Riot Games’ first-person shooter VALORANT bears striking similarities to CS:GO, one of the most popular games in the genre.
VALORANT is a hero-based tactical shooter which follows the story of multiple Agents. These hyper-natural characters are hailed from real-world locations and are based on multiple different cultures, all of which seem to have some form of futuristic biological enhancements to make them the deadliest set of characters.
But VALORANT has much more to offer and is strikingly different to CS:GO even though it maintains similar gameplay mechanics.
Agents
The biggest change is regarding the hyper-natural, battle-ready agents. These agents are similar to Overwatch because each have their own abilities and ultimate ability. But Riot has emphasized that these abilities are merely tactical options, suggesting that gunplay is the most important and crucial feature.
Currently there are seven agents that we know of:
- Viper, a female agent with a deadly attitude
- Sova, a male agent with a heroic look
- Phoenix, an agent with fire abilities
- Jett, the quick and light runner, similar to Tracer from Overwatch
- Cypher, a bionetic cowboy
- Sage, the healer, who’s similar to Mercy
- Brimstone, the brawn
Guns
The range of weaponry in VALORANT is vast with futuristic and modern weapons. The ‘Kingdom’ rifle, for example, is a high-tech rifle which could have the ability to one-shot headshot enemies. Similar to CS:GO, however, there is a Revolver in the game, but it will likely be as powerful as the Desert Eagle rather than the R8 Revolve in CS:GO.
Iron sights are another huge difference. It looks as though all guns will have the ability to aim down sights but it won’t be as useful as in other games. Some guns are similar to weapons in CS:GO like the AK-47, but they have been adapted for the futuristic environment in VALORANT.
Points system
The round-based system in VALORANT is similar to CS:GO but will feature best-of-24 rounds rather than CS:GO’s round progression system which features 30 rounds, with the winning team being the first to 16 or the winner of overtime after each team has reached 15 rounds.
VALORANT’s points system will feature attackers vs. defenders rather than Counter-Terrorists and Terrorists, suggesting that the game could appeal to a wider competitive audience and endemic sponsorships.
Cheating system
Valve’s notorious VAC banning system has been criticized over the years for its ineffectiveness at catching cheaters. But it has made positive strides recently with the introduction of the Overwatch system, which lets certain players view competitive matches to determine whether a cheater was active. Riot has not mentioned that it will be implementing a similar system, however.
VALORANT will utilize the anti-cheat platform in League of Legends Vanguard. This cheat detection program aims to remove tampering. VALORANT will introduce server-authoritative game architecture making it impossible for cheaters to use game-altering cheats like teleportation or speed hacks.
Server tick rate
One of the largest differences with VALORANT is that the public matches will be playable on 128-tick servers, which is different to CS:GO’s 64-tick servers on regular matchmaking. This means that VALORANT will be much smoother on public servers but will likely remain stable. Riot is aiming for most players to have 35ms ping, meaning that hit registration will be improved and lag will be removed for most players.
Riot will upsample all player movements to 128 frames-per-second even if the opponent is lagging due to poor internet connection. So thankfully you won’t be getting killed by players that skip around the map.
As Riot mentioned in the official reveal trailer, this has amassed to the fight against peekers advantage, which can provide players will low-quality network connections an advantage.
Style
VALORANT is set on a near-future Earth rather than CS:GO‘s modern approach to warfare. It is similar to League of Legends with its high contrast colors and sharp edges.
But most will associate the style with Overwatch since it’s somewhat cartoony but still realistic.
VALORANT is set to be released sometime in the summer of this year and will be free-to-play at launch, similar to CS:GO.
