Although Valorant has just had a very successful trial and there must be a lot of gamers who are not familiar with the game’s mechanics; however, the good news is that VALORANT was officially released yesterday! So let’s find out this new Riot’s game.
Instructions to install Valorant and how to handle bugs, Error Codes that may be encountered
VALORANT has a gameplay combining many FPS games that we have already familiar with such as CSGO, Overwatch … and have attracted special attention from casual gamers and professional eSports players even while in BETA. According to Riot’s data, during the testing period of Valorant, up to 3 million gamers log in to the game every day.
If you belong to a group of gamers who like Valorant but have not been lucky enough to receive a key to participate in BETA, the official release date will be an opportunity for you to enjoy this game. But first, Let us give you all that a rookie Valorant needs to know about the gameplay of this game!
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Characters and weapons in VALORANT
As other FPS games released in recent years (Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch,…),Valorant’s characters have a distinct skill set. However, these skills work differently compare to Overwatch or Rainbow Six Siege: instead of relying on cooldown or fixed use, these skills need to be “bought” with money similar to a grenade in CSGO. Meanwhile, the Ultimate skills have a special way of recovery so sometimes you have to wait for a few rounds to be used.
One thing that makes Valorant different from Overwatch, Rainbow Six Siege, and similar to CSGO is that our characters are not tied to a gun. You can spend money on whatever weapon and armor you like, since then the concepts of “eco round” (to save money) or “full buy round” (buy all equipment) appear in Valorant .
Familiarize yourself with the skill system
Guns are the main method to be used to defeat the opponents by each Valorant’s character, but the skills they have are equally important. The skill system of the characters in Valorant is a bit similar to LoL and each character always has 4 different skills:
- Two skills are bought with money at the beginning of the match Imagine these are grenades that you buy in CSGO, throw all it out and are not usable until the end of the round and you have to spend money to buy more.
- A “Signature” skill: Can be compared to the Passive in League of Legends because gamers can always use it in the game. However, it is a skill that needs to be activated, limited by the number of using times and cooldown.
- The “Ultimate” skill: These are skills that require a lot of “charge” to use. Gamers will receive charge when completing tasks (placing bombs/defuse bombs), shooting down enemies, being shot down or picking up black gems on the map. So if unlucky, players may have to wait for many rounds to use Ultimate once.
Maps and Bomb
Currently, the main game mode of Valorant is bombs setting (in-game called spike). The game has three maps: Haven, Bind and Split, in which Bind and Split have two bomb sites while Haven has three. All three maps are large, with lots of corridors, blind spots and bottlenecks to ambush. Many areas are also empty and unrestricted by the ceiling, enabling players to perform throwing grenade stunts or use the ecstatic skill that deserves to be included in highlight video.
Players who have played through CSGO will be very familiar with Valorant’s classic mod: a player in the attacking team will bring the bomb to one of the areas on the mapl; besides, the defending team must prevent that thing. The attacking team wins when the bomb explodes or destroys the defending team, while the defending team has to remove the bomb.
- Like CSGO, players keep their bombs can throw it on the ground for others to pick up with the G key. This will make the bomb location appear on the map.
- The bomb when thrown or placed on the target can be marked with the Z key.
- Bombing is done by pressing and holding 4, releasing this button will stop placing bombs.
- Once placed, you will have 45 seconds before the bomb detonate.
- The “beep beep” sound will get faster over time, signaling both teams to avoid (or risk their life to defuse the bomb) because when it explodes, it will kill all players in the surrounding area.
- After the bomb has exploded, anyone who enters the bomb area will still be killed.
- The time needed to defuse the bomb is 7 seconds and there are not any items that can speed up defusing the bomb process like Defuse Kit in CSGO.
The bomb defusing in Valorant has a “checkpoint” mark indicated by the bar in the middle of the progress bar. When you reach this milestone but have to pause to deal with the harassers, the next bomb defusing will start from this landmark instead of restarting from the beginning. This make sense, because once you started to defuse the bomb, it can’t recover again. So even if you see the remaining time is less than 7 seconds but over 3.5 seconds, don’t be afraid to try defusing the bomb – maybe a teammate has tried to do it before?
Ranked match?
Valorant will have a competitive system ranking similar to League of Legends, with the ranks from low to high are Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Immortal and Valorant. However, after many people complained about the name of the highest rank, Riot has confirmed that they will change this rank to something different when the game official launches. The new name of the highest rank has not been confirmed so we cannot tell you what it will be called.
How to join and promote?
Similar to League’s ranking mode, Valorant gamers must also meet a condition to play Rated raking. Because there is no level or exp during playing Valorant, the condition for playing Rated ranking is not level 30, therefore, you have to participate in at least 20 regular matches. This is the time to get acquainted with the game as well as “warm up” before seriously participating in the “real” battlefield, Valorant’s competition.
The game has a total of 8 ranks that I have mention above. The first 7 ranks are divided into three ranks (similar to Gold 1, Gold 2, Gold 3… in League of Legends) and Valorant is similar to the Challenger in League of Legends when not divided into smaller rank. If you do not play Rated for 2 weeks, the rank will no longer be displayed in the player’s profile.
Detailed rules of the game
Riot says that the bomb map (called Spike) is more fun when playing with friends, so players will be able to create a party of 5 to join in the queue of Rated. However, one thing players need to note is that you can only party with the one who do not exceed 2 ranks (Gold cannot play with Immortal and vice versa) This requirement is to prevent the “out level” from both sides, such as one side all Gold, while the other side has two Immortal/Valorant players, making the match to become “disastrous”.
Even when losing a game, players can still have good ranking results.
Every match in Rated will affect your rank. Winning or losing a game will directly affect the rank’s point that the player receives or loses. However, player’s achievement is also important. Take the example of losing: the game will calculate your achievements from the previous matches, if you play poorly than normal, the more amount of points will be lost. Riot wants to encourage players to play with their best with the desire to improve their achievements or return the pressure even when they are at disadvantage situations.
A welcome change of Valorant compared to League of Legends is that player’s rank do not “dropped” since they do not play Rated; however, this rank will be hidden and will only reappear when you return to Rated. Besides, the ranks that players achieve during Closed Beta will not remain the same when the game is officially released.
Keep it fair for Rated
In addition to preventing the “out” rank players in the match, several solutions are also implemented to ensure the balance between the two teams. The situation where one team is a 5-person party and the other is a 5-player solo-game will not occur because the game’s matchmaking system will calculate the number of people in the party and automatically optimizes the match – the 5-person party will to be paired with priority, 4 people with 4 people, something like that.
According to Riot, they have tried to design a ranking system that can solve the problems for players who often encounter in competition and ranking modes. Riot also knows that the current Rated formats are still quite “young” and may be they will change it in the future, based on feedback from players and actual operations. However, they are quite confident that it will limit the problems such as smurf (playing low-rank in new accounts), elo boosting, imbalance in skills between the two teams …
Hopefully this article has helped you better understand the concept gameplay of Valorant, a FPS games that promise to become a huge force in eSports. See you in the next posts!