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    Home Unlabelled VALORANT My First Valorant fanart - Cypher! Acrylic painting.

    VALORANT My First Valorant fanart - Cypher! Acrylic painting.

    June 20, 2020

    VALORANT My First Valorant fanart - Cypher! Acrylic painting.

    My First Valorant fanart - Cypher! Acrylic painting.

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:57 AM PDT

    This game's sleazy monetization is trying to toy with your brain. Don't fall prey to it.

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:59 AM PDT

    I get the game is F2P, and I understand they have to make money. At first, I was pretty disappointed about bundle prices because I believed (and still do) that they were too high. I get their tactic here, it's to target the wealthy, and hopefully, down the line, small fries like the major player base will get a fair deal. It isn't only the bundles which target the wealthy, however. To preface this, I will say also that no western, successful F2P game has pay-to-win.

    This game has the sleaziest monetization of any F2P I've ever played. I thought it would get better over time, but my hope has dwindled after Joe Lee's (RiotSWAGGERNAU7) statement regarding the battle-pass in Ask VALORANT #1. I would also like to say that managing monetization is this man's job. If you're going to get mad at anyone, get mad at the greedy guys at the top, not at him or the revenue team.

    No VP in the battle-pass. Interesting strategy. Here is what he had to say.

    Our goal is that when you buy a battle pass, you buy it for the total value of it rather than buying it as a way of getting enough currency to buy the next one. We want the battle pass to be the highest value product we offer as well as a compelling experience...

    This statement seems pretty genuine, but when you actually view the battle-pass beyond its face value, what they have done is pretty manipulative, and such manipulation is further demonstrated in the second half of his statement (which I'll cover after).

    Here is an image of VP and RP prices (I am in Australia, so prices will be different and the VP in each may be different, but the manipulation is a constant).

    Radianite points (RP) is the second of two paid currencies, I'll call it semi-premium because of their absolutely insulting prices, but I would also like to say you can earn a considerable amount in-game (that however, does not detract from its egregiousness). You have to buy VP first, and of course, they made it so you can't buy exact amounts, you've gotta use the packs. They also put these little "-x%" next to each tier of RP because oh boy, if it wasn't a steal already it's gotta be a steal now. /s It is insulting. 10 RP goes from around $10AUD to $15AUD, so you're pretty much best case scenario paying 10 bucks for an upgrade for a skin you've already bought (the upgradeable skins on their own btw, are $30AUD). Explained succinctly and pretty much perfectly by u/schemeKC, "Radianite is priced astronomically high to artificially inflate its perceived value". That's where Mr. Lee's statement comes in.

    Mr. Lee wants you to buy the battle-pass for "its total value". And jeez, the battle-pass must be good because of all that juicy Radianite which boosts its perceived value a fuckton. So after you finish the BP, you've got a nice amount of skins (none of which can be upgraded with RP). You've got this pile of RP leftover and it is just staring at you. The only way to use that RP though, is to spend even more money. Other F2P games give you premium currency for BPs months on end for free, and this game strips that away so you could be spending $10 every act, then coerces you to spend even more because of the RP you've been given. The way this statement was delivered to try and convince you that you were getting a good deal, now shows that this isn't something under the rug (to be felt not seen), it has been said by a real person. Any goodwill has been thrown out the window, and the player's intellect has been insulted. I hope that wasn't his intention, but that is exactly how it came across imo.

    VP can only be bought in really inconveniencing amounts, a tactic mostly used in mobile games but hey, it's 2020. Small indie dev needs to survive right? /s It is annoying for every player, and these tiers are worse than any F2P game I've ever played.

    If I wanted to buy 20 RP, I'd need to buy the 2175 VP pack and that would roughly equate to $15AUD per 10 RP. You can only use RP on paid skins (there are barely any free skins anyway). But let's say I want to buy the big boy 80 RP pack, ooh what value and it's 40% off! I would need to buy the 5800 VP pack for $80AUD and that would be around $10AUD per 10 RP if I were only buying RP. I need to buy another bundle to get an upgradeable skin, that sucks! I'll get the 1025 VP pack for $15 so I can buy a prime classic. That's $95AUD you've paid to get and upgrade a single skin (I'm not counting the RP you get for free for the purposes of demonstrating the confusion they have imbued within this model).

    This is a small demonstration of obfuscation. The system is designed to make you pay more and more and more until... oh. I still have some VP left, and I can get another skin! Let me pay just this little bit more. I think my bank balance might be negative. A single prime skin without any of its variants is at least $30AUD unless you buy the big boy bundles, but then you've obviously spent more than 30 bucks. It is designed to confuse the player into purchasing the highest value pack so they don't have to think, and if I'm being honest I haven't seen mobile games this cunning. This is malicious, and kind of impressive in a super fucked up way.

    The second half of his statement talks about the future of Radianite, and again, further attempts to display that "it's a great deal!" The revenue team wants RP to be "the evolving currency of VALORANT". They want this overpriced, huge pile of inflated pixels to be the next big thing. The RP you got for free can't be used for free, and honestly with the way this monetization is panning out I don't expect it ever to be used as such (despite what's said in the next few sentences, we've seen in the past a number of popular suggestions being thrown to the wind).

    An auto-renewable battle-pass in any game is designed to respect the player's time. If I see a game I love with an auto-renewable pass, actively rewarding me for spending time with the game after a one time purchase, you'd better bet your top dollar I will spend more. This system does not respect your time, it constantly probes you to spend more and more. Riot obviously didn't design this system with morals in mind, and there are certainly way more subtle additions that I didn't catch.

    So pretty much, this package has overpriced bundles and skins, psychologically manipulative RP, layers of obfuscation for all monetization - but hey, it's F2P! People who pay, they're suckers. Let their wealth be sapped for trying to support the devs. obligatory /s

    For a developer that has such strong ties to its community, these sort of manipulative business practices sour our perception. Even EA, after the Battlefront 2 fiasco completely removed loot-boxes and to a further extent, even microtransactions from everything but their sports games and AL. They tried to improve their reputation by investing in more indie devs and actually supporting them. Riot has done nothing.

    I know this post won't make them change their system. We have seen that they closed the door to the battle-pass changing after huge community outcry, and haven't at all changed the scummy Radianite, in fact, they've stated they are going to double down. But if we double down on our critique of the system we can be sure they will at least discuss it down the line. Your voice matters, probably not as much as your wallet though haha. Safeguard that shit from exploitation.

    If and when you decide to purchase something here, a good question would probably be whether this company actually respects your purchasing decision. As it stands, my feet are firmly glued to the "no" side of the fence.

    tl;dr - the game uses shady microtransaction design to confuse and fool players, then asks them to spend more money after stripping away common features of an established battle-pass model, completely failing to respect/reward their consumers' money/time.

    submitted by /u/IllumiMahdi
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    Valorant pro matches are difficult to follow; the game lacks the right spectating tools

    Posted: 19 Jun 2020 08:22 PM PDT

    I've been watching a few Valorant pro matches from the Twitch Rivals tournament as well as the current G2 Invitational and I've found myself having a difficult time watching the game and keeping track of each round. I think the game lacks the right spectating tools to make for a proper viewing experience. There is too little information being shown to the viewer.

    Here's a couple of suggestions on ways to improve the viewing experience:

    1. Showing the loadout of all players on the screen at all times. CS:GO has this shown for both teams on two ends of the screen, and in my opinion Valorant should have something like it too. It displays each player's gun, money, grenades, health, and even armor throughout the round. The grenades can be replaced with the agent skills for Valorant. This is the most important thing that the game is lacking spectator-wise in my opinion

    2. X-ray. Seeing teammates and opponents through the wall when spectating makes it so that viewers don't have to look at the minimap all the time to follow the flow of the round.

    3. Cleaner death indicators at the top tab. In-game, when a player dies, their agent's avatar is removed from the top tab, making it clear that they are no longer alive and makes it easier to count the number of remaining players alive in the round. Spectating does not follow this, instead, there is a red x mark drawn on top of the avatar. In my opinion this is very jarring to look at because it's less of a clearer indicator for death and makes it more difficult to count the remaining number of players alive left. If Valorant copies the loadout tab from number 1 above it can even be used as a death indicator exactly like CSGO.

    4. Texts indicating which team is the Defender/Attacker. In-game, the green tab indicates your own team and the red tab indicates the enemy team. This correlation isn't the same when spectating; the green tab is always the defenders while the red tab is always the attackers. This can be confusing for first time viewers and it would be helpful if there was just text somewhere indicating which team is defending or attacking at the given half.

    I think Valorant can copy a lot of the tools CSGO has right now to improve its viewing experience. Personally I do not see the harm in copying ideas from other games if it allows your game to improve as well

    Regardless I hope as time goes on the Valorant devs look for ways to improve the game's viewing experience because right now matches are really difficult to follow

    submitted by /u/Raviolla
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    I think Phonix flashed too hard

    Posted: 19 Jun 2020 10:27 PM PDT

    How to uninstall Valorant

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 12:01 AM PDT

    I just want to make a quick, and straightforward guide on how to uninstall valorant. I am making this post because, at the time of writing this post, if you search "uninstall" on r/VALORANT, the top post was a Redditor getting flamed for wanting to uninstall the game. I uninstalled Valorant because I don't have the time to commit to playing 21ish rounds.

    Here's a quick tl;dr for those that ran into issues trying to uninstall Valorant. There are extra steps to take that you would not normally do for a standard program.

    1. Close Vanguard (the anti-cheat for Valorant). You can open your system tray and right-click to close it. If you are not familiar with Windows (not everyone is tech-savvy), here's a quick guide from Riot: https://support-valorant.riotgames.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044648213-Uninstalling-and-Disabling-Riot-Vanguard.
    2. Uninstall Vanguard.
    3. Uninstall Valorant. Windows will not let you uninstall Valorant before Vanguard.
    4. Reboot. Valorant won't be removed from your list of programs until you have successfully rebooted.
    5. Done.
    6. Optional: The uninstall is pretty dirty. After you have uninstalled Valorant, there are still about 100 MBs of files on your OS drive. It didn't impact my system but it something to be aware of.

    If you don't follow the steps in that order, you will encounter error messages from Windows.

    submitted by /u/UWUPatrol
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    boombot strafes better than all of us

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 06:37 AM PDT

    Me and my friend we're killing each other with infinite ammo and then our game crashed. Came back in the game and this image replaced Omen's image in the hologram. New agent or old Omen ?

    Posted: 19 Jun 2020 11:03 PM PDT

    VALORANT Battle Pass Tracker - Check your progress towards the next skin/cosmetic! (Details in the comments)

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:16 AM PDT

    I posted this over a month ago, but Brimstone smokes are still not centered and ranked will be releasing soon

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:07 AM PDT

    This is how I motivate my team to win games in Valorant

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 03:45 AM PDT

    My experience in gaming has mostly been Mario Kart, but my boyfriend has started to teach me how to play Valorant. Yesterday I got my first Ace!!

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 12:13 PM PDT

    My best play so far

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 08:30 AM PDT

    AK-47 Inspired Vandal Skin

    Posted: 19 Jun 2020 08:32 PM PDT

    Valorant animation by Dopatwo

    Posted: 19 Jun 2020 08:47 PM PDT

    Play Valorant, Get Healthy!

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 12:55 AM PDT

    We decided, collectively as a group today to start an effort to be healthier and also get better at the game!

    I figured a lot of you might like it.

    For every death in a match you and your stack do

    1 pushup/crunches/squats

    Then after an entire gameplay session you add up your deaths and do that many minutes of cardio.

    Example:

    End Score: 6/9

    9 pushups 9 crunches 9 squats

    9 mins of cardio.

    It gets your blood pumping and also helps you focus on doing better at the game if you hate working out!

    I'm super obese and it's been good so far, we played much better and had a better time because if someone was having a bad game we just laugh collectively at how much they have to work out.

    Tl;dr dying = get fit.

    We used to do this for CSGO but instead of health we did shots. Bad times.

    Hope this results in fun times for you guys!

    submitted by /u/poying55
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    Spike rush should have a knife only round

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 02:18 AM PDT

    Pretty self explanatory, some games, in place of one of the pistol rounds, we have a knife round.

    submitted by /u/threeg40
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    Valorant is pretty fun ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 08:49 AM PDT

    To all my Cypher teammates:

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 05:54 AM PDT

    As a Cypher main, please stop fucking placing your trips at foot level.

    No, people don't actually trip on them.

    Enemy Cyphers though, keep doing what you're doing.

    -an angry Cypher main

    submitted by /u/Genesiss200
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    The enemy team had 3 dc's so we decided to see if a 5 man collateral was possible

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 11:06 AM PDT

    Dear duelists from a brimstone main,

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 07:44 AM PDT

    Cmon guys. You always ask me to smoke heaven and stuff BUT YOU NEVER PUSH. You just sit outside in long and just wait for the smokes to fade and after you push, you get domed by an OP. You gotta push before the smokes fade or else they're useless. I only have 3, and I don't want to waste them on a push that never comes.

    Sincerely, guy that shouts "MOLLAY"

    also p.s to other brimstone/omen mains:

    don't smoke your team's entrance. Smoke to block your enemy's lines of sight and their entrances,

    submitted by /u/X1x3x3x7
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    Would anyone else like to see gun buddies of the agents themselves?

    Posted: 20 Jun 2020 12:22 AM PDT

    I think that having chibi gun buddies of the agents would be great. I know that there are already agent specific gun buddies but they're not amazing. I'd honestly much rather grind for a chibi gun buddy of an agent rather than grind for a new character. Thoughts?

    submitted by /u/TeoLikesReddit
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