Valorant is a game that has been praised for constantly evolving in the two years since it was officially released by Riot Games. In that time, the game has changed in a vast number of ways, from little details and the shapes of objects in maps to huge overhauls that change the Meta in competitive play completely.
While not all the changes have improved the game as far as everyone is concerned, the game has generally become more and more popular over time. As a tactical shooter, it is important for Riot to constantly push the game to evolve to stay relevant, and there are a lot of ways they’ve put the work in to keep it so.
7 Agent Selection
While the closed beta of Valorant initially only contained ten playable characters, Riot has been consistent in the introduction of further agents since then. With the release of Neon in January with the beginning of episode four, there are now a total of eighteen.
Riot doesn’t look to be slowing down either, as we already have the artwork for the next planned agent, set to be named Fade. While not much is known about future work to be done on new characters, Riot has given us no reason to believe they’ll wind down on this front.
6 Balancing Agents
Riot hasn’t just set about expanding their roster of agents but is also constantly working to nerf abilities that allow agents to dominate the scene, and equally bring agents that have fallen out of the competitive Meta up to scratch.
Riot doesn’t want the same agents to be constantly selected, and so with every new patch and update, there are changes that can, sometimes dramatically, change how effective certain agents are. Most recently there has been some talk of an upcoming shift to Jett that could shift the entire Meta of the game. Constantly trying to balance a tactical shooter is a difficult tightrope to walk, but Riot certainly won’t slow down on this front either.
5 The “Classic” Nerf
Besides the changes to agent abilities and how useful they are, a major moment in the history of Valorant was when Riot lowered the capabilities of the classic. A starting gun that is free and every player always has, the classic was extremely overpowered at one point because of the right-click shotgun-style firing.
With the ability to run, gun and even jump and stay relatively accurate, the game was hugely changed and drastically improved by the increase in error firing rate that Riot introduced in November 2021. Without this update, many would continue to find themselves frustrated with this method, considered less skillful and more randomized than most of the gunplay in-game.
4 Gun Skins & Battle Pass
Of all the changes to Valorant over the past two years, none have been quite so constantly updated and questioned than the huge number of gun skins introduced, mostly through the game’s Battle Pass. Valorant has a mass number of gun skins, and fans constantly argue over which are the best, but one thing they all have in common is that they love to collect them.
Cosmetic changes like this are normally considered minor to the overall fun of the game, but gun skins have become a major component and something that die-hard fans look forward to seeing more of with each update to Valorant.
3 Solving AFK
As a tactical 5v5 shooter, Valorant is all about balance. Other similar games face huge problems with AFK players that aren’t participating in matches. Valorant had these problems throughout the first year of release in 2020, but in 2021 they managed to cut the AFK rate in-game in half by introducing penalties for repeated offenses.
The work on this side of things has continued into 2022 as well through Patch 4.02, which set even stricter potential punishments such as permanent bans and loss of ranked rating for continued offenses. In terms of AFK and cheating response, Riot and Valorant have started paving the way for other games like Call of Duty in how to deal with it.
2 Map Choice
One of the biggest early problems that plagued Valorant was the lack of maps in-game. While players still have issues, there is no doubting that Riot has improved the map situation, more than doubling the paltry three maps the game began with over the last two years.
With how careful Riot tries to be balancing and adjusting objects for more intriguing gameplay on every map, it’s no wonder that they aren’t able to introduce as many maps as players are craving. But they will surely continue their work on bringing more locations to the game. The most recent map release, Fracture, brought controversy to the community of players but certainly led to new tactics and thinking being put into games on that map.
1 The Competitive Scene
Of all the things that were changed by Riot over the past two years, one thing that has only grown and improved consistently over that time is the competitive E-sports scene surrounding the game. Many competitive players in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive came over very quickly to the more lucrative Valorant scene after the game was released. Pro players have focused down on everything from which agents are best on which maps to what crosshair you should use in-game.
While it remains to be seen if anything will dethrone Valorant in this aspect, it has continued to evolve and show enduring popularity for two years now and is only likely to become more and more popular with the recent rumor that the game will soon come to consoles.