Low Requirements and No Cheaters – Can Valorant Beat CS:GO?

Riot Games is not only taking over Blizzard’s employees, but also emulates it in some ways – for example, by adopting the strategy of reinventing the wheel. Why create a new genre or a revolutionary gameplay model, when you can copy the ideas of the competition and just improve on them? Warcraft imitated Diune, World of Warcraft drew handfuls from Everquest, and the new shooter from Riot Games is just Counter Strike, only with heroes. Is this approach enough to defeat Valve's legendary shooter? We’re trying to find an answer to this question below.

A hero won't do the shooting for you

By far, the biggest difference between Counter Strike and Valorant are the heroes. The version of the game that we were able to test had 8 characters available, but we can expect a minimum of 10 characters on launch day. Each of them, aside from appearance, differs from the others with the available skills (four of them). A basic one is available in each round for free, two more can be purchased at the beginning of the match for the cash you have. An additional, fourth skill is a special ability that we get after getting enough kills, or collecting power spheres that are available on the map.

Is it a bit like Overwatch? Maybe, but it actually looks very different. First of all, the abilities are much less powerful and only help shoot the enemy rather than annihilate them. Thus, we have access to all sorts of area-of-effect "spells" that limit visibility like a smoke screen, or slowly deal damage to enemies within their reach. Most of the abilities available in Valorant are auxiliary skills, and 90% of the frags we get from typical gunplay.

Of course, there are some deadly exceptions, but even these require considerable skill and good planning to actually get a frag. Most often, these are special abilities that take much longer to "charge" than in Overwatch, and can only be used once every few rounds. A good example of the philosophy that guided the game's developers is an air raid that one of the characters has access to. This attack is very powerful and can destroy the entire enemy team, but before it hits the target, the enemy has enough time to escape. In addition, the player calling the strike in is vulnerable for a short time and can be easily killed.

Heroes are not new in online games, but, it certainly is one of the elements that can give an advantage over Counter Strike. Not just because players like to collect stuff. Characters are also an excellent substitute of story in online games. Even if we are not particularly interested in the setting, a game with fleshed-out characters is just much more compelling. In addition, fantastic skills allow much more freedom in developing the game and introducing new, interesting ideas. Slow changes in CS can of course be considered a big advantage of the game (classic sports such as volleyball are also doing quite well, without monthly updates), but for players of LoL or Fortnite, frequent updates are already a standard, and without them, it would be difficult for developers to maintain interest in the game.

A few words about how servers work and why Valorant won't have lags

The second aspect of the game that should makeValorant a serious competitor for Counter Strike are the technical aspects. Unlike Fortnite or Apex Legends, the game was prepared from the very beginning with professional players in mind, ensuring they're provided with the best conditions. All servers will work at 128 Hz, which in CSGO works only on private servers and during professional tournaments.

The brief presentation also showed how Valorant developers are going to deal with players who take advantage of low internet connection. In case you're wondering how is that possible – we're talking about the so-called "teleports," which make the player briefly disappear. In Valorant, this problem is solved by synchronizing the animation server-side. On the demo, the lagging opponent moved quite normally for other players, so shooting him was no longer a problem.

Since we're talking about lags, they should be as small as possible in Valorant. All thanks to the network infrastructure Riot Games developed for League of Legends. It's not just about the servers, but also routers and even wires. What does it look like in practice? The user clicks a button, the information about the click has to get to the server. How quickly it gets there doesn't always depend solely on the distance to the server. Internet providers sometimes prefer to send a signal through several other access points, because it is simply cheaper. This is not a big problem for the regular user when browsing the Internet, but an increase in latency from 80 to 300 milliseconds can be very noticeable during the game.

With its own infrastructure and collaboration with Internet providers, Riot is able to ensure their games get shorter and more modern network pathways. The result? 75% of Valorant players shouldn't have ping larger than 35 milliseconds when the game launches, and this number should decrease further in the future.

It may not look like much, but it will run on anything

Another interesting statistic presented at the show was about what machines will be able to launch Valorant. The data was collected from League of Legends players. According to their calculations, the game will run smoothly on a PC for $120 on the minimum settings. . Equal or better hardware is owned by 88% of LoL players. For 60 frames and average graphics settings, you will a PC worth approx. $500, owned by 66% of LoL players. Ultra settings will be available to 33% of League of Legends players.

As you can see, Valorant should not require a sick gaming PC. For the same reason, however, you should not count on any graphical bells and whistles like ray tracing. The game is supposed to look nice and run on just about any rig. Graphically, it's reminiscent of both Overwatch and Team Fortress, but it definitely isn't as awe-inspiring as Blizzard's shooter was on first launch.

In Valorant, the colors seem much more toned-down, which, however, is justified. The creators wanted to make the game as clean and readable as possible. Despite being new to the game and despite the impressive abilities of some of the characters, I've never had a problem following the events in the game. On the other hand, after the first day, I also found it difficult to remember some of the characteristic elements of the maps I played on. They were definitely not as cleverly-designed and memorable as the ones in Overwatch.

Cheater hunters

All sorts of cheaters are a serious plague of online games, and fighting them often resembles a favorite pastime of the famous gentleman from La Mancha. Will the creators of Valorant be first to eliminate cheaters? It's unlikely, but their life won't be easy. As I learned during the presentation, almost all elements of Valorant were consulted with the team responsible for fighting cheaters before being implemented. Examples? The crosshair doesn't change color when it's aimed at an enemy, as this makes programming an aimbot much easier.

In Valorant, all calculations related to movement and shooting will be performed on the server side. The game will also use the so-called fog of war. The game's client will not receive information about the location of the enemy until the player is in close proximity. This limits the effectiveness of a wall-hack, which will only work if players are very near.

These mechanics will be complemented by all sorts of tried and popular solutions. This includes reporting cheaters, equipment bans, machine learning, and combating developers of cheats. Cheaters should also be kicked out during the match, and players should receive feedback if a player they'd reported was banned, or simply if they shared a server with them.

I largely focused on technical issues, but the bulk of the Valorant's presentation was devoted precisely to that. The new game from Riot Games will not bring about a revolution. It will not turn the genre of tactical shooters upside down. Mostly technical aspects are designed to convince fans of competing titles to switch to a new horse. Excellent server infrastructure, modest requirements, and cheaters are often elements that the developers think about at the very end of the production process, if not even after the game is released.

In case of Valorant, it should be different. If you add interesting characters and frequent updates, it may just result in one of the most compelling new shooters. Is this enough to defeat the old and experienced king (CSGO) and the young and ever more popular prince (R6S)? The task will not be easy, but, continuing the royal analogy, I think that a new contender for the throne is coming. It will release this summer.