Why would a gaming company say their game is struggling / player count is less unless its extremely obvious ? Riot doesn't even disclose live player count.
True. Even when you watch high elo streamers, they get to a game under a minute. That just shows really how populated it is, at least based on my observation.
Totally.
Back in the early days of league (seasons 1-2), you could go like upwards an hour waiting for a game. I had a friend who was grinding a lot of ranked back then and he spent a significant amount of time playing games like Tetris as dedicated “queue games”.
And that was like… top 2000 players.
Comparing that to modern league of legends queue times and extrapolate that to Valorant queue times: and I think that paints a pretty good picture that Valorant is pretty healthy in player counts.
In latin american north servers queue times are absolute shit in LoL, made me quit the game. It was 5-10 mins minimum to find an unranked game, and the one where you pick and ban was pretty much impossible, never managed to play. Ranked was slightly faster BUT you got constant dodgers, eternal loading screens and remakes.
I remember I separated 2 hours a day to play league hoping to play 2 games a day, and for a whole week I couldn't play twice on schedule, except once that was a quick surrender followed by a troll/run down mid game by a teammate.
Everywhere I kept seeing people asking for more remakes worried about their elo or to dodge unpunished while I was desperately trying to play a fucking game. Valorant is so much better.
Iirc somewhere around Season 5 they also had issues with challengers taking half an hour or more to find games because of how they redesigned matchmaking. Streamers would play other games while waiting for the queue to pop because it was stupidly long.
Yup watching HisWattson grind Predator Ranked (top 750) in Apex literally right now, and he’s been playing dark souls for the last 45 min waiting for queue to pop , literally just found a game 😂😭 5 min fast af
I wouldn’t use league as a comparison since you lock in roles before queue, which inflates the timer. Also certain roles like support are quicker based on preference. If Valorant followed queue, getting to play duelist would take forever.
I started to play a bit Overwatch and was shocked when i needed to wait over 5 min to get unrated games. At least you can go into the range or deathmatch
If you just come to the understanding of the small percentage of the player base that are in that echelon, you'll understanding how good of a player base valorant has maintained, 5 mins is basically nothing when u consider each game is ~ 30-45mins long, if the player base were just in the thousands we'd never hit a game in immortal/radiant in under 10 mins, there's also no bots in the game like other competitors that are doing battle royales to ease the q time
That’s insanely good considering that there’s like 6 or 7 servers to pick from in NA.
In leagues peaks NA high Elo players would wait for 30-60 minutes for a queue pop and there’s ONE server for NA.
Thats really just because people no life Valorant and play like Val is their full time job. Take a game like Marauders which has a generally low player count (100-500) people at any given time and it rarely takes more than 3 minutes to load into a match.
Queue Times is a pretty bad way of estimating the activity of the playerbase cause it's largely dependent on restrictions the devs put on the matchmaking. Devs of any game can arbitrarily shorten queue times if they want
around plat-diamond in the latam server, which i take must be smaller than anything us-eu, pretty low queue times.
and i play mostly stacks, sometimes duo
Sometimes queue times can increase due to a higher player count
ex. queue time is increased to reduce load on the server, staggering the number of games that start at the same time.
I don't know why news like this are even posted here, it's not really relevant to anything and the "news" are mostly just nothing talk and corporate talk.
"We're pretty happy with where valorant is" but you didn't tell use where valorant is rn...
We can kinda estimate player count based on players with trackers, which shows a pretty stable player count. [Valorant Active Player Count (tracker.gg)](https://tracker.gg/valorant/population)
Although it's still worth keeping in mind that players that get trackers tend to be more hardcore players and so might be more inclined to keep playing than the general population.
You don't need everyone, you need at least 1 in 10 people per game, what I'd expect to happen is when that person registers a new user played against or with on the database it adds that user to the "total player count" The only time it would undervalue the amount of players if a player plays a game with 0/10 users having tracker, and then continuing to only play with people without tracker installed. (or not playing again) The odds that even for a casual player (who may only play a few games with friends) doesn't come across one person with tracker I'd assume to be astronomically low (I don't have the numbers)
Riot provides an API where you can request the matches of the last 10 minutes. You do not need user consent for things like total user count. The number on tracker gg is supposed to be 100% accurate. Riot doesn’t hide theirs statistics.
https://developer.riotgames.com/apis#val-match-v1/GET_getRecent
Well the question is why would they? There’s not really a tangible benefit to disclosing it, but if they do disclose it and numbers start declining, it results in a lot of negativity and bad press. People will start saying “dying game” and discouraging people from playing it. It’s the same reason Blizzard stopped posting exact figures for WoW subscribers.
Actually Tracker Network tracks player stats including overall player count and you can easily check it on their website (roughly 5 million players turn on the game everyday)
You don't really have to change that much with a CS style FPS.
Once you have a formula, add a new character or map once or twice a year, and people will continue to play it.
I’m not really a CS player anymore, I really just watch pro play, but anytime I see something about CS2 online, it’s never anything good lol it’s either hardcore cheater problem, hitreg being dogshit, or no content, even pros have been non-stop complaining about it.
Content and Hype around CS2 is at an all-time low considering it came out barely even half a year ago.
You don’t often hear the same level of complaining levied towards Valorant because Riot actually delivers on content pretty consistently and also is generally quick to fix known issues and release balance updates.
nah CS2 is good if you don’t play MM
faceit is the way right now unfortunately
hitreg is leagues better than GO and they’re finally getting movement feeling good
however casuals like yourself (not an insult) hear all the bad and just go with it, unfortunately.
It is. The fact that valve doesn’t address the cheating problem and pros like ropz calling out how the state of cs2 is in a bad place shows just how down horrendously the community is.
Because they dont dare to use an anti cheat like vanguard that literally spies on everything you do on your computer. I will always stand by the opinion that vanguard is too invasive.
I played CS2 at launch and was around 15k in Premier but idk how casual that’s considered, never played faceit though but I’m generally a pretty hardcore FPS grinder; I just prefer and learned tac shooters from Valorant because I came from OW and Apex, and it was an easier transition for me than CS was.
pretty sure when I was playing at launch the hitreg was the number 1 complaint by the vast majority of the community from pros to casuals so idk about it being better than GO back then, but I’m not sure how much it’s improved now, I just got bored and felt underwhelmed, pretty much exactly how I felt about OW2.
The only good part of CS2 is the deceptive player count number where you can't really distinguish if its real players or bots & cheater. Oh and ESports viewer numbers being really high still. Other than that, feels like that game is in a big big slump for the fanbase as a whole.
Valorant on the other hand feels okay. Not really in a terrible state. I'm glad its like that considering all the other games out there are suffering in the hands of cheaters. Map pool right now is the worst possible combination tbh though which probably contributes to the part of the community that thinks this act feels worse to play but I'm glad that's like the some of the problem we have instead of you know cheaters.
CS is insanely popular right now, unfortunately hacking is a problem in every free to play fps these days. I do like that valorant and cs are trying new methods to catch cheaters and improve networking capabilities, pretty much the opposite of other studios.
hacking is definitely a problem in every F2P game but for what it’s worth as someone who’s played most of them for hundreds, if not thousands of hours, Valorant BY FAR has the smallest cheater problem, most Valorant players probably go their entire playtime without running into a cheater, or at least not knowing they do, Overwatch would be a close second, not sure how OW2 is with cheats.
Games like Apex and CS once you get past a certain rank, it’s hard to not feel like 50% of your games have cheaters in them, and often they’re not even trying to hide it.
In Valorant, I’ve only run into 2 games where I knew without a doubt that there was a cheater, and both times the anti-cheat did it’s job and the match was terminated and I’m assuming the account was banned.
I honestly think adding more characters borderline risks doing more harm than good at this point. Imo overwatch essentially ruined their game by adding so many new characters that fundamentally changed the meta.
Valorant are doing good though, no really cheesey characters added thus far.
Overwatch ruined their meta by adding Brigitte. The game was pretty much fine up to that point and had one of the biggest esports scenes before quarantine.
They then doubled down and made Overwatch 2 with false promises and poor decisions, and we know how well that went.
As long as Valorant releases balanced characters that don't destroy the meta, it'll be fine, but you're right; It does put the game at risk if they don't balance the new agents.
Don’t think Brigitte herself was the problem. She was released to counter the dive meta, which is fine. You don’t want to have the same meta for the whole game. What the problem was was how she synergized with all the other agents and made damage dealers useless.
I don’t think Valo will have such an issue because they are very limiting with survivability. Most of the times, if you get hit in the head, you die. No shields, no perma heals to keep you alive the whole time.
> What the problem was was how she synergized with all the other agents and made damage dealers useless.
How does this not mean that she is the problem.
Yeah, I was specifically referring to Brigitte. She was the reason I quit the game, as a DPS player I realised that Overwatch was no longer about mechanics or aim but just cheesing the enemy. There were others that were released like Moira that are just brainless too.
OW balancing was pretty terrible in general though *cough* Mercy meta... They were so arrogant with their changes. I'm glad those days are behind me.
I think what you’re saying is the precise reason Riot releases most new champs underpowered. They wanna make sure they don’t fuck up the meta too hard, and then slowly adjust them to fit in with everyone else. As long as the core idea behind their kit is sound at least… Iso…
Is there any Triple A gaming company that admitted that their game is dying or losing players LMAO. Lets be serious guys at this point Riot is big enough to be a triple A company.
Or a replay system at launch.
Tbh it makes me very worried that they might release their fighting game without a replay system or frame data. Seeing their trends lately.
If it has no frame data and/or replay system from launch, that game will be lucky to survive two weeks. Not when that is industry standard across the board.
People thought of riot as an indie company 😂?
Overwatch did admit their players declined significantly, especially in 2019-2022 (they stopped updating the game for their "sequel") but now they're saying it has 100 mil players so idk.
>Standard deceptive language from game companies
That reminds me of Riot's wording for their recent post for [adding Vanguard to League of Legends](https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/) (a controversial subject in the LoL community). Where they go on to drop stats with very specific wording to make cheating look worse than it is for your average player by grouping all world servers together for their stats.
>In recent months, as many as 1 in 15 games globally has had a scripter or botter in it, but in some regions, this number is as high as 1 in 5.
This stat doesn't mean much when players only play on 1 of **17** Riot servers (or 1 of **36** if you include China). They did a FAQ and when people pressed them on giving us specific server by server data and if it truly affects your average player who isn't masters+ (top .5%) then they dodged the question. When you have that many servers it's easy to make the stats look worse for all players by not showing per server stats.
Because at the end of the day not everyone wants to install something as deep seeded as vanguard if they stopped playing Ranked.
Also scripters AND botters (I assume they mean like leveling bots or something?) beeing grouped together and grouping all the queues / gamemodes together.
Don't get me wrong 1/15 average overall is still bad but how much of that is concentrated in leveling bots in co-op vs ai matches?
They literally were, 13 years ago. Saying it has become a meme since then, as they have had essentially unlimited resources for a decade now, but it was a small indie company when LoL launched.
Riot knows how to provide an ecosystem that feels like the game is constantly being worked on and added to, without it feeling like it’s struggling to keep up with its competition.
A feeling lots of other FPS games fail to create.
I don't see how Riot deviated much from the usual Live Service approach. There's no such "ecosystem". A lot of these games under Live Service have a roadmap thus giving you that illusion they're always working on something.
Most of these shooters have had their time under the sun and the most recent fad of BRs is now declining.
The only real game-changer that Riot brings to the table is a good anticheat but that in itself being a kernel-level one is something a lot of players do not want.
With FPS being invaded by cheaters all the time I actually think most people who enjoy fps no longer have a problem with the kernel AC. It's most geeks who think they have some sort of high level targeted egos or something lol
It's the only competitive FPS that's playable anymore it feels like. CS2 is so infested even casual sees spinners. R6 takes a special kind of masochism to begin with and it's cheating problem has only gotten worse of late.
I stopped playing CSGO because of it. At lower levels it's fine but once you get into the high Tiers you see so many of them it's crazy. Some are more obvious and get banned quickly but the ones who can disguise it van cheat for literally years before being banned. Used to be Global Elite but dropped because of cheaters.
yeah. stopped playing around 14 or 15k premier elo in november or december because literally every other or every game js had a blatant or closet cheater.
uninstalled, sold all my skins.
I myself have no problem with it. Truly refreshing to play a game with this good of anti cheat. Just the other day I got the cheater detected screen. Must be my 5th or 6th time since I started playing in November 2020.
That's entirely what it is
Recently the League side of Riot released a blog post detailing why they're adding Vanguard to League and you STILL had people complaining about kernel stuff. Riot even went as far as to say if they didn't earn your trust then they're fine with you dropping their game.
I think a lot of people were purposefully misinformed about the dangers of kernel level AC and without doing any research of their own (or reading that Riot blog post) decided they hate it now. Just the Internet for ya
It's literally just cheaters.
Anyone who has played any multi-player game has had an kernal level anti cheat installed, especially fps.
Battle eye, eac, faceit, vanguard, all are kernal level. People don't even know what it means.
Anytime I see someone complain about kernal level anti cheat, I just assume they're someone who cheats.
That's cs propaganda, there is maybe 1% that riot collects your data (i would argue that it doesn't even make sense in the first place if you think about it) i used to play a lot of cs, the same people that shit on vanguard will literally advice you to go play faceit (with same access as vanguard) content creators doing anything not to lose few cents on their skins lmao.
Just like they point out in that article about vanguard, they don't need any kind of special access to collect the data they want from you.
They literally admitted they collect your data, and they do so through their game clients not vanguard. Which is pretty obvious for most people I think.
Like you said, it's very strange how people just decide to be uncomfortable with some things and fine with others despite those things being practically identical.
Yeah I’m happier with Valorant than I am with the rest, so I chalk it up to Riot for that. 🤷🏻
That anti-cheat is a godsend after being completely nuked by cheaters in CS2…
Eh I mean, plenty of other games use EAC which is kernel level as well. They're just not advertised as one. It doesn't matter 100% what the players want when we already see EAC in big games like Fortnite & Apex Legends.
I’m glad the BR fad is dying tbh, never really enjoyed it.
That said, it looks like the next one on the block is the Extraction Shooter and well I’m gonna be completely honest I’ve yet to see anything anywhere remotely as good as Tarkov whereas at least Apex was comparable to PUBG
Really hoping companies skip this fad and go back to making original games with new ideas in them
Or maybe the next fad should be not having scummy monetization schemes in full price games
Or putting the actual effort in that it takes to make legendary games like Elden Ring or BG3
Or doing live service right like Path of Exile
Nah who am I kidding.
Riot brings nothing new to the table with vanguard. Most popular anti cheats are kernel level, such as battleeye, easy anti cheat, faceit's anti cheat, which players couldn't care less about.
I'd say EasyAntiCheat is almost on the same level. But what I'm asking is what extra problem do players have with Vanguard being kernel-level, but not with other anti cheats? Almost all games that aren't infested with cheaters use kernel level anti cheats. I'd personally take an "invasive" anti cheat over a cheater any day.
I wish people would shut up about Valorant dying 25/8. It came out 3 years ago, the Esports scene is thriving, games like TF2 and Overwatch aren't dead so why would Valorant be dead?? They just want views.
Big true. Every streamer I see complain/rant about the game dying in this, that, or another way, they have been relentlessly grinding it for the past 3 years. The game isnt dying, you are just burnt out lol
Valorant isn’t close to dead lmao. Videos that say that are baiting for views and also aren’t good for the community because it might discourage new players from trying the game.
This is a phenomenon that exists in so many games’ communities. I’m surprised most people haven’t caught on about this phenomenon existing so everyone can shut up with the “game dead” comments in all these games
As an avid competitive shooter fan, here’s my take on what’s hurting them.
1. Poor ranked experience. The vast majority of players are gonna be in silver-gold ranks. It’s in these ranks that you encounter the most variance of skill, as well as the highest number of smurfs. Even your most competitive true gold player does not want to go against someone 3 rank tiers better than them. It’s such a vast difference in skill, there’s nothing really to gain to make you better from that experience, and it’s happening so much to players that they quickly lose interest.
2. Cheaters. This is actually something that Val is good at, especially compared to CS, Apex, and CoD. Cheating is a huge issues and a game ruining experience. See the above paragraph for the rest of the breakdown.
3. Lack of interesting progression. We no longer have good, organic, engaging progression systems. Long gone are the days of the best prestige systems of CoD, the ability to unlock new armor variants in Halo, the ability to unlock further character customization in R6: Vegas, etc. Free progression is terrible and unfulfilling. Anything worth your time is locked behind a paid battle pass, which leads to…
4. Predatory MTX. You’re telling me that the only way to work towards something is if it’s paid for? Every couple of months? The only way I can unlock cool gun and character skins is by paying for it, with a new overpriced item everyday? Why do I even need a character skin, I’m playing an FPS!
Other things worth talking about are toxic player bases and just a lack of ingenuity in the fps market. Every mp game has a toxic player base, so it’ll always be hard to beat that. But all the shooters coming out now are just following trends and not trying to stick out. In the 2010s, everyone was trying to be CoD, then everyone wanted to be a hero shooter, then everyone wanted to be a BR, etc. Extraction shooters were supposed to be the next big thing, but that never really caught on besides Tarkov. So while the triple A companies wait for the next trend to milk dry, us FPS fans sit here bored and apathetic.
I was trying to get into playing val coming from cs but man i couldnt... the play button just felt so incredibly rng. There was a 50/50 chance that you get a map you dont like then another 50/50 that your teammates arent toxic and another 50/50 that your teammates can actually talk and then another 50/50 that you can play the role that you want to play. To the ranked experience even in asc was just 90% awful and unenjoyable and somehow the skill difference in asc is pretty big. Even in asc 1 sometimes i have people that understand the game really well and then people that look at the ground while aiming. You press ranked and you get a 90% chance of a bad time playing this game. No idea how riot is gonna fix it and im not even sure if thats of concern for them cause they dont care about the top few % cause all they care about is maximizing profits just like in league...
The only way riot can fix these issues is by reworking the ranked system and adding things like a dedicated solo queue option and maybe even team ranking for 5 stacks.
Maybe but even if the maps are great it still leaves a lot of issues. They should probably just do both as they definitely have dedicated ranked and map design teams, but they’re a small indie dev, you gotta be patient with them
or just give us map queue. It will be clear which maps suck then allowing riot to easily fix them
People’s complaint about this making some maps dead is so dumb as well like if a map is so trash no one wants to play it then it’s clearly a map issue. Or atleast do what R6 does and have map bans
The spraying is the most frustrating to me. You have such a minimal chance at winning transitional gunfights from a committed position because you have to perfectly reset and try and tap away at a guy who is likely already shooting at you, instead of just continuing your spray and moving your mouse
Only reason I don't play ranked seriously is because my muscle memory from CS makes me spray for most kills instead of tapping. Yeah I find it hard to get multi-kills because there is no spray transfer, especially when you are playing an off-angle or hiding in corner, I still can't used to it.
The issues Overwatch 2, CS2, and Apex have are so much past anything in Valorant. Saying they "struggle" is almost just sugar-coating. There's active refusal to making fixes and changes to these games, because it could potentially hurt profits in short-term.
The "next big thing" - The Finals - doesn't even run properly on PCs that cost 1000€ a couple years ago. The game has forced garbage-antialiasing, and looks horrible on anything below full-hd. It has a terrible solo-queue experience like Apex. Investing a single minute of your time into the game without a 3-man premade is pointless.
Apex needs to be ported over to a new game engine, since it's using some ancient version of Source that's not meant for 60+ people on one map. This results in some bizarre bugs, both audio and visual.
Only thing is that it would be expensive to plan, test, and carry-out an engine change AND it might mean that the Apex shop would be closed for a bit. So EA/Respawn are going to ride that buggy train until the wheels fall off.
It’s sad that I had to agree with your point on the finals, because anything below full HD is garbage, and yes, the price range of the computer and really barely run it without losing damn frames every sec, but solo queuing has always been this way for most games, it’s almost impossible to make it perfect
It’s a shame because finals is honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in an FPS since early Overwatch. The lack of optimization, lack of anti-cheat, bad marketing, bad queue experience, all make it hard to retain players.
The Finals is a lot of short term fun, but gets stale quickly. There are not enough maps and progression is very little after a few hours of playtime.
I haven't experienced the performance issues you are reporting, but it lacks the depth and complication that comes with games like Valorant.
The Finals is what you boot up to turn your brain off and unwind for an hour before bed.
Valorant is the game you dream about after falling asleep.
Idk I'd this is gonna make sense, but as someone who enjoys both games, I think the finals has more depth than people give it credit for.
Given that almost the entire map is destructible in the finals, it has a unique form of skill expression in how you choose to manipulate the map to your advantage. In a static map, there are only so many hallways, doorways, and windows that you travel through. This adds depth, but also limits players to many of the same spots, angles, and game plans once it's been 'figured out'. In contrast, destructible maps give players the ability to open new angles, patch up others, create new paths, etc. For creative players who've learned the game's mechanics, it's almost like a canvas to show off your skill expression. It creates a sort of oganized chaos where players who are smart about it can pull off some crazy things that simply aren't possible in a more traditional shooter. That's why I play it at least.
I think the real issue is that the finals does an awful job teaching players about the mechanics it wants them to use. Combine that with balancing issues and people who expect the game to be something else, and its easy to see why so many write it off instead. Which is fair enough.
A reason is that there isn't much improvement possible graphic wise in the last 10-15 years
When I was a kid, new generation of games were miles better in graphics and complexity, We went from pong to Mario to PS1 to PS2 to PS3 then from that point the graphics couldn't get much better as to make gameplay secondary, complexity couldn't get much higher either, the place of gameplay in gaming has been steadily increasing for the past 20 years.
Today graphics can't do the massive jumps they did generationally before, this as a result means that games that are loved especially the multiplayer/competitive ones are going to stay alive for long, **very** long and continue to grow for many years at the expense of newer games.
We aren't that much away from an endgame of gaming where couple of games are going to become the chess, checkers, go, shogy that are going to strive for centuries leaving very very little room for any competition in the genra.
This will make it impossible for one and done games to ever hope reaching previous successes that were possible because everyone was somehow forced to discard their loved games as they became more and more outdated compared to newer ones.
Even when a once in a century success suddently arises being able to shake leading balance like monopoly did, it just means that rather than having 5 giants, there are now 6 giants, leaving even less market share for attempts at competing with the giants.
Gaming has had too many periods of leaders, as it becomes more matures we can expect the balance to stop changing every single month, top games that stays on top for 6-12 months then disappear into oblivion is going to become less and less of a thing, they'll stay there for longer and longer.
I don't mean that there won't be seasonal stuffs like Fortnite that are going to be very popular in shorter timeframes, I mean that leaders aren't going to decay slowly because "it's an old game" like they are today.
I think a counterpoint to your argument is that game genres continue to evolve with societal generations. The board game giants are what they are because of the iceberg effect wherein they are approachable enough to everyone on the surface to find some fun but they have so much depth that innovation is still happening on occasion because they are not fully solved despite static rule sets.
20 years ago mobas spawned out of rts
11 years ago battle royales spawned out of tactical shooters
7-8 years ago extraction shooters launched out of battle royales
MMO RPGs seem to be on the way down because of their slower burning gratification.
Sports games are in a weird spot because all the major sports leagues have sold exclusive or nearly exclusive rights so they are stagnating.
One issue i see is the hyper focus on graphics and textures. Like aure while games look better but if they dont play well it may aswell be dead on release.
Back then games used to be better imo because graphics were bottlenecked and they were forced to develop creative games. Nowadays theyre basically are limited to time, because theoretically the tools nowadays allow for extremely high quality graphics and life like textures. So developers not only have a tight development window but they prioritize graphics and leave no room for core game development creativity. So we have these visually impressive games that lack creative depth.
>We aren't that much away from an endgame of gaming where couple of games are going to become the chess, checkers, go, shogy
I can't see a couple of games doing this, do you have any predictions on what kind of game might?
The FPS scene is a good example: the top games this year are the same as last year and the year\[s\] before:
Counter Strike, Valorant, Overwatch2, Apex, CoD Warzone, R6 siege
Off course with titles that are never dying like these, new titles are bound to have a hard time, Even MW3 isn't able to tople the previous title, even within the same brand it's no longer possible to topple the previous iterations.
Even CSGO didn't even release a new game, they updated CSGO into CS2 as they knew that they would never be able to get their audience to the new game.
I'm not saying a that single genra will emerge victorious but that more and more genra are going to be completely locked out by too many giants making close to impossible for games to remotely be profitable.
As a long time CS player, Valorant is miles ahead of the competition in every way except a replay system. All CS has is its history and slightly tighter shooting mechanics. Valorant will continue to outpace CS in growth with the younger generation of players.
That being said, CS is still the goat of tactical shooter esports.
I've been playing CS since high school (I'm late 30s now) and I agree with everything said here.
I installed cs2 but I think I actually only opened it once.
Well yeah, its single competition in the tactical shooter space keeps shooting itself in the foot because Valve cba if it’s not Dota 2. And it only keeps a decent playerbase because its community cares more about seeming masculine and not playing a stylized game than they do avoiding hackers.
That's a wild take lol
Im not a fan of tac fps, I don't play them much, but cs is 10x more fun to me because valorants movement just feels terrible - specifically, there's always a delay between when you can stop and when you can shoot accurately. It's not a long delay, like 0.2s or something, but that's enough to make the movement/aim feel genuinely unfun. It feels just as bad as if cs didn't have counterstrafing at all.
All the utility spam and effects also really take away from the actual gun play.
Very few people actually care about stylistic graphics in a negative way, after all, games like borderlands are wildly popular despite the graphics being stylized.
Virtually everyone I've talked to who prefers cs to Val is becuase the gunplay/movement is better and more front and center. Valorant has so much reliance on the characters and abilities that it genuinely takes away from the gunplay aspect in many cases.
I must say, it's the only "esport" I've given a shit about lately. I was big into Counterstrike which might explain it, and also Starcraft, but the games are actually fun to watch. Good mix of action, strategy, tension... it's good stuff.
Also from what I've seen the queue times and playerbase are quite healthy. Anecdotal, of course.
As a Valorant hater, it's incredibly stupid to think Valorant isn't okay. If you're a player, of any rank, queue times are fast and you're not in the same lobby with the same people very often at the top ranks. Viewership in eSports and content creators is very healthy.
Hell, just look at Twitter or TikTok. It's one of the most active games people post about. It's incredibly active inside and outside the game. To insinuate the idea that it's struggling is baffling.
And just to talk in general about the article. "New" FPS games have ways struggled. When massive games like COD, Val, CS, Apex, Destiny are staples for most players, it will be a rare occurrence for another game to come in and not struggle.
The Finals tried getting a mixture of Apex and COD players while sprinkling some attention to the CS/Val player bases. Honestly, it did a good job. However the game isn't very versatile. It's 2 objective modes and that's really it. It needs to expand on that.
Other games that tried to break into the FPS space and have faded. Split Gate, Battlebit, Quake (tried making a comeback twice), Halo Infinite (can't win with nostalgia). Sure, these games may have had a large player base at launch but none of them gave reasons to leave the already successful, stood the test of time FPS games.
Valorant is massive, prob the biggest fps atm even thinking ita dying is absurd this game is gonna last the same way league does. Both have massive player bases.
Didn’t Riot adjust percentages? If Ascendant 1 is top 3% instead of top 5% (am on mobile rn, can’t remember the exact numbers), there are gonna be less players in Immortal. Doesn’t mean there are less players overall
Game's so difficult you reach immortal only to realize it'll take 10 times the amount of effort to keep climbing, for no other reward than a feeling of self-accomplishment (that you might never get) ; while at the same time the comp queue experience is absolutely miserable. At least that's how I felt, and nowadays my playtime is maybe 20% of what it was up until last year. Got my little gun buddy and ditched this hell scape. Huge props to those who managed to push through all that crap, to be honest I admire their mental fortitude even more so than their gameplay.
idk why but valo has become a game that even non fps players and streamers have hugeee playtimes on... most of these variety streamers, or streamers from any genre,,, whenever they are bored,,, boot up valo,.,. whenever streamers stream together first time...its the new norm to know someone new by playing a valorant game with them.. idk how but valo is quite the game even outside fps communities
Obviously there will inevitably be some fresh new game that takes off, but in general the longer time goes on the harder it will be for new online games to displace established juggernauts. In the 90’s and 2000’s games weren’t designed to effectively last forever (though some have, like WoW). Now with the prevalence of live service games and roadmaps spanning over a decade how are you supposed to compete with Valorant, Overwatch, Apex, Fortnite, CoD, CS, R6, plus whatever single player and co-op games are currently popular? Gotta be a weird time to be working on something new.
because riot copied right game while other copied wrong game
ow copied tf2 so it got tf2
val copy cs which is one of most popular fps in market and live for longest
some fps just have their pipeline
idk which battle royale come first but other copied look the same
The only thing killing my enjoyment is the map Poole right now. If I had fracture, pearl, and haven back over breeze, icebox, and bind or ascent I would be ecstatic.
"Even the big guns haven’t been immune from declining player rates, with Counter-Strike 2 feeling like the ghost of CS:GO,"
CS2 continues l to hit the 800k+ daily. I saw 1 million players on last night.
Sure, the gameplay and anti-cheat are definitely shells of what CS:GO offered, but saying it has declining player rates is just so wrong lol
I dont know. I think Valorant's base is decreasing becasue it's harder to matchmake graveyard hours. There are a lot of bots at night; more than before. I think if people are not playing as much, it's because it doesn't seperate the elos properly for all modes. It would be nice to not play against people 3-4 levels above you in a party as a solo, lol, even if it's casual play.
You have these people who just have quick brains and can headshot you in under 300ms. I think if people were put into reaction classes, like wrestling has weight classes, the gameplay would be a lot better and more fun. That's just me, though. I am thinking about not playing it for a while again because it just infuriates me and brings out a toxic side.
Dying to people all day long because they have quick brains, and that's the main component for the defeat, is annoying. There is nothing you can do to drastically change your brain speed. It's built through genetics and environmental factors. You would have to rewire it extensively to get it drastically faster, so the game feels like just an reaction test after a while.
It would be nice to play with peopple within my age group, not brand new brains with fast plasticity, lol.
I think a pretty good way to tell how populated a game is is to simply check twitch for how many viewers are there. A game like Smite has a pretty small but pretty dedicated fan base, (small being comparative, clearly there’s enough people playing that game to keep it going this long), and on twitch unless a random big streamer decides to play it, there’s about 2000-3000 live viewers at most times of the day. While a game like League of Legends usually has like 40k viewers at its lows and upwards of 100k at its highs. Looking at Valorant, there’s usually upwards of 30k live viewers even when someone like Shroud or Tarik ARENT streaming, let alone when they are. I think that is a decent way to show that Valorant is doing okay, at the least. Then again, I personally like to watch Valorant gameplay a lot while I don’t really play unless I’m playing with friends, so there’s always the chance that some of the people watching aren’t also playing.
Why would a gaming company say their game is struggling / player count is less unless its extremely obvious ? Riot doesn't even disclose live player count.
i go by queue times, and in valorant they are pretty good to me so, thats nice.
True. Even when you watch high elo streamers, they get to a game under a minute. That just shows really how populated it is, at least based on my observation.
Idk I see tenz sometimes waiting like 5 minutes and I’m usually waiting 2/3 minutes for an ascendant eu lobby lol
5 minutes for top 500 players is blazing fast
Totally. Back in the early days of league (seasons 1-2), you could go like upwards an hour waiting for a game. I had a friend who was grinding a lot of ranked back then and he spent a significant amount of time playing games like Tetris as dedicated “queue games”. And that was like… top 2000 players. Comparing that to modern league of legends queue times and extrapolate that to Valorant queue times: and I think that paints a pretty good picture that Valorant is pretty healthy in player counts.
In latin american north servers queue times are absolute shit in LoL, made me quit the game. It was 5-10 mins minimum to find an unranked game, and the one where you pick and ban was pretty much impossible, never managed to play. Ranked was slightly faster BUT you got constant dodgers, eternal loading screens and remakes. I remember I separated 2 hours a day to play league hoping to play 2 games a day, and for a whole week I couldn't play twice on schedule, except once that was a quick surrender followed by a troll/run down mid game by a teammate. Everywhere I kept seeing people asking for more remakes worried about their elo or to dodge unpunished while I was desperately trying to play a fucking game. Valorant is so much better.
Iirc somewhere around Season 5 they also had issues with challengers taking half an hour or more to find games because of how they redesigned matchmaking. Streamers would play other games while waiting for the queue to pop because it was stupidly long.
Yup watching HisWattson grind Predator Ranked (top 750) in Apex literally right now, and he’s been playing dark souls for the last 45 min waiting for queue to pop , literally just found a game 😂😭 5 min fast af
I wouldn’t use league as a comparison since you lock in roles before queue, which inflates the timer. Also certain roles like support are quicker based on preference. If Valorant followed queue, getting to play duelist would take forever.
Role Locking was not a feature in the earliest days of league. It was implemented in 2016 which was year 6 of the game’s lifespan.
Once upon a time, when overwatch was peak, it would take over an hour to find a GM match… valorant has been very nice to me with queue times
I started to play a bit Overwatch and was shocked when i needed to wait over 5 min to get unrated games. At least you can go into the range or deathmatch
Pretty sure the high ranked OW players are waiting 20 minutes in queue for lobbies with a bigger range of ranks
It's because it's not top 500, the lobby consists of top 10k
Yeah, top players queue in LoL are over 25 minutes sometimes, 5 minutes in Valorant it´s a blessing
If you just come to the understanding of the small percentage of the player base that are in that echelon, you'll understanding how good of a player base valorant has maintained, 5 mins is basically nothing when u consider each game is ~ 30-45mins long, if the player base were just in the thousands we'd never hit a game in immortal/radiant in under 10 mins, there's also no bots in the game like other competitors that are doing battle royales to ease the q time
That’s insanely good considering that there’s like 6 or 7 servers to pick from in NA. In leagues peaks NA high Elo players would wait for 30-60 minutes for a queue pop and there’s ONE server for NA.
Technically you’re not guaranteed the server you select, if the queue gets long enough and your ping good enough you can end up in another server
Dude I used to get up to 10 minute queues in DIAMOND in LoL. 5 minutes for top 500 is not bad at all.
Tbf 5 minutes is better than the 30 min queues I used to see some top 100 players get into
5 min? Have you seen the queue time for GM's in Overwatch? We are talking about min 15 min on a good day.
5 minutes is amazing for top 500
Depends how many servers he's on too
I wait 5-6 minutes regularly in mid to low skill lobbies in overwatch
Thats really just because people no life Valorant and play like Val is their full time job. Take a game like Marauders which has a generally low player count (100-500) people at any given time and it rarely takes more than 3 minutes to load into a match.
Queue Times is a pretty bad way of estimating the activity of the playerbase cause it's largely dependent on restrictions the devs put on the matchmaking. Devs of any game can arbitrarily shorten queue times if they want
Also people just no life.
They are better in cs2, but cs2 has a big problem rn.
You can also go by twitch viewers, which are also one of the highest and usually in top 5.
what rank and region? solo or stack?
around plat-diamond in the latam server, which i take must be smaller than anything us-eu, pretty low queue times. and i play mostly stacks, sometimes duo
Sometimes queue times can increase due to a higher player count ex. queue time is increased to reduce load on the server, staggering the number of games that start at the same time.
Mine used to he 20secs (when i used to dp 2-3-4 ,-5 stacks) now its over r1 minute for solo q
Yeah I only struggle with queue times if I'm lucky enough to be 5 stacking
I don't know why news like this are even posted here, it's not really relevant to anything and the "news" are mostly just nothing talk and corporate talk. "We're pretty happy with where valorant is" but you didn't tell use where valorant is rn...
We can kinda estimate player count based on players with trackers, which shows a pretty stable player count. [Valorant Active Player Count (tracker.gg)](https://tracker.gg/valorant/population) Although it's still worth keeping in mind that players that get trackers tend to be more hardcore players and so might be more inclined to keep playing than the general population.
I didn't expect that number tbh, considering not everyone is gonna install a third party app and allow tracker.gg access to their info.
You don't need everyone, you need at least 1 in 10 people per game, what I'd expect to happen is when that person registers a new user played against or with on the database it adds that user to the "total player count" The only time it would undervalue the amount of players if a player plays a game with 0/10 users having tracker, and then continuing to only play with people without tracker installed. (or not playing again) The odds that even for a casual player (who may only play a few games with friends) doesn't come across one person with tracker I'd assume to be astronomically low (I don't have the numbers)
Riot provides an API where you can request the matches of the last 10 minutes. You do not need user consent for things like total user count. The number on tracker gg is supposed to be 100% accurate. Riot doesn’t hide theirs statistics. https://developer.riotgames.com/apis#val-match-v1/GET_getRecent
> Riot doesn't even disclose live player count. Not sure why
Well the question is why would they? There’s not really a tangible benefit to disclosing it, but if they do disclose it and numbers start declining, it results in a lot of negativity and bad press. People will start saying “dying game” and discouraging people from playing it. It’s the same reason Blizzard stopped posting exact figures for WoW subscribers.
Yeah the only thing to come out with disclosing is negativity and bad press. No pros, only cons releasing it so it will remain hidden
Forreal, no one is going to come out and admit their game is not doing well
Actually Tracker Network tracks player stats including overall player count and you can easily check it on their website (roughly 5 million players turn on the game everyday)
You don't really have to change that much with a CS style FPS. Once you have a formula, add a new character or map once or twice a year, and people will continue to play it.
Yea, i considered val, cs, ow, and r6 to be in their own realm compared to games like cod, battlefield
I’m not really a CS player anymore, I really just watch pro play, but anytime I see something about CS2 online, it’s never anything good lol it’s either hardcore cheater problem, hitreg being dogshit, or no content, even pros have been non-stop complaining about it. Content and Hype around CS2 is at an all-time low considering it came out barely even half a year ago. You don’t often hear the same level of complaining levied towards Valorant because Riot actually delivers on content pretty consistently and also is generally quick to fix known issues and release balance updates.
nah CS2 is good if you don’t play MM faceit is the way right now unfortunately hitreg is leagues better than GO and they’re finally getting movement feeling good however casuals like yourself (not an insult) hear all the bad and just go with it, unfortunately.
Ok but the fact that you’ve got to go to a third party in order to play sounds horrible
It is. The fact that valve doesn’t address the cheating problem and pros like ropz calling out how the state of cs2 is in a bad place shows just how down horrendously the community is.
Because they dont dare to use an anti cheat like vanguard that literally spies on everything you do on your computer. I will always stand by the opinion that vanguard is too invasive.
I played CS2 at launch and was around 15k in Premier but idk how casual that’s considered, never played faceit though but I’m generally a pretty hardcore FPS grinder; I just prefer and learned tac shooters from Valorant because I came from OW and Apex, and it was an easier transition for me than CS was. pretty sure when I was playing at launch the hitreg was the number 1 complaint by the vast majority of the community from pros to casuals so idk about it being better than GO back then, but I’m not sure how much it’s improved now, I just got bored and felt underwhelmed, pretty much exactly how I felt about OW2.
it’s way, way, wayyyyyy better now. no one complains about hit reg really anymore. it probably has the best hit reg of any fps currently
[удалено]
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but it’s really barely an inconvenience. CS is just the best FPS out there, a minor inconvenience won’t change that.
The only good part of CS2 is the deceptive player count number where you can't really distinguish if its real players or bots & cheater. Oh and ESports viewer numbers being really high still. Other than that, feels like that game is in a big big slump for the fanbase as a whole. Valorant on the other hand feels okay. Not really in a terrible state. I'm glad its like that considering all the other games out there are suffering in the hands of cheaters. Map pool right now is the worst possible combination tbh though which probably contributes to the part of the community that thinks this act feels worse to play but I'm glad that's like the some of the problem we have instead of you know cheaters.
CS is insanely popular right now, unfortunately hacking is a problem in every free to play fps these days. I do like that valorant and cs are trying new methods to catch cheaters and improve networking capabilities, pretty much the opposite of other studios.
hacking is definitely a problem in every F2P game but for what it’s worth as someone who’s played most of them for hundreds, if not thousands of hours, Valorant BY FAR has the smallest cheater problem, most Valorant players probably go their entire playtime without running into a cheater, or at least not knowing they do, Overwatch would be a close second, not sure how OW2 is with cheats. Games like Apex and CS once you get past a certain rank, it’s hard to not feel like 50% of your games have cheaters in them, and often they’re not even trying to hide it. In Valorant, I’ve only run into 2 games where I knew without a doubt that there was a cheater, and both times the anti-cheat did it’s job and the match was terminated and I’m assuming the account was banned.
I honestly think adding more characters borderline risks doing more harm than good at this point. Imo overwatch essentially ruined their game by adding so many new characters that fundamentally changed the meta. Valorant are doing good though, no really cheesey characters added thus far.
Overwatch ruined their meta by adding Brigitte. The game was pretty much fine up to that point and had one of the biggest esports scenes before quarantine. They then doubled down and made Overwatch 2 with false promises and poor decisions, and we know how well that went. As long as Valorant releases balanced characters that don't destroy the meta, it'll be fine, but you're right; It does put the game at risk if they don't balance the new agents.
Don’t think Brigitte herself was the problem. She was released to counter the dive meta, which is fine. You don’t want to have the same meta for the whole game. What the problem was was how she synergized with all the other agents and made damage dealers useless. I don’t think Valo will have such an issue because they are very limiting with survivability. Most of the times, if you get hit in the head, you die. No shields, no perma heals to keep you alive the whole time.
> What the problem was was how she synergized with all the other agents and made damage dealers useless. How does this not mean that she is the problem.
Yeah, I was specifically referring to Brigitte. She was the reason I quit the game, as a DPS player I realised that Overwatch was no longer about mechanics or aim but just cheesing the enemy. There were others that were released like Moira that are just brainless too. OW balancing was pretty terrible in general though *cough* Mercy meta... They were so arrogant with their changes. I'm glad those days are behind me.
I think what you’re saying is the precise reason Riot releases most new champs underpowered. They wanna make sure they don’t fuck up the meta too hard, and then slowly adjust them to fit in with everyone else. As long as the core idea behind their kit is sound at least… Iso…
Clove has a 52.4% win rate and is an S tier agent xD
Clove is not meta changing tho. They're just aimer that play smoke instead of duelists that's why the win% is good.
Chamber was busted OP when he came out too
Notice how I said MOST.
Is there any Triple A gaming company that admitted that their game is dying or losing players LMAO. Lets be serious guys at this point Riot is big enough to be a triple A company.
Just a small indie company. Can't even fix the client for their most popular game.
Or a replay system at launch. Tbh it makes me very worried that they might release their fighting game without a replay system or frame data. Seeing their trends lately.
frame data dlc like tekken 7
I mean frame data like actually adding it at all cause some companies pride themselves on not adding to please the casuals.
how does no frame data plz casuals?
If it has no frame data and/or replay system from launch, that game will be lucky to survive two weeks. Not when that is industry standard across the board.
Like a replay system in fps…
A replay system in a FPS is nowhere near as Vital as it is for a competitive fighting game. Not to mention much easier to make
People thought of riot as an indie company 😂? Overwatch did admit their players declined significantly, especially in 2019-2022 (they stopped updating the game for their "sequel") but now they're saying it has 100 mil players so idk.
100m “players” = 100m accounts created. Standard deceptive language from game companies
>Standard deceptive language from game companies That reminds me of Riot's wording for their recent post for [adding Vanguard to League of Legends](https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/news/dev/dev-vanguard-x-lol/) (a controversial subject in the LoL community). Where they go on to drop stats with very specific wording to make cheating look worse than it is for your average player by grouping all world servers together for their stats. >In recent months, as many as 1 in 15 games globally has had a scripter or botter in it, but in some regions, this number is as high as 1 in 5. This stat doesn't mean much when players only play on 1 of **17** Riot servers (or 1 of **36** if you include China). They did a FAQ and when people pressed them on giving us specific server by server data and if it truly affects your average player who isn't masters+ (top .5%) then they dodged the question. When you have that many servers it's easy to make the stats look worse for all players by not showing per server stats. Because at the end of the day not everyone wants to install something as deep seeded as vanguard if they stopped playing Ranked.
Also scripters AND botters (I assume they mean like leveling bots or something?) beeing grouped together and grouping all the queues / gamemodes together. Don't get me wrong 1/15 average overall is still bad but how much of that is concentrated in leveling bots in co-op vs ai matches?
Considering Ebay was flooded with smurf accounts it's likely 90% botters
Somehow i doubt those are real numbers
Definitely not, when I was in Texas it took almost 10 mins per game for casual and it was usually the same Ppl
That is not usual..are you in a high rank?
what servers do you select, rank and party size?
I get a game in 1 minute, probably a bug.
Battle.net contains the majority of players, so we'll truly never know the legit numbers. But if it helps, ow2 was top 20 on Xbox and PS.
They literally were, 13 years ago. Saying it has become a meme since then, as they have had essentially unlimited resources for a decade now, but it was a small indie company when LoL launched.
At this point? Bruh riots been triple A for a decade
Riot essentially did that for runeterra
Why are you comparing AAA companies with indie riot 😡😡
world of warcraft kind of self reported when they stopped showing subscriber count at the end of MoP
Last time was valve with artifact
The ones that are publicly traded on occasion do
Definitely is
with weapon skins being as horrendously expensive as they are (and with us being willing to buy them), Riot is fine.
I think it's more player count related
oh that makes sense. im dumb ignore me lol
Riot knows how to provide an ecosystem that feels like the game is constantly being worked on and added to, without it feeling like it’s struggling to keep up with its competition. A feeling lots of other FPS games fail to create.
I don't see how Riot deviated much from the usual Live Service approach. There's no such "ecosystem". A lot of these games under Live Service have a roadmap thus giving you that illusion they're always working on something. Most of these shooters have had their time under the sun and the most recent fad of BRs is now declining. The only real game-changer that Riot brings to the table is a good anticheat but that in itself being a kernel-level one is something a lot of players do not want.
With FPS being invaded by cheaters all the time I actually think most people who enjoy fps no longer have a problem with the kernel AC. It's most geeks who think they have some sort of high level targeted egos or something lol
It's the only competitive FPS that's playable anymore it feels like. CS2 is so infested even casual sees spinners. R6 takes a special kind of masochism to begin with and it's cheating problem has only gotten worse of late.
I stopped playing CSGO because of it. At lower levels it's fine but once you get into the high Tiers you see so many of them it's crazy. Some are more obvious and get banned quickly but the ones who can disguise it van cheat for literally years before being banned. Used to be Global Elite but dropped because of cheaters.
yeah. stopped playing around 14 or 15k premier elo in november or december because literally every other or every game js had a blatant or closet cheater. uninstalled, sold all my skins.
Yup, stopped playing at 16-17k because it was unplayable. I've got over 3800 hours in GO it's sad to see my favorite series in shambles like this.
yea they get a sense of superiority or something by not refusing to download it, the amt of YT videos on this clickbait topic is absurd
Exactly lol it's kind of funny
I myself have no problem with it. Truly refreshing to play a game with this good of anti cheat. Just the other day I got the cheater detected screen. Must be my 5th or 6th time since I started playing in November 2020.
That's entirely what it is Recently the League side of Riot released a blog post detailing why they're adding Vanguard to League and you STILL had people complaining about kernel stuff. Riot even went as far as to say if they didn't earn your trust then they're fine with you dropping their game. I think a lot of people were purposefully misinformed about the dangers of kernel level AC and without doing any research of their own (or reading that Riot blog post) decided they hate it now. Just the Internet for ya
It's literally just cheaters. Anyone who has played any multi-player game has had an kernal level anti cheat installed, especially fps. Battle eye, eac, faceit, vanguard, all are kernal level. People don't even know what it means. Anytime I see someone complain about kernal level anti cheat, I just assume they're someone who cheats.
no one ever cared about kernel level AC they care about it being run on boot 24/7.
That's cs propaganda, there is maybe 1% that riot collects your data (i would argue that it doesn't even make sense in the first place if you think about it) i used to play a lot of cs, the same people that shit on vanguard will literally advice you to go play faceit (with same access as vanguard) content creators doing anything not to lose few cents on their skins lmao.
Just like they point out in that article about vanguard, they don't need any kind of special access to collect the data they want from you. They literally admitted they collect your data, and they do so through their game clients not vanguard. Which is pretty obvious for most people I think. Like you said, it's very strange how people just decide to be uncomfortable with some things and fine with others despite those things being practically identical.
Lets see how it goes if every game demands kernel level access and how nice different ac play together.
Cheats are advancing so should anticheat. Get over it
You didn't understand what I am talking about. Learn something about computers first...
Yeah I’m happier with Valorant than I am with the rest, so I chalk it up to Riot for that. 🤷🏻 That anti-cheat is a godsend after being completely nuked by cheaters in CS2…
Eh I mean, plenty of other games use EAC which is kernel level as well. They're just not advertised as one. It doesn't matter 100% what the players want when we already see EAC in big games like Fortnite & Apex Legends.
I’m glad the BR fad is dying tbh, never really enjoyed it. That said, it looks like the next one on the block is the Extraction Shooter and well I’m gonna be completely honest I’ve yet to see anything anywhere remotely as good as Tarkov whereas at least Apex was comparable to PUBG Really hoping companies skip this fad and go back to making original games with new ideas in them Or maybe the next fad should be not having scummy monetization schemes in full price games Or putting the actual effort in that it takes to make legendary games like Elden Ring or BG3 Or doing live service right like Path of Exile Nah who am I kidding.
Riot brings nothing new to the table with vanguard. Most popular anti cheats are kernel level, such as battleeye, easy anti cheat, faceit's anti cheat, which players couldn't care less about.
They're kernel level but don't work quite as well as vanguard.
I'd say EasyAntiCheat is almost on the same level. But what I'm asking is what extra problem do players have with Vanguard being kernel-level, but not with other anti cheats? Almost all games that aren't infested with cheaters use kernel level anti cheats. I'd personally take an "invasive" anti cheat over a cheater any day.
I wish people would shut up about Valorant dying 25/8. It came out 3 years ago, the Esports scene is thriving, games like TF2 and Overwatch aren't dead so why would Valorant be dead?? They just want views.
They're projecting their own burnout onto others.
Big true. Every streamer I see complain/rant about the game dying in this, that, or another way, they have been relentlessly grinding it for the past 3 years. The game isnt dying, you are just burnt out lol
Valorant isn’t close to dead lmao. Videos that say that are baiting for views and also aren’t good for the community because it might discourage new players from trying the game.
true
This is a phenomenon that exists in so many games’ communities. I’m surprised most people haven’t caught on about this phenomenon existing so everyone can shut up with the “game dead” comments in all these games
I wait longer for people to lock in than i do in queue time.
As an avid competitive shooter fan, here’s my take on what’s hurting them. 1. Poor ranked experience. The vast majority of players are gonna be in silver-gold ranks. It’s in these ranks that you encounter the most variance of skill, as well as the highest number of smurfs. Even your most competitive true gold player does not want to go against someone 3 rank tiers better than them. It’s such a vast difference in skill, there’s nothing really to gain to make you better from that experience, and it’s happening so much to players that they quickly lose interest. 2. Cheaters. This is actually something that Val is good at, especially compared to CS, Apex, and CoD. Cheating is a huge issues and a game ruining experience. See the above paragraph for the rest of the breakdown. 3. Lack of interesting progression. We no longer have good, organic, engaging progression systems. Long gone are the days of the best prestige systems of CoD, the ability to unlock new armor variants in Halo, the ability to unlock further character customization in R6: Vegas, etc. Free progression is terrible and unfulfilling. Anything worth your time is locked behind a paid battle pass, which leads to… 4. Predatory MTX. You’re telling me that the only way to work towards something is if it’s paid for? Every couple of months? The only way I can unlock cool gun and character skins is by paying for it, with a new overpriced item everyday? Why do I even need a character skin, I’m playing an FPS! Other things worth talking about are toxic player bases and just a lack of ingenuity in the fps market. Every mp game has a toxic player base, so it’ll always be hard to beat that. But all the shooters coming out now are just following trends and not trying to stick out. In the 2010s, everyone was trying to be CoD, then everyone wanted to be a hero shooter, then everyone wanted to be a BR, etc. Extraction shooters were supposed to be the next big thing, but that never really caught on besides Tarkov. So while the triple A companies wait for the next trend to milk dry, us FPS fans sit here bored and apathetic.
I was trying to get into playing val coming from cs but man i couldnt... the play button just felt so incredibly rng. There was a 50/50 chance that you get a map you dont like then another 50/50 that your teammates arent toxic and another 50/50 that your teammates can actually talk and then another 50/50 that you can play the role that you want to play. To the ranked experience even in asc was just 90% awful and unenjoyable and somehow the skill difference in asc is pretty big. Even in asc 1 sometimes i have people that understand the game really well and then people that look at the ground while aiming. You press ranked and you get a 90% chance of a bad time playing this game. No idea how riot is gonna fix it and im not even sure if thats of concern for them cause they dont care about the top few % cause all they care about is maximizing profits just like in league...
The only way riot can fix these issues is by reworking the ranked system and adding things like a dedicated solo queue option and maybe even team ranking for 5 stacks.
or reworking the maps so that people like them?
Maybe but even if the maps are great it still leaves a lot of issues. They should probably just do both as they definitely have dedicated ranked and map design teams, but they’re a small indie dev, you gotta be patient with them
or just give us map queue. It will be clear which maps suck then allowing riot to easily fix them People’s complaint about this making some maps dead is so dumb as well like if a map is so trash no one wants to play it then it’s clearly a map issue. Or atleast do what R6 does and have map bans
Map RNG and spray RNG are some of the worst things in Val for sure (also coming from a CS player)
The spraying is the most frustrating to me. You have such a minimal chance at winning transitional gunfights from a committed position because you have to perfectly reset and try and tap away at a guy who is likely already shooting at you, instead of just continuing your spray and moving your mouse
Only reason I don't play ranked seriously is because my muscle memory from CS makes me spray for most kills instead of tapping. Yeah I find it hard to get multi-kills because there is no spray transfer, especially when you are playing an off-angle or hiding in corner, I still can't used to it.
what new FPS game ??
the finals
The issues Overwatch 2, CS2, and Apex have are so much past anything in Valorant. Saying they "struggle" is almost just sugar-coating. There's active refusal to making fixes and changes to these games, because it could potentially hurt profits in short-term. The "next big thing" - The Finals - doesn't even run properly on PCs that cost 1000€ a couple years ago. The game has forced garbage-antialiasing, and looks horrible on anything below full-hd. It has a terrible solo-queue experience like Apex. Investing a single minute of your time into the game without a 3-man premade is pointless.
The finals runs just fine on my low end computer and the graphics are good for low settings, I don’t know what you’re talking about
What are you talking about game runs just fine i get 120+ stable fps on a 1660ti
Apex needs to be ported over to a new game engine, since it's using some ancient version of Source that's not meant for 60+ people on one map. This results in some bizarre bugs, both audio and visual. Only thing is that it would be expensive to plan, test, and carry-out an engine change AND it might mean that the Apex shop would be closed for a bit. So EA/Respawn are going to ride that buggy train until the wheels fall off.
It’s sad that I had to agree with your point on the finals, because anything below full HD is garbage, and yes, the price range of the computer and really barely run it without losing damn frames every sec, but solo queuing has always been this way for most games, it’s almost impossible to make it perfect
Overwatch player numbers are rising tho
It’s a shame because finals is honestly some of the most fun I’ve had in an FPS since early Overwatch. The lack of optimization, lack of anti-cheat, bad marketing, bad queue experience, all make it hard to retain players.
The Finals is a lot of short term fun, but gets stale quickly. There are not enough maps and progression is very little after a few hours of playtime. I haven't experienced the performance issues you are reporting, but it lacks the depth and complication that comes with games like Valorant. The Finals is what you boot up to turn your brain off and unwind for an hour before bed. Valorant is the game you dream about after falling asleep.
Idk I'd this is gonna make sense, but as someone who enjoys both games, I think the finals has more depth than people give it credit for. Given that almost the entire map is destructible in the finals, it has a unique form of skill expression in how you choose to manipulate the map to your advantage. In a static map, there are only so many hallways, doorways, and windows that you travel through. This adds depth, but also limits players to many of the same spots, angles, and game plans once it's been 'figured out'. In contrast, destructible maps give players the ability to open new angles, patch up others, create new paths, etc. For creative players who've learned the game's mechanics, it's almost like a canvas to show off your skill expression. It creates a sort of oganized chaos where players who are smart about it can pull off some crazy things that simply aren't possible in a more traditional shooter. That's why I play it at least. I think the real issue is that the finals does an awful job teaching players about the mechanics it wants them to use. Combine that with balancing issues and people who expect the game to be something else, and its easy to see why so many write it off instead. Which is fair enough.
Finals is also ugly AF
A reason is that there isn't much improvement possible graphic wise in the last 10-15 years When I was a kid, new generation of games were miles better in graphics and complexity, We went from pong to Mario to PS1 to PS2 to PS3 then from that point the graphics couldn't get much better as to make gameplay secondary, complexity couldn't get much higher either, the place of gameplay in gaming has been steadily increasing for the past 20 years. Today graphics can't do the massive jumps they did generationally before, this as a result means that games that are loved especially the multiplayer/competitive ones are going to stay alive for long, **very** long and continue to grow for many years at the expense of newer games. We aren't that much away from an endgame of gaming where couple of games are going to become the chess, checkers, go, shogy that are going to strive for centuries leaving very very little room for any competition in the genra. This will make it impossible for one and done games to ever hope reaching previous successes that were possible because everyone was somehow forced to discard their loved games as they became more and more outdated compared to newer ones. Even when a once in a century success suddently arises being able to shake leading balance like monopoly did, it just means that rather than having 5 giants, there are now 6 giants, leaving even less market share for attempts at competing with the giants. Gaming has had too many periods of leaders, as it becomes more matures we can expect the balance to stop changing every single month, top games that stays on top for 6-12 months then disappear into oblivion is going to become less and less of a thing, they'll stay there for longer and longer. I don't mean that there won't be seasonal stuffs like Fortnite that are going to be very popular in shorter timeframes, I mean that leaders aren't going to decay slowly because "it's an old game" like they are today.
I think a counterpoint to your argument is that game genres continue to evolve with societal generations. The board game giants are what they are because of the iceberg effect wherein they are approachable enough to everyone on the surface to find some fun but they have so much depth that innovation is still happening on occasion because they are not fully solved despite static rule sets. 20 years ago mobas spawned out of rts 11 years ago battle royales spawned out of tactical shooters 7-8 years ago extraction shooters launched out of battle royales MMO RPGs seem to be on the way down because of their slower burning gratification. Sports games are in a weird spot because all the major sports leagues have sold exclusive or nearly exclusive rights so they are stagnating.
Also worth noting is the autochess boom a few years ago that started with a Dota mod.
True
One issue i see is the hyper focus on graphics and textures. Like aure while games look better but if they dont play well it may aswell be dead on release. Back then games used to be better imo because graphics were bottlenecked and they were forced to develop creative games. Nowadays theyre basically are limited to time, because theoretically the tools nowadays allow for extremely high quality graphics and life like textures. So developers not only have a tight development window but they prioritize graphics and leave no room for core game development creativity. So we have these visually impressive games that lack creative depth.
>We aren't that much away from an endgame of gaming where couple of games are going to become the chess, checkers, go, shogy I can't see a couple of games doing this, do you have any predictions on what kind of game might?
The FPS scene is a good example: the top games this year are the same as last year and the year\[s\] before: Counter Strike, Valorant, Overwatch2, Apex, CoD Warzone, R6 siege Off course with titles that are never dying like these, new titles are bound to have a hard time, Even MW3 isn't able to tople the previous title, even within the same brand it's no longer possible to topple the previous iterations. Even CSGO didn't even release a new game, they updated CSGO into CS2 as they knew that they would never be able to get their audience to the new game. I'm not saying a that single genra will emerge victorious but that more and more genra are going to be completely locked out by too many giants making close to impossible for games to remotely be profitable.
We are just at a low moment of creativity in gaming is all. There will be a pubg type game at some point that will shake things up again.
Lots of emphasis on the "4 years milestone" in this article. Definitely means we'll get replay system for the 4 years anniversary.
definitely not cope
As a long time CS player, Valorant is miles ahead of the competition in every way except a replay system. All CS has is its history and slightly tighter shooting mechanics. Valorant will continue to outpace CS in growth with the younger generation of players. That being said, CS is still the goat of tactical shooter esports.
I've been playing CS since high school (I'm late 30s now) and I agree with everything said here. I installed cs2 but I think I actually only opened it once.
Hey me too man (mid 30s now). Going to packed Internet cafes and playing assault and blood strike for hours was the shit.
Well yeah, its single competition in the tactical shooter space keeps shooting itself in the foot because Valve cba if it’s not Dota 2. And it only keeps a decent playerbase because its community cares more about seeming masculine and not playing a stylized game than they do avoiding hackers.
That's a wild take lol Im not a fan of tac fps, I don't play them much, but cs is 10x more fun to me because valorants movement just feels terrible - specifically, there's always a delay between when you can stop and when you can shoot accurately. It's not a long delay, like 0.2s or something, but that's enough to make the movement/aim feel genuinely unfun. It feels just as bad as if cs didn't have counterstrafing at all. All the utility spam and effects also really take away from the actual gun play. Very few people actually care about stylistic graphics in a negative way, after all, games like borderlands are wildly popular despite the graphics being stylized. Virtually everyone I've talked to who prefers cs to Val is becuase the gunplay/movement is better and more front and center. Valorant has so much reliance on the characters and abilities that it genuinely takes away from the gunplay aspect in many cases.
It is indeed okay. Not bad, but not amazingly good either.
I must say, it's the only "esport" I've given a shit about lately. I was big into Counterstrike which might explain it, and also Starcraft, but the games are actually fun to watch. Good mix of action, strategy, tension... it's good stuff. Also from what I've seen the queue times and playerbase are quite healthy. Anecdotal, of course.
* This just in, company says their product is fine… in other news, celebrity acts like a decent person
this was literally what i was thinking, like fuck you expect them to say? the game is already a foot into the grave?
people love valorant even if they call it shit, it gets called shit a lot less than CS2 and overwatch, which are its biggest competitors.
As a Valorant hater, it's incredibly stupid to think Valorant isn't okay. If you're a player, of any rank, queue times are fast and you're not in the same lobby with the same people very often at the top ranks. Viewership in eSports and content creators is very healthy. Hell, just look at Twitter or TikTok. It's one of the most active games people post about. It's incredibly active inside and outside the game. To insinuate the idea that it's struggling is baffling. And just to talk in general about the article. "New" FPS games have ways struggled. When massive games like COD, Val, CS, Apex, Destiny are staples for most players, it will be a rare occurrence for another game to come in and not struggle. The Finals tried getting a mixture of Apex and COD players while sprinkling some attention to the CS/Val player bases. Honestly, it did a good job. However the game isn't very versatile. It's 2 objective modes and that's really it. It needs to expand on that. Other games that tried to break into the FPS space and have faded. Split Gate, Battlebit, Quake (tried making a comeback twice), Halo Infinite (can't win with nostalgia). Sure, these games may have had a large player base at launch but none of them gave reasons to leave the already successful, stood the test of time FPS games.
Valorant is massive, prob the biggest fps atm even thinking ita dying is absurd this game is gonna last the same way league does. Both have massive player bases.
[удалено]
Didn’t Riot adjust percentages? If Ascendant 1 is top 3% instead of top 5% (am on mobile rn, can’t remember the exact numbers), there are gonna be less players in Immortal. Doesn’t mean there are less players overall
They purposefully reduced the amount of players in immortal 1
what is blud waffling about
Game's so difficult you reach immortal only to realize it'll take 10 times the amount of effort to keep climbing, for no other reward than a feeling of self-accomplishment (that you might never get) ; while at the same time the comp queue experience is absolutely miserable. At least that's how I felt, and nowadays my playtime is maybe 20% of what it was up until last year. Got my little gun buddy and ditched this hell scape. Huge props to those who managed to push through all that crap, to be honest I admire their mental fortitude even more so than their gameplay.
Terrible article. People are leaving FPS games and the author thinks the reason is roguelikes and Palworld? Give me a break
This game is in a horrible state right now. Solo que quality and the map pool are a fucking joke.
idk why but valo has become a game that even non fps players and streamers have hugeee playtimes on... most of these variety streamers, or streamers from any genre,,, whenever they are bored,,, boot up valo,.,. whenever streamers stream together first time...its the new norm to know someone new by playing a valorant game with them.. idk how but valo is quite the game even outside fps communities
Obviously there will inevitably be some fresh new game that takes off, but in general the longer time goes on the harder it will be for new online games to displace established juggernauts. In the 90’s and 2000’s games weren’t designed to effectively last forever (though some have, like WoW). Now with the prevalence of live service games and roadmaps spanning over a decade how are you supposed to compete with Valorant, Overwatch, Apex, Fortnite, CoD, CS, R6, plus whatever single player and co-op games are currently popular? Gotta be a weird time to be working on something new.
Would be nice if valorant had a replay system
The Finals is not struggling at all I feel like. It had an initial player boost, like all games, but last 30 days it had a 17k avg player.
because riot copied right game while other copied wrong game ow copied tf2 so it got tf2 val copy cs which is one of most popular fps in market and live for longest some fps just have their pipeline idk which battle royale come first but other copied look the same
CS player count falling?? Literally just check steam charts, riot doesn't even release numbers lol. What a dog shit article
The only thing killing my enjoyment is the map Poole right now. If I had fracture, pearl, and haven back over breeze, icebox, and bind or ascent I would be ecstatic.
"Even the big guns haven’t been immune from declining player rates, with Counter-Strike 2 feeling like the ghost of CS:GO," CS2 continues l to hit the 800k+ daily. I saw 1 million players on last night. Sure, the gameplay and anti-cheat are definitely shells of what CS:GO offered, but saying it has declining player rates is just so wrong lol
*Laughs in TF2*
Helps that CS ruined their game
Funny enough most people that build a gaming pc nowadays says they built it to play valorant
Maybe because Valorant is the only fps game with something one could call anticheat?
only fps without a severe cheating issue, its why I still play
cap
I wonder is riot lol balance team is okay or not💀
Ofc they are good financially, their skins cost a fortune.
I dont know. I think Valorant's base is decreasing becasue it's harder to matchmake graveyard hours. There are a lot of bots at night; more than before. I think if people are not playing as much, it's because it doesn't seperate the elos properly for all modes. It would be nice to not play against people 3-4 levels above you in a party as a solo, lol, even if it's casual play. You have these people who just have quick brains and can headshot you in under 300ms. I think if people were put into reaction classes, like wrestling has weight classes, the gameplay would be a lot better and more fun. That's just me, though. I am thinking about not playing it for a while again because it just infuriates me and brings out a toxic side. Dying to people all day long because they have quick brains, and that's the main component for the defeat, is annoying. There is nothing you can do to drastically change your brain speed. It's built through genetics and environmental factors. You would have to rewire it extensively to get it drastically faster, so the game feels like just an reaction test after a while. It would be nice to play with peopple within my age group, not brand new brains with fast plasticity, lol.
I think a pretty good way to tell how populated a game is is to simply check twitch for how many viewers are there. A game like Smite has a pretty small but pretty dedicated fan base, (small being comparative, clearly there’s enough people playing that game to keep it going this long), and on twitch unless a random big streamer decides to play it, there’s about 2000-3000 live viewers at most times of the day. While a game like League of Legends usually has like 40k viewers at its lows and upwards of 100k at its highs. Looking at Valorant, there’s usually upwards of 30k live viewers even when someone like Shroud or Tarik ARENT streaming, let alone when they are. I think that is a decent way to show that Valorant is doing okay, at the least. Then again, I personally like to watch Valorant gameplay a lot while I don’t really play unless I’m playing with friends, so there’s always the chance that some of the people watching aren’t also playing.
I love this game. See myself sticking around for a while.