Intro

If you listen to professional cooks, they will tell a beginner that instead of learning dishes with lots of features, one should focus on doing a very well made simple dish with few features. A thick, creamy, fresh tomato soup with soft white bread is 10 times better than any half assed dish with gold paper.

2GD, a former Quake Pro and now developer of Diabotical, once commented on the early stages of his game Reborn saying "You know a game is good when it's fun to just run around the map". The greater point he made during that video is that if the game has well made and clean mechanics, you will have fun just moving around, pressing your buttons, shooting your gun against walls.

Valorant seemed like the fairy tale game promising exactly this - and also delivered in some aspects. This post isn't meant to sh*t on Valorant as I very much like the game and want it to become even better. I'm also going to list aspects in which Valorant excels at.

1) Hit reg & hit boxes

Hit reg in the early beta felt so incredibly crisp and orgasmic, it was one of the cleanest experiences I have ever had. It was night and day between Valorant and CSGO MM. Multiple pros have commented on how somewhere along the patches towards release the "crispness" just dropped. I'm almost certain that the hit reg became worse right after the patch that introduced major changes to movement. Right after that patch, you could increasingly see more and more posts on reddit regarding complaints about hit reg.

I remember headshotting someone with a ghost in early April feeling soooo good, together with the satisfying music that plays on kills. What happened between then and now? Is it just that we got used to it and now recognize and feel even more minor flaws?

2) Movement

In general I think the movement is pretty good. It's not as instant and direct as in Overwatch, which it isn't supposed to be in a high consequence tactical shooter with more complicated shooting mechanics, but not wonky as well. It's pretty clean. Tagging is fine and in line with the philosophy of high consequence gameplay.

However, regarding counter strafing: Since the major movement change patch, it was pretty clear that they wanted to virtually get rid of counter strafing. Which is ok, even though I personally would have preferred it otherwise. They wanted to make the game more accessible which is pretty good reasoning.

I might be wrong on this but here is what I find weird: I wrote a bot that simulates counter strafing to see at which delays you have to counter strafe and shoot to make it work and I'm pretty sure counter strafing right now is non existent. I didn't get any better results from a bot that perfectly counter strafes. Only at around 100 ms delays between stopping and shooting your bullets were accurate, which is around the same as not counterstrafing and just letting go of the movement key. I might have to do an extra post on that and be sure that there aren't any errors on my part.

Despite that, just moving around the practice map is actually fun. The easier bunnyhop with less reward is, weirdly enough, pretty satisfying.

3) Clarity

One of the major strengths of Valorant. The maps aren't bloated with random details. The details are placed where there is no action going on, as in the ceilings, outside of the map (look up more often). The animations are very clear, the smoke lines are very clear, players are easy to spot on the map. Very good design IMO.

4) Shooting mechanics

I think it's clear that many pros are advocating for more consistency in the form of spray patterns. Guns behaving inconsistent can feel really bad. I think the major patch to the rifles was one of the best changes to the game and I'm glad Riot is listening to feedback to something as fundamental as this. Despite the changes, the feedback on the slow recoil reset still feels "off". I can't say if this is because I'm not used to it after having played CSGO, or if this is another vector of inconsistency. Doing the aim trainer and swapping between multiple targets still "feels inconsistent", in the sense that it slowly builds up after tapping a rifle multiple times.

In general, the guns are mostly satisfying to use and the sound effects also play a big part in that. I can have fun just shooting targets in the range.

One could start an entire new thread about how abilities aren't supposed to kill, which I won't dive into right now. Maybe you can in the comments. The feedback regarding Raze and Killjoy made it very clear that the community is in favor of utility where the players have to capitalize on them to make them work, instead of abilities that kill.

5) Performance

On my lower end PC Valorant runs at almost twice the fps of CSGO, which is THE major part I prefer Valorant over CSGO. It's incredibly how well it runs on lower machines. It was a huge point in advertising Valorant early on as well, rightly so. It's a must-have for a high consequence shooter.

That being sad: Why does every other build introduce major fps drops? Genuine question. What in these changes between patches has the potential to have such a dramatic effect on the fundamentals of the game?

Final words

Valorant is currently my favorite game and I might be nitpicking right now, but I still think that there is room to improve when it comes to the fundamentals and I want the game to become even better than it already is. Thanks to Riot for doing an insane job so far.

Edit: I haven't touched all points, these were just off the top of my hand. I'm kind of unsatisfied in how I've argued for my points, since most of them are "feelsy" points. I can only go by what I feel like is good for the game and the feedback I've read from pros and the community. One could do huge empirical QoE studies to find out, which mechanics are more fun for which type of player, but obviously I don't have the means for that and it's kind of unrealistic for Riot to do so either.

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