Valorant
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Snowball Fight Deathmatch brings holiday spirit to Valorant
Olivia Richman
“Ready to have a Snowball Fight with your friends (and likely your foes)?” Every time the holiday season rolls around, most major competitive games try to have some fun with the winter spirit in mind. Valorant is no different. For its first winter celebration, Riot Games is introducing Snowball Fight Team Deathmatch to Valorant. This limited-time game mode will run from December 15 to December 29, and was introduced in …
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Valorant First Strike NA peaks at more than 300,000 viewers
Olivia Richman
Valorant fans couldn’t get enough of Riot Games’ First Strike action this past weekend. While First Strike featured action from multiple competitive regions, North America was by and far the most popular competition. The region boasted over 300,000 viewers during the main event’s 21 hours of air time. Europe’s competition was the second most viewed region. But that event only had 106,000 viewers at its peak, which is almost 200,000 …
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Valorant pro receives death threats for teabagging at event
Steven Rondina
Controversy has erupted around Valorant’s North American First Strike event. Michael “dapr” Gulino of Sentinels says he was slammed with harsh criticism for fans due to his teabagging of Joshua “steel” Nissan. dapr states that this was harsh enough that he received death threats for the move: got a death threat cus i tbagged in a video game poggers — dapr ✨???? (@daprcs) December 6, 2020 dapr’s teammate Shahzeeb “ShahZaM” …
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FaZe Clan’s Babybay talks “troll” Breach pick in First Strike
Nina Forneloza
The final weekend for Valorant’s First Strike tournament is coming to a close, and for Andrej “babybay” Francisty, the tournament is over after FaZe Clan’s tough loss to the Sentinels. The matchup was promising in the beginning, with FaZe creeping up on the Sentinel’s lead halfway through the first map, but babybay’s performance was lacking, and his kill ratio was suffering. In the second map, babybay pulled an unexpected pick …
Heretic’s NiesoW on First Strike: “I don’t care who we play against”
Olivia Richman
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Underdog team Heretics has been shaking up Valorant’s First Strike EU main event over the past few days. Yesterday, the Valorant community was shocked to see Heretics come out on top after a close back and forth against Team Liquid. Today, Heretics came back and defeated top team G2 Esports. But Dustyn “niesoW” Durnas doesn’t see it as that surprising. While G2 and Team Liquid are well-known organizations, the Valorant …
Valorant pros left unpaid by Pulse Series event organizers
Olivia Richman
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It’s been three months and Valorant teams and talent still haven’t received payment for participating in the Pulse Series event in September. Commentator Dustin “dusT” Mouret was the first to come forward about the concerning situation. dusT claimed that Pulse Esports Arena owes him and other talent “a good chunk of change.” Originally reported by Dot Esports, dusT stated that the payment was due around October 22, but he’s yet …
Valorant First Strike commentators diss the Overwatch League
Olivia Richman
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The Valorant First Strike EU quarterfinals have been entertaining fans all day. But a lot of viewers have taken to the Twitch chat to voice their preference for North American Valorant players. This might be due to that region’s larger list of big personalities, including Matthew “Wardell” Yu and Yassine “Subroza” Taoufik on TSM, former Overwatch League MVP Jay “sinatraa” Won, and Andrej “babybay” Francisty on FaZe Clan. Their flashier …
Valorant players are frustrated with harsh ranking system
Olivia Richman
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Competitive Valorant players feel that it’s much too easy to lose rank in Riot Games’ tactical shooter. There is a soft reset each competitive season, introduced in Act 2. A soft reset means that a player will be put into “abridged placements” for a series of three games. The matches determine their rank for the next competitive season, meaning players will be placed “slightly lower” than where they ended in …
Valorant fans angry that Ninja, Myth will stream First Strike
Olivia Richman
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While Valorant fans are hyped for the First Strike North America tournament, they are frustrated with Riot Games’ choice for the two official event co-streamers. Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Ali “Myth” Kabbani were announced as the exclusive co-streamers for First Strike on November 30. In the announcement, Riot called the two streamers “beloved personalities,” but it doesn’t seem like fans agree with that sentiment. When the news was shared on …
Valorant agent Killjoy disabled until the turret bug is fixed
Fariha Bhatti
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A recent bug in Killjoy’s kit added to the long list of Valorant glitches in which the German agent could plant her turret under the map in Haven. After months of complaints from players, Riot developers have disabled the agent until the exploit is fixed. The bug could make or break the game. Entering B or C site of Haven became impossible with Killjoy’s turret waiting to be activated as …
Valorant’s original character art shows the game’s origins
M Alzamora
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Players are very familiar with Valorant’s unqiue characters by now, but they might hardly recognize them from how differnet they used to look. Game development is a trial and error process, and Riot Games’ Valorant wasn’t any different. While it borrowed heavily from the shooters that came before it, the game shines largely through its characters. These characters are the game’s main stars. And they went through many different changes …
Game-breaking Killjoy bug discovered on Haven Valorant map
Olivia Richman
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Killjoy mains have discovered a game-breaking bug with Valorant’s defensive agent. While playing a match on Haven, players discovered that Killjoy can deploy her turret under the ground. This is a game-breaking glitch that competitors have started taking advantage of. Killjoy’s signature ability is her Turret, which fires at enemies in a 180-degree area in front of it, dealing 11 damage per shot. The turret usually has 125 health, meaning …
These are the best Valorant cosplays of 2020
Olivia Richman
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Even though live conventions have been halted in 2020, cosplayers have not slowed down when it comes to creating amazing cosplays based on their favorite video game characters and icons, including some from new tactical shooter Valorant. Ever since Valorant was released earlier this summer, cosplayers have been inspired not only by the agents’ unique outfits but also their personalities and attitudes. It’s no surprise that many cosplayers have created …
Best Valorant agent duos according to your playstyle
Fariha Bhatti
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Riot’s tactical shooter Valorant is a team-based game which relies heavily on agents’ abilities to get through a round. In this tactical FPS, aim alone cannot carry your way to victory. Most people team up with a friend to maximize their chance of success, but selecting the right pair of agents is equally as crucial as tagging along with someone of the same mindset. In Valorant, agents have different abilities …
How does Valorant measure up with Volcano’s vision for an FPS?
M Alzamora
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Valorant is a great game for its players, but its sudden jump into professional esports without any established specatating tools was strange given that a senior game designer at Valorant had previously forced Valve to implement them in Counter-Strike Global Offensive nearly eight years ago. CSGO is an easily understandable game from a viewers perspective. At its heart, five players face off against five other in a race to be …
Valorant releases new First Strike trailer before NA main event
Olivia Richman
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Valorant has released a trailer celebrating the intense First Strike tournaments taking place all over the globe. The trailer, called “That New Fire,” showcases agent action in multiple regions, including Brazil, Korea, Europe, and North America. The heavily edited video showed some high-intensity moments from matches at previous First Fire events, complete with animated casting and headshots. The First Strike trailer was released before First Strike main tournaments within each …
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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