on Valorant
This will be(was suppose to be) just a quick post as I'm often asked what I think of Valorant. Nothing in depth, just my thoughts.
No, I don't see it as an Overwatch killer. It was launched at an interesting time in Overwatch's timeline. It was when people were sick of abilities being king and where mechanical skill wasn't needed as much. Funny enough, that's the entire point of OW (see my first post). The community was wanting more skill and this is why I think so many players jumped on the "Its an OW Killer" bandwagon. It seemed to be the perfect answer for everyone's frustrations in OW. With one big problem...
The pace and TTK of Valorant's design make it a completely different game. Once everyone realized that Valorant wasn't close to the same they came crawling back as usual. I can't count the number of streamers and players that quit OW only to come back a month or two later. Maybe a break is needed, OW can get on your nerves because it's so heavily team focused. Yet no other game fills its role quite as well. It's a very unique game and like the old legendary games, it's not about "skill first". Take a look at your favorite childhood games or take a look at the games being speedrun. It's usually the classics that play wonderfully because it was about having fun and if you really wanted to, you could get amazing at the game. There's no point in wanting to optimize a game if the point of the game is to be optimized. That's just playing the game! Real fun comes from figuring out how to play the game your way instead of the way the developers demanded.
That's how I feel about Valorant and Riot Gaming's design in all their products. They're gaming parents, not gaming developers. It's why their games have never really appealed to me, they told me how to play instead of giving me tools to have fun with.
If that large architectural design wasn't enough for me to disagree with, it's design to be the exact opposite of how I prefer my games, its slow paced with a low TTK.
My childhood is that of playing quake 2 and its in-depth movement system. Its very difficult for me to pick up a game where the movement is slow. I prefer to have a game where my mobility isn't limited and i'm allowed to express myself by dominating the map simply because I'm better at movement then the opponent. This idea is completely lost in the current gaming market. Everyone moves the same in modern games and even if there are abilities to augment movement, when used they all do the same thing. In quake 2 I could strafe jump better than other players which allowed me to dominate weapons, health and armor. What I lacked mechanically I could make up through strategy. This is one of the main reasons why I love junkrat so much. He has some dynamic movement available that allows me to outplay my opponents with a weaker head on kit.
The other killer for me is that it's an incredibly low time to kill game. My favorite games to play are where players can slug it out for minutes without killing each other. Map domination and movement can directly combat mechanical skill. Quake Champions inherited this idea and still has some of the best shows of skill in the gaming market today. Speaking of skill, long time readers should know how I feel about skill. It's all about consistency. This is why in games where we want to see who is truly better we have best of sevens or higher. The more games you play the more often that the better player will win. In best of ones anything can happen and the best player isn't always going to win. This has its advantages and disadvantages, its normally more exciting but doesn't show who's better. My focus is usually on who is better, as its the true reason for competitive games.
What does this consistency have to do with Valorant? The more consistent player will always be the more skilled one but in games with low TTK that is thrown away. There seems to be some weird obsession that if you get the drop on someone, you deserve the kill. No, you deserve an advantage but they should be able to fight back with enough skill. A player may have to make multiple correct decisions after getting into a deficit but it should still be possible. This is one of my favorite parts about quake. If someone gets a good railgun hit a lot of people will say "well the guy that got hit will just heal from it now" but by being at a disadvantage in health means you have to play more conservative and lose map presence. It's an uphill battle but it's possible to win in the long run. Some see it as boring but there's more excitement in the long con than the short.
On a side note i'm curious on Riot's decision to make this game. It's the middle ground between Overwatch and CSGO. I didn't think there was enough design space between the two to generate enough of a player base to make profit. I would think that players who want a heavily skill based game would go to CSGO, those that want abilities would go to Overwatch. I know riot has a lot of fanboys but enough to launch their own game? Obviously I have to say there is a market and it was the right choice because of the money it's making. Still, I plan to look at it from a design perspective to really see the difference between it and CSGO.
TLDR
Valorant is not the end of Overwatch, far from it. It came at a very specific time when mechanics weren't needed as much so we saw a lot of hype being generated. It's still massively different from OW and shouldn't lose many players, outside of those that constantly jump to the next game. While a decently designed game for people with that specific taste, it is not a game i'll ever play. It far too slow paced and has too low of a TTK to be what I consider enjoyable. OW doom-sayers can relax and take a deep breath, look at how many people came back from Valorant in the past couple months. We're doing just fine.