As you may already be aware, Riot Games’ Tactical FPS, Valorant, will be launching fully on the 2nd of June and the biggest question is, will it be a viable esport? In this article I’ll be sharing my opinion about Valorant esports, the game and if it has the potential to compete with other esports in the FPS genre.
Riot Games have been very smart with the development of the game, they have managed to combine assets of other games into one game, to unite all the communities into one. The game consists of abilities which are similar to the ones in Overwatch, whereas the gunplay and weapons have a similar style to CS:GO’s shooting mechanics.
Valorant’s main selling point (apart from combining the core gameplay of other games) were their promises to the community, which ironically, were things Counter-Strike was suffering from. In a video they released back in October of last year, the executive producer behind Valorant, Anna “SuperCakes” Donlon mentions that the issues like bullets not registering correctly and cheaters will definitely be something that they will be tackling with full force. In fact, all of Valorant’s official servers are set to 128 tickrate to avoid these hit registration problems. With regards to cheating, the Valorant developer team worked together to create Vanguard, Valorant’s anti-cheat system. However this did not work out as expected.
On the very first week of closed beta, there were already quite a few cheaters that were surfacing on popular twitch streams, which created a lot of backlash with regards to the anti-cheat. However Riot have addressed this by saying that the anti-cheat was still in its early versions, and now has the capability of not only detecting cheaters, but also banning them.
If Riot Games manages to keep cheaters as far away as possible from playing Valorant, the better the atmosphere of the game will be.
What about gameplay?
Valorant is quite similar to Counter-Strike when it comes to its core gameplay. It’s a 5v5 tactical shooter where one side attacks the enemy team to plant the spike (bomb), and the other side defends them. Game duration lasts for a maximum of 25 rounds (if overtime is reached, 12-12) and games last for about 40 minutes.
The weapons feel very polished and have a certain flow to them. There are a total of 17 weapons which are split into 6 categories:
- Sidearms (Pistols)
- SMGS
- Shotguns
- Rifles
- Snipers
- Heavies
Each weapon has its own purpose, which means that not everyone will be viable in the same position or scenario, however that is where the abilities come in handy.
We’ve already covered a majority of the abilities on a previous article (which you can find here https://www.esportsguide.com/news/the-valorant-closed-beta-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-gameplay) where we go over each ability and how it is best used.
For the most part, the agents in Valorant are quite balanced, however there are some that are more balanced than others. This has led to a point of controversy, as with the release of the 10th and newest agent Raze, players were noticing that she was maybe a little bit too strong. This immediately caught the attention of the developers and released a patch with a nerf shortly after.
Does it have potential to be an esport?
This is definitely the biggest question that Valorant will have to answer. Riot Games, having League of Legends be the esport that it is nowadays, will certainly want Valorant to have similar success, and definitely have a vision for the game’s future as an esport. However it does come down to two things:
- Is it going to be a fun esport to spectate?
- Will there be a strong community to sustain a Valorant esports healthy competitive scene?
Valorant consists of a lot of stuff happening at the same time, especially when fights are happening across the map, things tend to be chaotic, and as a viewer, I’m not sure I’d find it fun to spectate. However not everyone is the same, and maybe another viewer would like the turbulent action happening throughout most of the game.
We’ve already seen instances of events which showcased professional FPS players battling it out versus each other in Valorant, and on the whole, (even though the spectator tool is not very polished and optimized) it was quite an enjoyable viewer experience.
The FPS community has already embraced Valorant’s core gameplay, which in fact led to a couple of professional players from other games (CS:GO, Overwatch, Apex Legends, Fortnite) to completely switch over to Valorant.
If it were up to me, I’d say the game has a bright and long future in the world of esports. It’s very fun, easy to understand, and hard to master. The three key points for an esport to succeed and have a long and healthy lifetime for Valorant esports.
