Day 21: Online Class/Game Review

Everything You Need To Know About VALORANT

Valorant was officially launched on June 2, 2020, by Riot Games.

What’s new? 
  
















Reyna is the latest Agent to join VALORANT. She offers a unique play style where you go all in and take out enemy from behind with her invisibility. 
Here's a link to see a short clip of "Reyna".

• Dismiss (E): INSTANTLY consume a nearby soul orb, becoming intangible for a short duration. If EMPRESS is active, also become invisible. (Cost: Unknown)
• LEER (C): EQUIP an ethereal destructible eye. ACTIVATE to cast the eye a short distance forward. The eye will Nearsight all enemies who look at it. (Cost: Unknown)
• Devour (Q): Enemies killed by Reyna leave behind Soul Orbs that last 3 seconds. INSTANTLY consume a nearby soul orb, rapidly healing for a short duration. Health gained through this skill exceeding 100 will decay over time. If EMPRESS is active, this skill will automatically cast and not consume the orb.
• Empress (X): INSTANTLY enter a frenzy, increasing firing speed, equip and reload speed dramatically. Scoring a kill renews the duration.

 A new map is here.  

 
















Ascent, is a playground for diverse ability use and successfully controlling the area opens additional routes for Attackers to both Spike sites. 


Old Map Changes
 
Split

They have restructured the mid chokepoint.

"We felt like Defenders were able to effectively plug up the main choke point in mid for a large percentage of the round. The new layout hopes to alleviate this issue."

These changes open up the space quite a bit and provides an additional path to get around stalling abilities on the stairs. It also gives Attackers a few different angles to help siege B Tower and Vents.

Old

New

Haven/Bind/Split/Ascent 
 

• Expanded their new system that combats map exploits to all other maps—this will eradicate anyone trying to escape the play space
• Continued to fix level collision in order to enhance the smoothness of the gameplay space
• Completed draw call optimizations
• Also continued to block spots for Cypher’s Spycam that prevented counter-play.

A New And Fast Game Mode

 















Spike Rush (beta) also arrives to deliver a fresh and more hectic flavor of VALORANT. 

 

“What do I need to know?”

• Games last about 8–12 minutes.
• Plant the Spike—except we’re insane, now everyone on attack has a Spike!
• Best of 7 rounds with shorter pre-round and round times.
• Swap between Attack and Defense after 3 rounds.
• Everyone on both teams gets the same random weapon. Now you can live out your all-Bucky fantasy.
• You get all basic abilities for free every round.
• You get 2 ultimate points for kills and deaths.
• Each round, 3-5 special powerup orbs are randomly selected to appear on the map.

 










In each round that you spawn, you'll see question mark icons on your minimap telling you where orbs will spawn that round. A few seconds before the round starts, these orbs will appear, revealing which power ups are available to collect. The effects can vary anywhere from upgrading your weapon, to granting bonus damage output—and you can even plague the entire enemy team!

COMPETITIVE MODE UPDATE 
 

• Competitive mode will not be on at launch
• Similar to the closed beta launch, their initial focus is making sure their service is stable before activating competitive matchmaking. This is also a way to give new players the same courtesy that closed beta players had to learn the game ahead of turning on Competitive.

PERFORMANCE UPDATES   

Riot Games have focus their priority on framerate dips that you may sometimes experience in combat.

Combat Performance: 

• Addressed multiple causes of framerate dips in combat. These improvements should help the game feel smoother, especially in combat situations on higher-end PCs.

• Effect pooling added for impacts, gunshots and footsteps. This should reduce frame drops when these events occur.

+FPS for mid to high specs: 

• Sped up calculations on the CPU for game and render threads. These improvements will be felt the most on machines with powerful GPUs bottlenecked by their CPU speeds.

• Optimized minimap for visible elements

• Reduce cost of updating transform on render thread
• Reworked a variety of HUD elements that were previously built on a particularly slow component

+FPS for low to mid specs: 

Content improvements that will primarily help low to mid tier specs when rendering the world.

• Removed non-gameplay impacting map particles on Low and Medium Detail Quality

• Removed unintentionally large textures across gun buddies, scopes, silencers

• Optimized VFX for Characters

1. Omen : ALL ABILITIES
2. Sage : ALL ABILITIES
3. Viper: ALL ABILITIES

• GPU Time stat now correctly excludes idle time

Day 20: Online Class/Game Review

Valorant releasing on June 2? Why?

Riot games has officially announce that "Valorant" will be release on June 2. But there are some concern with that release date from the community, wondering if the game is ready for launch. While Riot games tries to tackle these concern, more and more bugs/exploits are still happening. I'm here today to show both side of the story with Riot games saying its ready while the community saying its not.

Riot Games

What Riot games learned in Closed Beta?

 Riot games main goals of the VALORANT Closed Beta: to begin the technical rollout of our game, anti-cheat, and infrastructure; to watch you play (and break) VALORANT in millions of ways they couldn’t have possibly imagined; and to get your opinion on what they should be prioritizing in the months to come.


Is their anti-cheat technology ready? 

"We know that wars aren’t won overnight—especially when we’ve taken a very public stance against cheaters who want to win at all costs. But it’s also why we have a proprietary anti-cheat detection platform and dedicated team of engineers who will improve things over time. "

The real question, has Vanguard been effective at tracking and deterring cheaters? Well, yes to the first, and not yet to the second. With VALORANT being the grand unveiling of Vanguard, they've gotten a lot of inputs that help them understand what cheats - and forms of cheating. But during closed beta they have held off on deploying the second half of their tech, the auto-banning systems. They needed time to understand what to action on, especially when it comes to hardware bans. "This will be different at launch" as they said.


Are our tools to intervene in disruptive behavior ready? 
  
Almost everyone playing VALORANT wants to compete without fear of harassment or disruption, and it’s on them to provide us the tools and community to guarantee that kind of experience.

By launch, they commit to delivering the following:
 

• Clear community expectations for all VALORANT players
• Improved automation to handle reporting including:
• Automated chat analysis for blatant violations of our community code
• Automated analysis of reports and escalation of common offenders for punishment
• 72 hour team chat restrictions for behavior violations
• 72 hour team voice restrictions for behavior violations 

Community

FPS Drops/Stuttering

Valorant player have noticed bizarre frame rate drops and game stutters during gunfights or after the use of abilities during the beta play testing. The massive frames drop ans stutters makes its impossible to kill anyone in the area. Riot games have still yet to fix any of this problem and as they beta comes to a close, will the game fps/stuttering problem be fixed?

Matchmaking is completely broken

7 times out of 10, players are placed in a team of new players and  simply get annihilated without standing a chance to win. They had games end like this: 0-13 - enemies win each round and their team don't even seem to be trying. The frustration that comes from not being able to do anything and seeing your team die like cockroaches, because they are so clueless.

Ranked System and playing against a full stack team 

Many people refuse to play the game’s ranked mode alone, since solo players and duos are able to match against groups of four and five. Especially in higher ranks, this problem can be problematic due to the disparity in both communication and coordination between teams.

The obvious problem is that they’re thinking about whether the opposite team has a pre-made group of four or five.This makes for an uneven playing field where the majority of one team lacks communication and teamwork, while their opponent is made up of a squad of friends who are used to playing with each other. As a result, the team made up of solo players will be at a huge disadvantage. This will also prevent players from getting  accurate read of their solo skills, since they can rely on others a lot more in a four or five-man

Shroud 

Shroud, one of the biggest streamer of all time, have stated that “It is not ready. VALORANT is not ready. I don’t know what the fuck they think they’re doing.”

Shroud also explained that the game is missing a lot of features and the launch might be messy because of the rushed release date.
 
Despite his feelings that VALORANT is not ready for a full release, Shroud did entertain the idea that the needed changes could be ready by launch.

“That is very possible, maybe they have a fix to every single problem by launch… It is close to being ready,” the streamer said.

Day 19: Online Class/Game Review

The Cons with Valorant

 

Valorant, one of the most top hit game by far blowing out major games such as: Fortnite, League of Legends, Call of Duty Warzone, etc. But since it has it the top of the chart, the community have been encountering many problems and bugs with the game. Even I've encountered them. So far, Riot games have been working hard to try to fix/patch the roots of the problems. I'm here today explain the 3 biggest problems with Valorant

1. FPS DROPS & GAME STUTTERS

Valorant player have noticed bizarre frame rate drops and game stutters during gunfights or after the use of abilities. The massive frames drop ans stutters makes its impossible to kill anyone in the area. (Stutters are causes from the lack of fps in a game.) Riot programmer and anti-cheat lead "Arkem" provided players with a brief update on what to expect going forwards with the game's frame rate.

"Arkem" also shared that removing frame drops and bettering FPS for players is a priority for the Valorant dev team. He said: “The game will probably remain CPU bound for the foreseeable future but we do want to remove frame drops and improve the frame rate on high-end gaming PCs.”
 
Players have been sharing many surprising theories as to why their frames have been dropping in the beta, with some even claiming that the "ping system" had been a cause. However, Riot will likely resolve many of the frustrating issues before the game's full release later in the year.

2. The agent "Cypher"

Cypher is an amazing agent in Valorant. He provides so much to the team with his camera and trip mines. However, players have been using exploits with him. 

Firstly, you can place a gun onto of his camera and use it to kill enemies.

In this clip you can see how cypher camera with a gun can be used.

Secondly, Cypher camera can be place in walls or out of the map. 
In this image, you can see the potential of information you can give to your team with this cypher camera exploit.

 Here a clip of another cypher camera exploit. 

 

 

 

Riot so far have announce that they will be fixing all the bugs/exploit with cypher but many players are still finding a way to exploit with him. 

3. The broken run boost with the agent "Jett" & "Viper".


As players figures out all the unique things to do with each agents, some have found a bug with 2 agents in the game, Jett & Viper.

What is a run boost?

Basically for those of you who don't know, run boosting is when you stand on a teammates head, both of you run in the same direction at the same time and then when you jump, you jump about 3x further than normal. It was mainly used in "CS:GO" as the developers allowed it as a way of fast travel in the game.

With Valorant run boost, its not a 3x further distance but a distance of 10x. It is so frustrating to play with as you can't see them because of how fast they are going.

In this clip, you can see Viper run boosting the Jett with her abilities in a practice game.

Heres another clip but used in an actual game.

From these two clips, you can see the endless possibilities with this "run boost strategy". Riot so far have not announce any fix to this bug yet. But the players hope they fix this sooner than later as this will ruin their game.

Day 18: Online/Game Review.

VALORANT's Weapon Guide

Every weapon in Valorant is neither good or bad. Each gun has its own unique circumstances that it excels at. There are four categories of weapons in Valorant, each of which have their own tactical advantages and disadvantages. You’ve got Rifles which’ll work nicely in mid to long range fights, SMGs that’ll shred enemies up close,  Sidearms for when you’ve run out primary, Snipers which’ll pick off targets from afar in one hit and Shotguns to blast opponents away with, ammo.

Rifles:
 
These guns cost at least 2,700 Creds and they can kill enemies in one headshot from most distances. Each of these rifles has their own pros and cons.
 
Bulldog — 2,100 Creds

The Bulldog is an automatic weapon that turns into a burst rifle when you aim down sight. It stands up well in a fight, but does less damage than the other rifles, which is why it costs less.
 
Vandal — 2,900 Creds
This is the go-to rifle. It has high damage-per-bullet and very little damage falloff at range, making it one of the game’s most effective and deadly guns. If most of your shots are accurate this is a great gun for any round you can afford it. But because of its slower rate-of-fire it punishes inaccuracy a little bit more than the Phantom.
 
Phantom — 2,900 Creds
The Phantom fires faster than the Vandal, and its recoil can be a little easier to control. It has a shorter ranger, though, and its damage falls off at longer distances.
 
Guardian — 2,700 Creds

The Guardian is a semi-automatic rifle. You have to be accurate with it, but it does more damage and costs less than other rifles. If you’re confident in your accuracy, this gun is perfect.

Sniper rifles:

 

Marshall — 1,100 Creds

This sniper is cheap and efficient. It’s a one-shot kill to the enemy’s head, even if they have armor, and it’s quick to fire and bolt so you can shoot again. If you face an enemy straight on and only hit their body, they’ll fire back before you have a chance at another shot. 
 
Operator — 4,500 Creds  
This sniper rifle is a one-shot kill if you hit enemies anywhere but the leg, even if they have armor. This gun is the most expensive in Valorant, but its one-shot kill potential makes it one of the best weapons in the game.

Sidearms:

Every round players spawn with the Classic, a basic pistol that doesn’t do much damage. You can use that pistol when you’re forced to, or you buy another option if you’re trying to save some money while still being deadly.
 
Shorty — 200 Creds
This is a small double barrel shotgun. If you’re up close it can be a one-shot kill, but it loses its effectiveness as soon as you move a few feet from your enemies.
 
Frenzy — 400 Creds

As an automatic pistol, it does low damage per bullet, but is the only pistol capable of spraying its way through a crowd of two or three enemies.
 
Ghost — 500 Creds

The Ghost does solid damage with headshots and fires quickly, but it loses its accuracy the more you fire. It is one of the most used gun from players.

Sheriff — 800 Creds

This pistol fires slowly but is a one-shot kill if you hit the enemy in the head. It’s high risk, high reward, and if you’re confident in your aim, it can be as good as any short-range weapon in the game. 


Submachine guns:

These are cheap weapons that can provide a good rifle alternative on rounds where you can’t afford a full kit.
 
Stinger — 1,000 Creds

The Stinger does low damage and isn’t very accurate, but if you’re close enough to the enemy that won’t matter, you can just spray and hope you hit them with enough bullets for a kill.

Spectre — 1,600 Creds

This SMG does good damage, especially with headshots, and is accurate at short range. It isn’t exactly a rifle replacement, but if you’re low on Creds it’s the next best thing to a Phantom rifle.
 
Shotguns:
Shotguns are situational and can be fantastic if you take them into short-range fights.
 
Bucky — 900 Creds

This pump-action shotgun fires very slowly but the hits are devastating. This weapon is best used if you know you’re going to be getting close to individual players.

Judge — 1,500 Creds

The Judge is an automatic shotgun that can fire very quickly. It’s perfect for defense if you’re holding a tight angle and might catch two or three players who didn’t check their corners well enough.

Machine guns:
Machine guns are excellent at holding down points on Defense as the enemy is rushing toward you. Or if your accuracy isn’t the best you can buy one of these and hope that one of their dozens of bullets hits its mark.
 
Ares — 1,600 Creds

The Ares can almost be a replacement rifle if you’re strapped for cash, but its main purpose is to fire lots of bullets to help you hold down a point.

Odin — 3,200 Creds

The Odin shoots a lot of bullets really fast and can be one of the best guns in the game at staving off a particularly aggressive push when you’re defending a bomb site. 

Day 17: Online Class/ Game Review

Play Testing "Valorant Beta" Rank System

Riot games has finally decided to release a "rank system" into Valorant. Much to do by the community complaining that the people they mach up with in a "normal games" are either not on level with them or straight up way better than them. Here is my take on the rank system Riot Games has added.

Rank System














There are eight ranks in Valorant. Each rank has three levels, this means you can push or drop 22 levels in total for your competitive experience. Each ranked level has an icon associated with it to give you and your teammates a visualization of what your current rank is. All the total competitive ranks that can achieve, in order:

• Iron 1
• Iron 2
• Iron 3
• Bronze 1
• Bronze 2
• Bronze 3
• Silver 1
• Silver 2
• Silver 3
• Gold 1
• Gold 2
• Gold 3
• Platinum 1
• Platinum 2
• Platinum 3
• Diamond 1
• Diamond 2
• Diamond 3
• Immortal 1
• Immortal 2
• Immortal 3
• Valorant

Gaining and Losing Rank
 

While playing rank system game mode, your rank will fluctuate based on wins and losses, your contribution to the objectives, kills and the use of abilities. The most important thing for your "rating" is wins, but your individual achievement in these games also matter. You will also need to use your abilities to assist your teammates in kills and objective wins. The more you contribute, the more the ranked system favors your climb.

There are three different types of rank effects symbols that you can see after each game you play:
 

• Rank UP (Green)
• Rank DOWN (Red)
• Break EVEN (Grey)

The way to understand how your rank is affected is to look at the direction of the arrow, its color and how many arrows/how thick the arrow is. The more arrows means the more rating. The thicker the arrow means a big shift in how your rating was affected. The circle around the arrow means a rank change (up or down).

Placement Games

 For my placement games, I did alright. I manage to win two games out of 4. Placing my self in Silver 3. These games were a struggle to play as I was mainly playing by myself with 4 other people on my team against a team where they had everyone in a voice call. It was hard to receive any info on the enemy as my team didn't bother calling out where they were.

As of today

Currently I am Gold 3 in Valorant. Games are still a struggle to play but I am doing well to keep up the amount of wins. The rank system as of now is fantastic. It allows me to exceed my play style and allows me to try to achieve the highest rank possible. For the next few days I will be grinding out the rank system and seeing rank I can get.

Day 16: Online Class/Game Review

VALORANT BEGINNER'S GUIDE

VALORANT’s game mode features two teams of five players facing off in rounds with a 30-second buy phase and a 1:40 minute active phase. Where the attackers must plant a bomb or eliminate every enemy to win, while the defenders must prevent the bomb from exploding by eliminating the attackers or defusing the bomb if planted. The first team to reach 13 points wins the game. I'm here today to help you avoid making beginners’ mistakes.


In Game Setting

DO NOT! And I repeat ever go into a game without looking at your setting. Even if it’s tempting. Shooting games can be played in many different styles. Hop in the practice mode and take the time to get everything right.
 
Controls

The default key for defusing and planting the bomb is "4" on the numpad. Many players coming from CSGO may think the defuse button would be "E" and thus try to defuse to no affect. So please check the controls.

Crosshair


The crosshair is an important aspect for shooter games. There’s no perfect setting for it, but you’ll want to adjust the options to see if its right for you.

When playing

Abilities exist to enhance your gunplay rather than becoming your main asset. Using them makes you vulnerable because of the delay to switch to your weapon. You have to make sure you’re in a safe position to use them, especially for abilities with a long delay.


Aiming down sight (ADS)


It’s a common mistake to think that you’ll aim better when you aim down sight. But it can get u killed most of the time. It is because you’ll rarely exchange fire with a target over 20 meters away from you. Not having to ADS allows you to fire the weapon more accurately. Only ADS when you fights at a long distance to get more accurate shots and reduce the weapon’s spread.

Communicate with your team
 
This game isn’t meant to be played solo. Communicating with your team is crucial. Having info on enemy and sharing them with your team can give massive advantage and most likely win you the round from it.

Remember that you can still convey information after being elliminated in a round by opening the map and using pings to help your surviving teammates make the right decisions.
 
Know when to buy and save

Every round, you should be careful with how much you spend because if you end up losing or dying in several rounds in a row, you’ll be forced to stick with cheap weapons and a light shield.

You want to make sure to have enough money to buy better weapon and abilities at the start of each round . The “min next round” information can help you calculate what to buy in case you die during the next round.


TIP

Several strategies can be formed throughout a game. If you ping that you want to save money or spend it all, it can help the rest of your team decide what to do. It’s all a matter of coordination and style. But don’t forget to anticipate instead of thinking of each round individually. 

Day 15: Online Class/Game Review

VALORANT AGENTS GUIDE   

Agents in Valorant 

As Valorant runs into its 1 month close beta release, Riot games has been working hard on releasing a lot of new agent. Currently, there are 10 agents that you can play as. Each agents works differently, some agents are perfect for defense while others have the tools to sneak behind and cause havoc on unsuspecting enemies. There is a character for every type of player in VALORANT. Today, we will help you choose your agent and will give you the run down of their abilities. (NOTE. Valorant classes & Agent abilities)

Valorant classes 

There are currently four different classes in "Valorant:" Duelist, Initiator, Sentinel and Controllers.

• Duelists are the ones who push forward into conflicts with the enemy team. Think of them as attackers.

• Initiators focus on gathering intel and help the team push.

• Sentinels are defenders, usually playing the back line of a team.

• Controllers are good at blocking off sight lines and generally offer support to the team.

 











Agent abilities

Each agent in Valorant has four abilities: one main ability that comes with the Agent, "the ultimate" which is charged up slowly over time or getting kills which will charge the ultimate super fast. At every start of a round, you will receive one ability without having to buy it.

A decent amount of agents abilities are meant to slow and obscure the enemy team from advancing. A lot of them are also area of effect (AOE) attacks, which damage or affect opponents within a selected radius.

With just 10 Agents known before the game's official release (and more potentially in the pipeline), here's what you need to know about each Agent and their special abilities.

 

AGENT LIST:

Sova

• Recon Bolt: Fires a tracking arrow that reveals player locations within a certain area.
• Owl Drone (optional): Flies a recon drone and can shoot enemies with a fire arrow.
• Shock Bolt (optional): Hits enemies with a shock arrow that can bounce off of walls.
• Hunter's Fury (ultimate): Fires three shots that can pierce walls and damages opponents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brimstone

• Sky Smoke: You can select one or multiple points on a map that drops a smoke grenade that obscures vision.
• Stim Beacon (optional): An AOE combat stim which increases fire rate. Both teammates and enemies alike can use this.
• Incendiary (optional): A grenade launcher that fires off an incendiary round.
• Orbital Strike (ultimate): Select an area on the map and a laser damages all inside the blast radius.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Raze

• Paint Shells: Throws a cluster grenade. Explodes and deals damage.
• Boom Bot (optional): Walks across the floor and later explodes, dealing damage to enemies.
• Blast Pack (optional): Throws like Semtex grenades or C4. Can be triggered.
• Showstopper (ultimate): Uses a rocket launcher that deals damage over a large area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phoenix

• Hot hands: Creates a fire zone that damages enemies.
• Blaze (optional): Creates a flame wall that deals damage and obscures vision.
• Curveball (optional): Essentially a controllable flash grenade. It blinds both enemies and teammates.
• Run it Back (ultimate): Places a marker on the ground that you can teleport back to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cypher

• Spycam: Throws a camera down that can signal where opponents are.
• Trapwire (optional): A tripwire that slows enemies and reveals their location — invisible to enemy eyes.
• Cyber Cage (optional): Drops an AOE screen that slows opponents, obscures vision and is signaled by an audio cue.​ 
• Neural Theft (ultimate): Throws down a device on dead opponents that can show where the enemy team is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Viper

• Toxic Screen: Fire out a wall of poison smoke.
• Snake Bite (optional): Fires down a pool of poison that damages opponents.
• Poison Cloud (optional): Throws down a cloud of poison gas that can be activated later.
• Viper's Pit (ultimate): Creates a large expanding sphere of poison around you.

 

 

 

 

 

Jett

• Tailwind: Dash in the direction you're moving.
• Cloudburst (optional): Throw a projectile that will throw a vision-blocking cloud.
• Updraft (optional): You can float up to otherwise-unreachable heights and float around.
• Bladestorm (ultimate): Get several knives that you can throw at opponents — recharges as you get kills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Omen

• Dark Cover: Fires down an orb that obscures vision.
• Shrouded Step (optional): Can teleport to a marked location.
• Paranoia (optional): Fires a throwable that can go through walls and blind opponents.
• From the Shadows (ultimate): Can teleport to any point on the map. Can be interrupted by the enemy team.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Breach​

• Fault line: Chargeable attack that can stun players within the zone of effect.
• Aftershock (optional): Fires a charge through the wall, but takes a moment to charge.
• Flashpoint (optional): Fires a blinding charge through walls, but takes a moment to charge.
• Rolling Thunder (ultimate): Fires an AOE attack that stuns opponents and knocks them in the air, but doesn't damage them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sage

• Healing Orb: Fire this at an ally to heal them. Not instant, but heals over time.
• Barrier Orb (optional): Places a solid wall.
• Slow Orb (optional): AOE ability that slows opponents.
• Resurrection (ultimate): Can resurrect teammates.