The official launch of Valorant draws closer as the date is set for June 2. There are still some issues that Riot would be wise to address before Tuesday.
Riot Games managed to keep up the hype for their new game for months now. Valorant is about to come out of its closed beta stage and into an official launch next Tuesday, June 2. Many fans who didn’t manage to get a key for the beta are already excited that they’ll finally get a chance to play. Game servers will go down tomorrow on May 28 and light back up on Tuesday. In the meantime, there are still some underlying issues that Riot need to look at in light of the big day.
Vanguard
Riot’s custom anti-cheat has earned quite a reputation during the closed beta. Many players weren’t thrilled that the program was highly intrusive and started automatically from system boot. Riot did indeed take some steps and grant users more control over Vanguard by even adding the option to uninstall. Still, the anti-cheat caused other various issues like lower fps in other applications, system crashes and even BIOS interference which led to melted CPU/GPU and hardware damage. If Riot’s new shooter is to truly come out and compete with something like CS:GO there’s still a long way to go for Vanguard. The program, at its current state, is simply too much of a risk for many users as it’s uncertain what might happen to your hardware or software. On top of that, cheats are still possible in Valorant, but thanks to soul bans (hardware bans) the number of hackers should gradually drop over time. Points to Riot for that, but Vanguard should be improved even further.
- READ MORE: Valorant's Vanguard causing BIOS issues
Sound
Valorat’s main goal is to become THE competitive shooter. Currently, that title is mainly associated with CS:GO. The two games have a lot in common but also some differences. Sound in a tactical shooter is one of the most important aspects and right now CS:GO simply outshines Valorant. In Valve’s shooter, it’s really easy to tell if someone is coming to you or running away. Sound direction is also clear in most situations when you’re using headphones. With Valorant, things are worse, much worse. Sounds change much quicker, leaving players with little to no time to react, and the direction they’re coming from is impossible to determine. Many players have expressed their frustration over the sound design in Valorant and it seems like there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Hitboxes
In late April and early May, players uncovered another big problem in Valorant – hitboxes. If you’ve seen your fair share of Valorant videos or streams you’ve probably noticed that most of the time people die to headshots. You might be thinking that most streamers are experienced players who have years behind their back in other titles and while that’s true for some there’s another reason. Hit detection in Valorant is generous, very generous. Some players have even taken videos of shoulder hits which count as headshots.
- READ MORE: Valorant fps drops and hitboxes
Patch 0.50 tried to address that problem but reportedly made things even worse as now shots weren’t registering. Many players shared that they can’t hit nearly as many headshots as before the update. Jumping from one end to the other, there are still some things to tweak in terms of hitboxes and we’re hoping Riot will do their best to resolve it by launch or soon after.
- READ MORE: Valorant 0.50 Patch Notes are here
On June 2, a new agent, a new game mode and a new map will be added to the game. We can only hope that the Riot servers will be ready to take in the number of players (and cheaters) and that the development team is trying to resolve the issues above. Stay tuned for more Valorant news and check out EarlyGame for more content.
