[2020] Blog Post: Day 1 Closed Beta in EU/NA and moving forward

Here to answer questions, lmk

(Now adding in answers here as I see questions...)

How do you personally feel about the lottery system for the closed beta access?

I'll do some real-talk here around this... very few (if any) company puts engineering or resource efforts toward closed beta access because it's a single moment to test server loads. We wanted to do a lot here around making a more 'fair' way to get closed beta access, but needed to put resources elsewhere. It happens.

Right now Twitch is the best MVP approach because we really wanted to focus on players knowing what they were getting into before getting into it. VALORANT is a hard game and we wanted to prioritize people who knew this game was for them vs. passive interest of people getting a random key from a website key generator.

I personally think watching Twitch streams is a great way to start to understand the game, and then to decide if it's for you. I was okay with that number being small but... we're seeing it's pretty large.

Explain diminishing returns?

Every additional hour you watch of streams increases your weighting but adds less with each additional hour you watch. So going from 2hrs to 3hrs means more in weighting than going from, say, 80hrs to 81hrs of watching. We definitely see the ones marathoning and are thinking about how to help but don't want that to be the standard.

I can't really expose the math of it because it's both complicated (our data scientist ran me through it and it's crazy albeit fair) and we don't want it to be gamified.

Here's what I'll say: watching more helps, it does, but watching like 12hrs of streams vs. 80hrs of streams isn't so significant that you should bleed your eyes out. The largest BY FAR impacting issue is the sheer NUMBER of people in line. They all have a chance, and we have a limited amount of space in the club.

My account was registered elsewhere and now I'm somewhere else...

Reach out to player support to change your home-based country.

I can't really expose the math of it because it's both complicated (our data scientist ran me through it and it's crazy albeit fair) and we don't want it to be gamified.

Here's what I'll say: watching more helps, it does, but watching like 12hrs of streams vs. 80hrs of streams isn't so significant that you should bleed your eyes out. The largest BY FAR impacting issue is the sheer NUMBER of people in line. They all have a chance, and we have a limited amount of space in the club.

A little tired but insanely excited :) Was up at 4am yesterday, slept at 1am because I wanted to play some games and couldn't through the day, and now up today to see how we can keep on going.

Thanks for asking!

No, you're eligible for all waves.

No, sorry :(

Every additional hour you watch of streams increases your weighting but adds less with each additional hour you watch. So going from 2hrs to 3hrs means more in weighting than going from, say, 80hrs to 81hrs of watching. We definitely see the ones marathoning and are thinking about how to help but don't want that to be the standard.

Where'd you register that account? If you're in EU, reach out to player support to change your home based location.

Reach out to player support ASAP to change your regional home base

I'll do some real-talk here around this... very few (if any) company puts engineering or resource efforts toward closed beta access because it's a single moment to test server loads. We wanted to do a lot here around making a more 'fair' way to get closed beta access, but needed to put resources elsewhere. It happens.

Right now Twitch is the best MVP approach because we really wanted to focus on players knowing what they were getting into before getting into it. VALORANT is a hard game and we wanted to prioritize people who knew this game was for them vs. passive interest of people getting a random key from a website key generator.

I personally think watching Twitch streams is a great way to start to understand the game, and then to decide if it's for you. I was okay with that number being small but... we're seeing it's pretty large.

I don't think so because we're tracking on our end viewtimes attached to accounts. If you unlink and watch 50 hours and then re-link you've lost the 50 hours but if you're fiddling with it, you should be okay.

yeah... technically this has been a challenge. Definitely a lesson to prioritize clarity.

nope we see you - take a break, you'll (hopefully) eventually have one sitting in your inbox when you get back (or check your email)

1. Waves
2. It'll be okay don't do that my dude that's all I got

real talk we wanted to, but since we were only collecting emails on the website we couldn't quite partition or target correctly for closed beta.

tl;dr the technology wasn't there but we were trying for it because I agree with you