Valorant
| Genre | Multiplayer |
| Gamming Style | First Person Shooter (FPS) |
| Platform | Microsoft Windows |
| Release Date | June 2, 2020 [1] |
| Developer | Riot Games [2] |
| Publisher | Riot Games |
| Website | https://playvalorant.com/ |
Valorant is an online multiplayer game designed by Riot Games that is available on the Windows platform, and it is the company’s only first-person shooter (FPS). After being in closed beta for a couple of months, Its official release was on June 2, 2020. The main motivation for its development was to make tactical shooters more accessible to new players while resolving some of the core issues games of the same genre had before.
Contents
Gameplay
Similar to other tactical shooters like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Call of Duty: Black Ops, Valorant presents a multiplayer shooter game with different maps and assortment of weapons to buy each round. In a standard game mode, there are ten players, five on each team, and each team gets a chance to be the attacking and defending team for an even amount of rounds. For each round, the attacking team’s main objective is to plant a spike, and if the spike is not defused in a given amount of time by the defending team, the attacking team wins that round. On the other hand, the defending team’s goal is to prevent the spike from blowing up if it is planted, and they win the round if they are successful. During the round, if all five players of a team are dead before the spike is planted, the other team wins the round. The first team to win 13 rounds wins the game.
The key difference that Valorant brings is the introduction of agents. Each agent has their own abilities to use during the game, and similar to guns, these are purchasable at the start of each round. This brings a new aspect to a traditional FPS video game in that abilities can harm, heal, and disrupt players and their movements, which create space for numerous strategies to be formed outside of pure gun fights.
Unrated
This is the non-ranked version of the standard game mode. Players can play this game mode if they are looking to test agents, guns, and strategies or play for fun where the outcome of the game does not affect their ranking. This mode does not incorporate the “win by two” rule of overtime if the score sets at 12-12. The team that wins the next immediate round wins the game.
Competitive
The Competitive mode is the ranked version of the standard game mode. This mode incorporates a ranking system which assigns a certain rank to each player after they have played 5 games in competitive mode. The ranking system consists of iron, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, Immortal, and Radiant, where Radiant is the highest ranking a player can achieve. Players can play this mode to play with and against other players who rank in a similar range. This mode tests players’ gunplay, character movement, and strategy, and those who consistently win games reach the top of the ranking ladder. In some cases, players who consistently play at a high level may receive interest from professional teams to play for their ESports team.
Other Modes
Valorant also includes three other game modes: Spike Rush, Deathmatch, and Escalation. These game modes are unlike the standard game modes, and they are mainly used to practice aiming and gun mechanics, or bring a different excitement to the game.
Ethical Issues
Delayed Punishment
One of the biggest problems of the Tribunal is that it is a delayed punishment system. Players who are reported due to poor gaming etiquette are not punished immediately. Players can continue to play games and behave poorly after being reported for a while. A case might not be reviewed until there are multiple reports and incidents. When a player is put on the Tribunal, almost certainly there is a pattern of poor gameplay in not just one, but multiple games. Players can avoid being put on the tribunal by playing some games well and other games poorly, making it difficult to pinpoint unethical gaming behavior.[3] This means that players can abuse the system and play around the system by trolling here and there, which ultimately lowers the quality of the game if many players decide to do this.
References
- ↑ Wikipedia. "Riot Games, Inc." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games
- ↑ Wikipedia. "League of Legends" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Legends
- ↑ http://na.leagueoflegends.com/tribunal/
Valorant - video game Valorant
Kevin Chen
