Valorant
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CSGO-style butterfly knife is coming to Valorant soon
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant’s lavish inventory has all sorts of vibrant and insane skins that players have spent big cash on. However, the extensive store is still lacking the infamous Counter-Strike: Global Offensive butterfly knife. Valorant has easily beaten many other traditional shooters in terms of skin collection. Riot Games has crafted skins themed around forests, agent lore, kingdoms, and different themes that add more meaning to already fierce weapons. While Valorant skins …
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Valorant players highlight a wall-hack glitch triggered by Kay/O’s abilities
Fariha Bhatti
Valorant’s smart bot, Kay/O, has received tons of praises for being balanced. But a new glitch is rendering him overpowered in ranked games. Valorant players are no stranger to wall-hack glitches triggered by BlastX wrappers in the past. It seems that Kay/O’s addition hasn’t only shaken up the meta but also the walls as numerous players have noticed a weird bug that exposes the enemies’ position through Kay/O’s triangle pointer. …
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Unsilenced Phantom and Spectre discovered in Valorant single-player
William Davis
Unsilenced versions of multiple Valorant weapons have been discovered in-game. In Valorant’s single-player modes, players fight against computer-controlled enemies in a variety of sample missions. These objectives are available in The Range and are meant to serve a tutorial for tactical shooter novices. However, the enemy bots carry weapons that aren’t available in multiplayer Valorant. Players are able to pick up the bot’s guns and use them for themselves. However, …
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New agent and new map are teased in Valorant’s Year One Anthem
Fariha Bhatti
Riot Games has just extended the Valorant agent roster with Kay/O, but the developer may already be teasing agent 17 and a brand new map. In Year One Anthem, Riot Games may have hinted at a well-dressed agent who looks like Cypher’s long-lost sibling. The cinematic also teased “Deadeye” as the new agent’s name, scribbled on the weapon he’s weilding. The next agent codenamed “Deadeye” has been teased in the …
Here is how Valorant account leveling works in patch 3.0
Fariha Bhatti
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Players will now get rewarded for playing Valorant all day and night. Patch 3.0 has brought tons of modifications to the Valorant ranking system, agents, and weapons. The heavy updates enshrouded a whole new feature coming to Valorant that will compensate for the time spent on the game. “A new way to recognize and reward you for your time playing in all VALORANT game modes—even retroactively! Your account Player Card …
Twitch streamer Sydeon exposes sexist abuse in Valorant matches
Olivia Richman
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Cosplay content creator Sydney “Sydeon” has come forward with some concerning experiences had while playing Valorant. Sydeon, who has notably played Among Us alongside Rachell “Valkyrae” Hoffstetter, has experienced severe harassment from toxic players while solo queuing in Valorant. The sexism Sydeon faced is unfortunately something that a lot of female Valorant players have shared in over the past year. On June 22, Sydeon explained that she was “held hostage” …
Valorant patch 3.0 nerfs agent flashes, lowers weapons prices
Fariha Bhatti
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Patch 3.00 will bring drastic changes to Valorant that will be felt across all levels of skill in the popular tactical shooter. Valorant’s newest episode is finally here, and it rolls in with brand new agent Kay/O, heaps of changes to agent abilities, a modified competitive experience, and new weapon prices. The sizable update seems promising as it addresses long-standing issues with agent powers that have limited the impact of …
Valorant esports championship event in LA teased by Riot
Fariha Bhatti
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Valorant’s first-ever championship event may take place in Los Angeles, judging from the newest Watch Cinematics. The colorful, bubblegum-themed Valorant Year One Anthem dropped various hints about a potential new map and a brand new agent. Fans also noted the subtle mention of the venue for Valorant’s ultimate championship, Valorant Champions. The Year One Anthem featured renowned Valorant streamers playing their primary agents on vibrant machines enhanced with colorful effects. …
Riot still wants to nerf “run and gun” accuracy in Valorant
Fariha Bhatti
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Subpar gunplay being overly rewarded has been a hot topic among Valorant players for some time now. The game’s developers at Riot Games have improved the overall shooting experience by some margin, but erratic and sometimes overly effective gunning while running remains an issue. After tweaking the game’s weapons in search of a fix for accurate shooting while running and walking in patch 2.02, the developer is now looking to …
Tons of agent ability & weapon price changes coming to Valorant
Olivia Richman
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Episode 3 Act 1 is bringing a lot of big changes to Valorant, including new agent KAY/O and some impactful nerfs that will affect the meta. Most of the changes revolve around the cost of abilities and ultimates. Many weapons in the game will also see price changes. While Riot Games has not officially released patch notes on these changes, the details have been collected from the latest Valorant update. …
KAY/O banned in upcoming Valorant Champions Tour Europe events
Olivia Richman
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Reports are circulating that KAY/O will be disabled in the Valorant Champions Tour Europe Stage 3 qualifiers and main event. KAY/O is Valorant’s newest agent, coming to the tactical shooter in Episode 3 Act 1. According to Upcomer, Riot Games is planning to disable KAY/O for the VCT Europe Stage 3 Challengers 1 event on June 28. This is in line with previous agent rollouts in the past. New agents …
How to avoid dying from spike explosions on every Valorant map
Fariha Bhatti
News
Tired of losing an Operator because you misread how far the spike blast would go? This new trick will help you stay safe after the round win. Unlike other tactical shooters like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, it’s relatively easier in Valorant to save weapons post-explosion. A tangible globe marks the blast radius, and players need to evacuate that area before the spike detonates. However, a lot of time, players end up …
Learn all about agent Kay/O’s abilities, release date, and more
Fariha Bhatti
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Agent 16 Kay/O will be a nightmare for players who heavily rely on their utility in Valorant. The game’s latest agent, Kay/O, has finally been revealed. He’s unlike anything you’ve seen before in Valorant. Kay/O is a deadly robot out for blood. This robotic agent will change the game’s meta, and detailed look into his kit provides hints as to how. Agent 16 has a tool kit that interacts uniquely …
Leaks provide first look at Kay_0, Valorant’s new agent 16
Fariha Bhatti
News
We finally know what Valorant’s agent 16 will like, and it turns out that the memes about a bot escaping the practice range weren’t entirely wrong. Plenty of fan theories about Valorant’s brand new agent have been floating around, but developers at Riot Games managed to keep the details under wraps. Btu dozens of images have now slipped through the cracks, providing a first look at this new agent, a …
Here is how to unlock free weapon skins in Valorant
Fariha Bhatti
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Default Valorant skins can be dull to play with but buying extravagant bundles isn’t cheap either. You can get your hands on select Valorant skins for free through a long but worthy process. Riot Games has made Valorant free for all, but certain perks are reserved for those who have cash. Weapon skins with unique sound animations come off at hefty rates that not everyone can afford. However, it’s not …
Riot reveals awesome Give Back bundle, includes Reaver skins
Fariha Bhatti
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Riot Games has announced a fan-picked bundle that will have some of the best skins in Valorant. The developer has unveiled a brand new collection of weapons picked by Valorant players. The new Give Back bundle will let players get premium skins for all the most important Valorant weapons at once. This unique bundle will be available in the store starting June 22. Here are the winners of the Karma …
Riot Games has long looked to expand its footprint beyond the success of popular MOBA League of Legends, and one of its biggest successes to date in this regard is the tactical shooter, Valorant. Blending traditional first-person shooter elements with unique and flashy hero abilities, Valorant seeks to combine the best attributes of tactical shooters and hero shooters into one cohesive experience.
Based on player feedback, the game has largely succeeded in accomplishing those aims. It’s not an easy balance, and it’s one that is arguably still tenuous, but Riot Games seems to be doing as good a job of it as most fans have hoped for.
What type of game is Valorant?
Valorant is a first-person shooter that represents a unique blend of the tactical shooter and hero shooter subgenres. There are some games that represent similar gameplay elements, but not many that offer the exact experience that Valorant puts forward to players.
The tactical shooter genre is often considered to have been defined by the release of the original Counter-Strike, a multiplayer mod for famed single-player PC title Half-Life that later became a standalone game of its own. While most multiplayer FPS games to that point emphasized prolonged battles between opposing players zipping around the game at high speeds, Counter-Strike slowed things down significantly and made players much more susceptible to each other’s firepower, requiring players to take a more tactical approach to play.
That slower and more tactical approach, combined with the lightning-quick nature of action when it does occur, proved reliably popular. That popularity can still be seen today with the ongoing success enjoyed by the Counter-Strike franchise, and it’s this gameplay type that represents the core of Valorant. It’s no accident that former Counter-Strike developers were drafted by Riot Games to help create Valorant during the game’s formative stages.
What differentiates Valorant from CS and other tactical shooters it that each of the game’s characters, called agents, wield a number of unique abilities. Some are typical for tactical shooters, like flashbangs and smokes, while others are wildly different, such as an ability that transports two players to an isolated dueling arena for its duration.
These agent abilities are more reminiscent of hero shooters, a subgenre that arguably got its start with the Team Fortress games but has best been popularized by Blizzard title Overwatch. The abilities, combind with the tactical considerations that are at the core of Valorant, separate it from most any other FPS experience available for play.
How does Valorant esports work?
Like many other popular competitive shooters, Valorant does have a thriving esports scene. That scene is differentiated by the way it’s run and controlled by developer and publisher Riot Games. Riot uses a model based on the success of its League of Legends esports scene, which sees the globe’s competitive players and team’s separated by region. These regions play out their own competitions in their sections of the world before coming together at regular intervals for international tournaments featuring the best teams from each individual region.
While League of Legends once boasted a variety of regions and regional types, Riot sought to simplify that model when setting up esports for Valorant. The game has only a handful of major regions, and these regions are held as largely equitable, each sending their best teams to international events leading up to the year-end VALORANT Champions event.
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