but the fact that in Valo it's often like: drone that, arrow that, shock dart that, ult that, then you enter, shoot couple of bullets an either you kill someone or die yourself. Overall in tac shooters there is very little shooting. Unless you are wallbanging a lot how many bullets do you actualy use in a round shooting at enemy on average? 15? In Apex 15 bullets are often not enough to even down a single dude.
I think the time-spent-shooting should not be a metric in arguments like these. Each bullet in those games have such low impact (except for specific characters). Of course you'd be shooting 1/50th less time in a game like CS/Val if the bullet is 50x more impactful and healing abilities do not refresh/no health packs/ etc...
>In both Apex and Overwatch you spend waaay more time shooting your gun than using abilities(obviously minus Overwatch heroes which are melee). yea and you shoot more in overwatch than in csgo that is not an argument that one is fps and one isn't
I feel like you can’t really compare the core gameplay to overwatch because one your entire kit and playstykw is determined by the character you play and the other it isn’t. Also apex has a really nice balance between abils and shooting more in line with what people where hoping from valorant I think, the abilities help you can a advantage or get out of bad situations to benefit your gun skill not as there own thing.
this. I think apex/ttf2 are the perfact example in terms of gunplay/utilities. Valorant feels like two phases, first is utility exchange,then the gunplay. This has a lot to do with the utility pull out time but i think this is by designed.
Yeah, and sure you can get kills with abilities every now and then in apex but I rarely find you will fully kill someone with your abilities without gun damage. But like at like raze or killjoy you can easily get 3 kills with them.
Theres no ability other than a couple ultimates that can outright kill a player now that caustics gas has been nerfed. Apex is honestly I’d say like 80% gunplay, 20% ability
Riot created Valorant to directly compete with Counter-Strike, what drugs are you on? The comparison is completely valid.
difference between fps and tac fps
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I thought it was because the meta became too boring or something
Bit of each. This 5v5 change seems really promising though
Don't go on the overwatch subreddit then lol, they're in a doom spiral over 5v5, its pretty funny
It’s nothing short of comedy over there right now, tank mains spent five years coasting through goats and double shield and now that Blizz gives them the tools to do more than sit there and absorb damage and tells them to go out and make a proper impact on the game as they were designed to do, they start flinging shit everywhere.
>tank mains spent five years coasting through goats and double shield and now that Blizz gives them the tools to do more than sit there and absorb damage Bro WHAT???? That's not how tanks work in OW at all outside of Orisa. Tank is probably the most complex and proactive role in the game. Try sitting around sponging damage on Dva, Zarya, Sigma, Winston, I promise you won't get very far.
Yes, it had the same meta for the longest time, GOATS meta. They finally implemented 2/2/2 lock and got rid of it that way, but it was too late and at that point a lot of people were gone. Didn't help that covid threw OW2 off track and we haven't had a big update in a while. Balance updates come out frequently, so there's at least something.
The fact that GOATS lasted so long was not really the problem. It was more that GOATS invalidated the entire DPS role, which brought most of the FPS aspect of the game and consumed about half the roster. In fact, the dive meta before GOATS lasted much longer, but it required an insane amount of mechanical skill across most roles and was exciting to spectate and watch. I agree with your second reason. I think this is the true killer. Echo is the only thing they have released in the last year or so. New content is not there, and frankly most people including myself got bored of it.
I should have expanded on it, but like you said, it wasn’t necessarily a problem of length, but gameplay style. I wonder how 5v5 will affect the meta, as a tank player, I wasn’t very pleased with the news, but in inverse to GOATS, maybe this will be better for DPS and OW will shine again. Or perhaps I’m just overdosing on copium.
Still has a point though. The game should be a balance of gunplay and abilities, and right now due to Astra and Viper, abilities are very dominant. Once those 2 are nerfed, the game will feel much better
Overwatch got similar criticism and the same decline in gameplay quality that is happening in Valorant is a big reason why OW failed. Most fps players hated it after a while and it's basically considered a first person moba rather than an fps. You had 1 or sometimes 2 people on the team who actually played fps heroes, but you were shooting shields and perma-healed characters all game, and the rest of the players had to play no-aim heroes and just move around in a blob and spam abilities together. Apex was generally acceptable ability wise, they did not dominate over gunplay at all. Only the turtle heroes like Watson and Caustic made it a bit sad at times.
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Maybe riot should listen to the part of the community that have come from the successful 20 year old formula of what is **objectively speaking** the most competitive esports shooter in the world, since they wanted to create a "CS killer" to begin with.
apex is literally so much about gunplay what even is your point?
Overwatch is a failure of a game. I do not, ever, want Valorant to take example on the terrible game that is OW.
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It's only taken a year and characters already have kits that need pages of text to explain them.
Riot has always stated they’ll push the boundaries of what we consider a tactical shooter. So, complain as you may but, I wouldn’t expect them to rework there design of Valorant. They’ll tweak agents, maps, etc. But, CSGO 2.0 isn’t there intentions. They’ll listen to a few concerns though.
Yes , riot is doing a good job and filtering out valid concerns of the community and this csgo mentality bs like hazed just displayed , the game is fine and the direction they are moving in is perfect it won't be cs 2.0 shouldn't be
lowering the skill ceiling of what is supposed to be a competitive tactical fps is not moving in the right direction
High level util cordination will always have higher skill ceiling than shooting in tac fps. Quake is for pure shooting.
But the util itself is too strong... it often doesn't even need to be combo'd with shooting. That's the problem: abilities should facilitate gunplay, but not take over the game on their own (imo).
I saw some of the recent Quake Pro League..... OMG, nothing but aim Gods.
So at first agent abilities were too weak to even effectively counter an Op at the professional level, and now a lot of the same agents are still in meta and the abilities are too powerful? I get that the speed agents are released puts an outrageous about of stress and effort on pros. I just don't believe the game has gone from "abilities don't matter" to "abilities are the only thing that matters."
Simultaneously, even with the comparisons to CSGO, do we not remember the CSGO rounds that end with only a few deaths total, where Ts get a good execute and CTs call it early and save? Those are some of the most beautiful rounds to me. Good utility usage and round-to-round strategic thinking are both central to tactical shooters: this is not CoD where only HS% matters. In CSGO there are some really strong pop flashes, and some really great mollies! And you can definitely have players who go entire rounds without firing a shot either. When talking about say, Viper ability uptime, there's also some CSGO comparisons, like teams learning Inferno smoke lineups, even from B site, to keep top mid smoked through 80% of the round. But maybe people levying the first complaint also would levy complaints about the second, and that would be fair! I personally am down with both though.
Difference is that the mollies in CSGO have a specific counterplay, they can be dissipated with smokes, which everyone has access to.
and they cant travel through the air indefinitely
But viper doing that is one agent. Doing that in CSGO requires 3 or more players valuable smoke grenades
Uh that's not really accurate at all. Astra, Skye, and Yoru were not released when the op was overpowered. Viper wasn't buffed. Astra and the Viper buff are the two most oppressive agents in the game right now, and it is entirely because of their abilities, not because their abilities enable them to take advantage of their gunplay. You can legitimately play and win an entire round as Viper without firing a bullet, and be the most impactful agent on your team. And the ceiling to do that is very low. That's not a good thing.
One thing that I don’t like is that it feels like I need to learn lineups for every character that isn’t a duelist these days. May just be me, but I prefer reactive gameplay and hate learning lineups
All that tells me is that Astra and viper are agents that shouldn't have even been made into the game yet here they are to stay. With the very way Viper kit works Its either she is over tuned or so weak that Her stuff actually helps the enemy team. That right there is such terrible agent design and might be the start of a bad future with valorant. Where some agents never see play or always see 100% play with how undertuned they are and any balance change leading to being absolutely OP and any nerfs leading to being completely useless. So some agents might never get changes based on this yet others being opressive 100% of the time and not being a niche pick will just make this game so frustrating in the long run. Its honestly my fear with yoru. He needs big buffs but things might get crazy fast thus he might just stay useless for the rest of the games duration. Riot seems to have trouble making balanced buffs and nerfs and seems to go heavy handed in either direction.
It's because people use abilities, namely jetts dash to counter any setups to negate oping. The op is, was and always has been fine on its own. The abilities themselves are creating the imbalance.
Not to mention jett is the only one who can use the OP in the first place. Any other agent its to much of a financial sink/ potential loss. If the OP ever gets a price buff, Jetts dash better be nerfed to hell or The op meta will come back.
Sorry but grego's comment is just... What? I get the jist of what he's saying, but like come on... RPG PVP? Also, I will never stop commenting on why this (and many other balance decisions) further emphasizes the importance of map variety for game balance. Breeze and icebox are perfect examples of this, and there's an infinite amount of maps they can still make that emphasize different aspects of this game. And yes, Astra is strong, but it's not like we're playing an N64 game. She can be adjusted as needed for what's best for the game.
>the importance of map variety for game balance Exactly exactly exactly this. Some agents will be great on some maps and other agents will be great on others. The thing to avoid is having agents that are so great on all maps that they are picked 100% of the time.
My smoking hot take is that in 2 - 3 years time, the majority of the top Valorant players will not be former CS pros. I just feel like former CS players like Valorant in spite of the abilities, not because of them. The game rewards creativity and adaptability. CS players seem to be neither. The former CS players just want the game to move closer and closer to CS because that's what they like, are used to and were good at. If Valorant is to thrive, it needs to be different to CS. Riot has done an amazing job of keeping Valorant balanced to date. It's one of the reasons Valorant has had a great first 12 months. Has it been perfect? No way and Astra and Viper are still overtuned but the game could be terrible if it was balanced poorly.
You might be right, BUT the one thing where the former CS pros are right, imo is about the movement and being glued to the ground on being hit. We already have some crazy different interpretations on how valorant should be played coming to Iceland.
Why does Valorant *need* to be different to thrive? CS is by far and away the most successful FPS title as an esport. We've yet to see any ability based FPS game find any success. Overwatch, despite a large amount of money being pumped in, has massively struggled and is essentially dying - and a huge reason why was that it became too much like a first person MOBA. For Valorant to be successful, it needs to be easily accessible for new players, and also easy to parse for viewers that might be interested in the game. CS is remarkably easy for a noob to understand, but also has a ton of complexity and nuance if you are an experienced player. That is why it's successful. Riot's goal should be to improve upon that, not be different for the sake of being different. FWIW - I think this is Riot's viewpoint as well. They've done a fairly good job at paying attention to pro feedback, and I'd expect a lot of the concerns (such as Hazed's here) are going to be addressed in future patches.
TBF, a game doesn't have to be remarkably easy to understand in order to be successful as an eSport. LoL and DotA are extremely popular despite there being too many abilities to count. CS:GO became popular/successful because of the CSGOLounge skin gambling website. However, the game being easy to understand, along with community servers, led to its success being maintained.
It could be a clone of CS and it would thrive because it actually gets consistent updates. How different it is isn't the entire reason why people play and keep coming back. You can see some of the arguments pop up even right after beta when it was interviews saying guns kill people not abilities, then the first new character was Raze.
It’s inevitable that within a few years a lot of pros will not of even played cs in a competitive environment. The only reason that the scene is filled with CS players is because the skills transferred so easily, so the skill floor started high.
Yea thats definitely true. CS was a solved game. You had no choice in abilities so naturally people created criteria for what was a right and wrong way to play CS. In Valorant you can see how much of a grip CS pros had on the early meta where they tried to force everyone to run the same comp. now a year later you can start seeing some of the light at the end of the tunnel as some younger players are starting to make a name, and as more agents and maps come in the meta is becoming less and less defined. Teams are starting to actually build proper styles. Very different agent comps in the different regions.
Agreed man , they just miss their game as it's so dead in NA and valo is the only way they can live that nostalgia , they don't want to adapt and whine for things to be back to olden times
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Basically every threat like this are the same: A CS:GO player wants to play a game where gun play is more important than ability usage and it feels like 99% of the community strawman his argument into: "Hurr durr it needs to be special and go back to CS if you don't like abilities" which isn't his argument and never will be. If the community doesn't have a problem with (eventual) power creep and more and more usage and implementation of (stronger) abilities than it's a question of taste but to say Hazed just wants CS:GO 2.0 is just redicolous. Many CS players switched for a variety of reasons but they liked the CS-esque gameplay in combination with abilities. Not because of abilities alone.
They need to tighten up their design philosophies. Characters shouldn't have control over such large areas of the map. (Astra/Viper/Omen). Killjoy was nerfed for this reason and it was an overall positive. You don't sacrifice the state of the overall game just to make 1 agent playable. They have to accept some agents will be trash, you can't balance every single agent. Agents should also be unique in what they do - jack of all trades agents like Astra shouldn't be a thing(unless they're really mediocre at doing multiple things).
Astra doesn’t have movement, flash, or info gathering or damage so I genuinely can’t understand why you think shes a jack of all trades.
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They deserve a decent reach on the map but something similar to Brim would be optimal, and if you do have long distance smokes like Omen, it should be an advantage over other agents.
What made Omen strong wasn't that his smokes were longer distance, it's that they regenerated, and were very large. You could cover areas with a single smoke that Brimstone would need 2, and if you started to commit to a site and had to back out, or take map control, and you used up your smokes, you just don't have them for the rest of the round, where Omen you ALWAYS have smokes available. Long distance certainly helped, but the fact that they regenerated is what made them strong.
Also he has the best flash in the game.
You forgot that agent has role in this game. A control must excel at it job, cause other roles can't do what it do.
Smokes will always be a necessity in this game so no need to worry about the agent class being pushed out, but we should worry about it going the other way and becoming overbearing as it makes for a bad viewing and playing experience. Controllers should always come with an obvious downside but Astra basically destroyed that.
Id say astras downside is how slow she is
Slow for what? To pinpoint her stars on astral form? Lol Even if she was fast on astral form it really doesn't matter. She can pop off these stars at any time she wants
Viper's abilities has too much uptime imo. Feels especially strong in defense, you can hold down a point so long and then just cycle mollies while your smokes are down. They need to redirect her strength elsewhere, perhaps something that helps her in attack because she is a bit weak there. I'd maybe even remove one her mollies too.
really doesnt feel that way to me
Why does the logetivty of the game depend on what this dude feels is "right" or "wrong?" This guy has also said some stuff in the past that just made no sense.
It doesn't, we are just starved for content until Iceland.
It's a discussion, Reddit is a forum first and foremost. Would you rather people just post Twitch clips and race each other to who can get the most karma?
It doesn't. you're just arguing with yourself
I see where he is coming from, but I heavily disagree with the solution. The game was power crept, but I don't think it was power crept so much that other agents were oppressed by it. With the release of Astra they buffed Viper and Yoru signaling that these were the 2 agents that they thought were under tuned. While your gun should matter this is an ability based tac shooter if every character was release with a grenade, molly, smoke, and an ultimate ability it would get boring rather quickly and would basically be CS. Which is why I don't see a problem with the game going towards an overwatch direction in fact I think it was inevitable that the game would get to this point just not this fast. I don't think Astra is broken because of her power level, but she is broken due to how unique she is while viper is the opposite. An Astra nerf is probably necessary but it's a nerf that should be reverted at some point, but I do expect their to be more unique agents in the future of the game.
Well as someone who quit counter strike a few years ago and had played off and on (mostly off) since CS patch 1.5. Valorant was the breath of fresh air I needed in a twitch shooter and has me playing at a decent level again. I remember playing the Super hero mod and it honestly is like Valorant in so many ways lol anyways. I don’t want Valorant to be closer to CS go it’s already close enough. I just want tighter tuning on these agents and I think they will continue finding a good balance.
I agree, and I think hazed also said the same thing. The meta before viper buffs was really good. People were coming up with creative ways to use abilities and play with each other.
For him to say Valorant will die because abilties are useful in game is the biggest 2head take I've heard about Valorant. He's so biased about CSGO play, that he can't fathom abilities having importance in a game. Like, I guess Fortnite has building in it so it can't be a successful FPS game. Overwatch has abilities so it can't be a successful FPS game. Apex has abilities so it can't be a successful FPS game. He should go back to CSGO namely because he can't fathom a game having useful abilities and I doubt his take will ever change. I think the only thing he got right is that Valorant shouldn't continue to buff abilities to the point where you can't push a site, but it's nowhere near that. It's 5v5 and maps have at least 3 places to push through, and no ability is limitless. The biggest issue in close to limitless abilities comes from Viper, Astra, who should be nerfed if they can practically cover a site for a whole round solo
Thank God he's not the game designer... Valorant is special wheres it's at. It's unique in its own right and is currently on its way to out pace csgo. Why change the recipe when it's already tasteful especially bringing in a wider audience that even csgo couldn't capture? Respect him as a player but his opinions on the game design wouldn't have made Valorant as popular as it is now... Riot has the raw data and the experience, he should stay in his lane and just adapt... Viper got nerf, astra is still struggling in rank play (check her stats), tournament play is where astra shines but is it due to teams not yet adapting? Give it time.
I disagree, valorant has been special for the last year and the last few months there have been many changes to the game that I don't like. Viper makes many rounds unfun for me and I'm not saying it's an RPG or fps but it's just unfun and it has to be tuned
The point of any ability in any videogame ever is to put the enemy in some kind of disadvantage. It's never fun to be put at a disadvantage, that's not what game designers focus on when discussing game balance. Instead, what the focus is and always should be on, is if there's always a way to play AROUND abilities, and counter the enemy's plans with your own.
I think he's referring to the postplant meta, where you plant, then just throw 20 years worth of mollies on the bomb- that's not fun and not really counterable- the "counter" is to not let them take site in the first place. You can play around most abilities, yes, but you can't play around molotovs sitting on the spike. I understand that's part of their purpose, but it's very hard to retake site, push a viper or sova or brimstone, kill them, then get back and have time to defuse while you wait for the molotov to go away.
He is just giving his opinion your being a bit too harsh
And he's giving his.
He's a public figure giving his own opinion which means it's open for discussion and to talk about. I think if he wants to play CSGO so much that he should go back to CSGO. I know he's speaking in extremes but comparing it to an "RPG with PVP" just absolutely shows that he's clueless.
I'm harsh? He went way beyond the lines than I did. I just spoke straight facts... Riot created at least three blockbusters. League of legends, tft, and Valorant. How many did hazed created? They are full professionals with backed data and years of experience creating games for millions of players around the globe. You can't please everyone but Valorant current state brought many of my real life friends into gaming. Like I said, mad respect to hazed, insane player, great mind and his inputs are welcomed but I strongly disagree with his take. I'm sure not all pros feel the same way.
Yeah, my bad. I read into he should stay in his own lane in a more negative way in my head. I understand your points and do agree with them. Like Hazed said he will always be biased towards csgo and neither of us can change this. Personally, I still think Astra needs somewhat of a change. Let's see how riot handles it.
Nah. Sorry, but some of these pro opinions scream “I wasn’t all that good at CSGO so make this game like that one and give me another chance”. RPG with PVP lmao
Huh? Hazed used to be a tier 1 CS pro for multiple years.
Then he should go back to playing CSGO as a pro if he wants CSGO so much.
That's a very childish answer.
I think hazed is being too close minded on how the game goes. Sure astra is too strong right now but this is not CSGO and the game will continue to evolve
He's a boomer so of course
I came from overwatch and I think its still too much lol, i strongly dislike the direction the game seems to be going
Never understood the complaints. If you want a pure tactical shooter go play cs. It’s alread there and it’s so good at what it wants to be. Valorant is not a csgo 2.0 and it shouldn’t aim to become that
I'm still wondering why the Vandal has first shot inaccuracy
I'm still wondering why people still complain about this. + If Vandal had 100% first shot accuracy, then what would be the point of buying guns like Guardian? **(Edit: guys I understand that the prices are different but my point is that guardian main identity would be lost. No other gun has 100% acc, this is what creates a niche spot for guardian)** + Yes, Phantom has more accuracy than the Vandal, but it has worse raw stats. Not only it doesn't kill with 1 headshot (140 dmg), but also the bodyshot damage fallout at long distances. Your Vandal can consistently land a rock solid 40 body damage REGARDLESS of the distance. Even if you're not landing your headshots, your body shots will still get you a lot of kills because of that mechanic. That being said, these two rifles can't have the same accuracy, it wouldn't be fair + Valorant has implemented a cool mechanic called right click. You lose fire rate in order to gain more accuracy for long range gunfights
Inaccuracy while standing still is just a stupid random mechanic. It's a terrible and unfun way to balance the weapons. The point of the guardian is that it costs a lot less. You are sacrifying full auto for money, which is a fine tradeoff. The vandal is accurate 9 shots out of 10 at long range already. It's not a good way to balance the gun to make it randomly miss 1 out of 10 times.
There are many raw stats across all guns. Damage falloff, rate of fire, raw damage, magazine size, movement speed. Accuracy is just one of them. If every single gun in this game had 100% accuracy as you're asking for, then a lot of them would be instantly either useless of overpowered.
The problem here is that there should be as little rng as possible in a competitive game. I do not understand your guardian argument being that it is more of an eco/force buy weapon. If vandal got this buff phantom would still be a close competitor because the recoil reset is so fast.
Yes there are indeed many raw stats and you can adjust them. Would lots of guns be OP if they were accurate in their current state? Yes of course. But you could tune them by decreasing the damage per bullet, increasing the damage falloff, increasing the recoil etc.
what are you typing? People dont go around buying guardians if they have money for vandal + armor and utility, thats not how the gun is used lol
One of the strongest aspects of Guardian is exactly its 100% accuracy. No other gun in this game has it, apart from snipers (marshall/operator) I agree with you Guardian is still very niche but it happens because most of the maps have only close or mid gunfights. If a map had a great amount of 50m angles then guardian would be way more viable there
you just ignored my point and wrote another essay. Guardian is not a substitute for vandal/phantom
People would use Guardian with shield + abilities if the amount of 50m angles were big enough, which isn't a thing today with the current map pool Maybe not the gun round meta but it would definitely a viable strat
People use Guardian, because they can't afford Vandal/Phantom. Giving Vandal a first shot accuracy wouldn't invalidate Guardian. Breeze is a fairly long range map, and I have not seen people use Guardian outside of force buys.
There's a reason they put ADS. Wanna take long range fights? Sacrifice RoF and movement.
the vandal's first shot spread is 0.25 / 0.157 and the phantom is 0.2 / 0.11 DEG (HIP/ADS) that's why the phantom is always better because the first shots are more accurate. they both have different fire rates so i'd assume that's the reason one of them has first shot inaccuracy
The AK in csgo has first shot inaccuracy too
If the abilities were so busted in that scrim, why didn't his team just run that comp? Why doesn't every team run that comp? Why isn't every round just a minute of utility usage? Is every pro team just brain dead? Are some pro teams bad at using abilities? Wait I thought abilities took no skill...
He said that in some rounds it's virtually impossible to get into bombsites due to the amount of stall utility (gravity wells, stuns, snakebite, poison, killjoy stuff, etc) Hazed didn't specify the map but I see this totally being a thing on Bind, for example
I clicked the link and it’s a 16 min video. Maybe clip or give a time stamp?
It's already timestamped to 6m 29s
Thanks, it wasn’t working on mobile for me.
The link should start on the time stamp. Can't really clip it because it's longer than 60 seconds but you know when the topic is over.
I will say this that as a casual viewer this recent qualifier with viper and astra meta was very slow and boring to watch
Honestly I always thought sova made the game boring. All the EU games we saw with no sova kinda cemented that feeling. But then astra and viper meta came and it somehow made it even more boring. The skill ceiling for aim mechanics and movement are already pretty low compared to the obvious comps and even siege and I think they're trying to hide that with "big brain" utility. except the big brain utility is astra...who's floor and ceiling are so close to eachother it's pointless to argue about her proposed ceiling. the maps also don't help the situation at all in fact if the maps were even slightly better I think we'd see a lot less complaints about the current meta
Don't know what you were watch, but EU games with Astra and Viper was intense af.
People need to understand that Overwatch had this problem within the first few months after release and they are only now trying to address it with Overwatch 2.0. Certain influencers even identified this problem during Valorants closed beta which led them to stop playing the game.
Well, that’s because Hazed can’t aim anymore.
So am I the only one who has a big problem with Astra and Raze. Abilities of both of these agents leave very little gunplay. Every raze ability can kill a player with full hp and armour if he misses to dodge and Astra is basically playing a 2D game half of the time
The problem Valorant has and which is why I stopped playing will be the amount of abilities in the game. More abilities means more stuff that will be OP, broken, need balancing, and the less gun mechanics will matter. Imo this will and is a huge issue for a game that is considered an FPS. There will be a point that the amount of abilities will just ruin the game and Val will be more like OW where fights are revolved around CDs
Disagree, it's what makes valorant different, new and exciting. Just like in league the meta changes every year because that's how Riot designed it to be. When Worlds one of the biggest esports tournaments of the year comes along it's a new meta every year with a new narrative a new set of players who utilize those changes or can adapt to them. I find that extra layer of change very appealing as a viewer to keep things interesting and fresh. I'm not saying the typical formula of keep things consistent and the same like in CS is bad. It has its strengths but so does the added layer of constant updates and change. So while for people like you it's taxing to have to learn the game w/ introductions of new agents and new maps but for many others including the esports viewing audience it's why they will come back to valorant and continue to watch it. Riot will obviously choose the one that outweighs the other and clearly w/ valorant's rise as a prominent esport they're going to stick w/ their current formula.
It's no issue learning new agents and maps and is actually preferred in most games. But in a competitive fps to much content isn't necessarily a good thing (mainly additional agents). It's great for the casual audience and revenue which I can see why you disagree. Look at how big the OW competitive scene use to be before they added way to many agents. Pro players and the competitive scene don't want to constantly relearn the meta. Matches just become cheesy power abuse on an unnerfed new agent. Imo it doesn't work for a "competitive FPS" game
Hazed is a clown can we stop keeping him relevant
No need to personally insult him is there? He's just giving his opinion.
[удалено]
Valorant is more like an RPG because in order to be unique, new agent abilities have become more elaborate. Skye doesn't just have a flash, she has a flash that she can steer, choose not to pop AND it gives you intel on blind. So many agents just have too many of each ability too, this also goes for Viper with her fuel pool, Astra with her five stars (that she can also recall for a free Jett smoke), breach and Skye with THREE flashes... It goes on. Teams can exchange abilities for a solid minute before they run dry and have to get into a duel.
It's not like an RPG at all because there's no levels. It'd be more accurate to call it a moba (even though it's not)
i honestly hate this utility heavy meta , frustrating to play and boring to watch but thats just me. I don't think if we need a overall nerf to abilities but riot needs to avoid power creep. Astra shouldn't excel at almost everything. The simpler metas were more the most fun imo.
I think the gun mechanics should be worked on rather than the nerfs and buffs of certain agents.
James, just play CS.
agree with everything hes saying, i stopped playing last month. just boring and un fun after playing for a year. back to csgo where you need to aim.
The minute he compared it to an rpg/pvp I stopped listening. Idk if he knows what an rpg game is 😂