Valorant has been one of the most popular online games for the past month despite it currently being in its closed beta phase. Initially the developers Riot Games had planned for the beta to continue for a few more months for a mid summer release, but just this week they announced that the game’s full release will be coming on June 2nd. The closed beta will end five days before the release on May 28th. A new map and agent were teased on release with a new gamemode soon after. This week, I’ll be writing about what I think of Riot’s decision on an early release for Valorant.
I’ve been playing Valorant for a few weeks during the closed beta so there’s a lot of different things I’ve seen in terms of bugs and broken game mechanics. Personally, I don’t really think that the game is ready for a full release yet. There are several things that make the game sometimes frustrating to play. The game is poorly optimized, the hitboxes are inaccurate in the latest patch, weapons have desync issues, and certain agents have exploitable boost abilities which allow for insane speed across the maps.
When lots of abilities are being thrown down and several players are shooting there’s a very good chance that your frame rates will start dropping. One character using all of their abilities can drop the amount of FPS you get by over 100. I’ve had times when my game has practically frozen in large gunfights only for my frames to come back after I’ve already died. Other people have also pointed out the issue to the developers, and while they’ve already optimized the maps, there are still some issues whenever the action starts.
Another one of the issues are the current hitboxes in the game. Sometimes you get visual recognition that you’ve headshot a player but you deal zero damage. Many people have videos where you can see sparks flying off of their opponents heads but the game registers them as body shots. It can be frustrating because there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it.
A third problem that came with one of the more recent weapon patch is when you spray your weapon and the bullets don’t go in the direction the weapon is pointing. Initially, looking at the barrel of your gun was one of the only ways to control recoil, but now it can be completely random no matter how hard you try. It can be so bad to the point where the bullets are going in the complete opposite direction of the barrel.
The last thing that I find terrible is how players have found ways to boost other characters across the map with different agents’ abilities. Depending on how they’re used, you can send players flying across the map right from the start of the game extremely quickly. When you see it happen it’s almost comical and clearly wasn’t an intended game mechanic.
Despite all of these annoying mechanics the game still feels somewhat solid. However, there are still some balancing issues with the agents that have been in closed beta since the start, and when Riot says that they plan on adding another agent on release it worries me about whether or not they will cause more unbalance within the game. Currently there are still some agents that many people consider underpowered and some overpowered.
Overall, I’m sure they’ll be able to fix some of the bugs that are currently in the closed beta, but at the same time Riot plans on adding even more content on the date of release. I just don’t think that the game is in a good state for full release especially in terms of agent balancing. If they try and tweak them within the five days between the end of beta and release, there won’t be any chance for player feedback. In the end though, we can only see how the game will turn out at the start of June.