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An Overview of Valorant’s Closed Beta & Everything We Know About Launch

Aashir Ahmed 2020-05-30 12:52:42
  Valorant's first chapter has ended as the closed beta closed its doors in preparation for the official release of the game on June 2. The beta was part of Riot’s preliminary testing of the games, and a source of receiving valuable feedback from the gaming community. This game marked the first steps taken by Riot in the world of First-Person Shooters (FPS). At first glance, it looks like a breed between Overwatch and Counter-Strike -- but there’s more to it. The reception was remarkable for a first-person shooter entering an already crowded marketplace. An intensely competitive game, the single biggest success of VALORANT is that it's still readily available to casual gamers, but accommodating enough to those who never played it.  Riot unveiled a closed beta for Valorant, which began on 7 April. At first, it was only available to Europe and North America. Other regions were later constituted. The release of Valorant was scheduled to take place later in the Summer with no specific date. The decision to release a closed beta, allowing users to receive a special key, did generate a lot of curiosity. Since the 28th of March was the last day of the beta. Valorant capitalized this opportunity to make a couple of announcements.  

Why Was Closed Beta Useful? 

The first one being a thank-you to everyone who participated in the beta. The official account of Valorant tweeted the following: They accompanied the tweet with two images highlighting some of the major benefits of launching a close beta. The images highlighted the number of bugs fixed in the beta, with almost a third of them being fixed because of players reporting them. Other statistics included the number of updates deployed within such a short period, the number of hackers caught via reporting, and as a result of Riot’s Vanguard system. In addition, to the number of server crashes, as well as the number of data centers that stood because of the beta. All these facts and figures prove one thing – the beta was a great success.   

Valorant Esports:

Twitch Rivals:

Another news the Valorant community was blessed with was the hosting of the first-ever Valorant twitch Rivals tournament. The first major VALORANT event to be launched will be the Twitch Rivals tournament. A $200,000 reward pool will be available for grabs on the opening weekend of Valorant’s launch. Riot Games and Twitch are collaborating on the event. Regions including North America, Mexico, LATAM, Australia, Korea, and Japan will be participating in this tournament. This will be the first set of official competitive Valorant. Twitch has seen quite a hit in their Twitch Rivals series, putting together some of the most successful content developers and sports pros on the web. Riot Games is placing a strong emphasis on competitive play, and this is only the beginning of Valorant Esports. Dedicating an entire mode towards competitive play hints that Riot is working hard towards making Valorant esports a success.  While still being in beta, the community has already seen a variety of Valorant tournaments taking place. All of them were online-only, but some trumpeted prize pools as large as $25,000, which is low compared to the Twitch Rivals offering, which is significant for a game this early in development. The T1 Invitational was, by far, the most successful event of Valorant's beta.
Related: Valorant Agents | All Characters and their Abilities
There are certain perquisites for a game to be esports-compatible. Intense, competitive gameplay is a relatively obvious consideration. The game must be designed to appropriately maintain a state of competitive integrity, where the skill levels of each player are defined. As soon as players queue into their first matches it is eminent that the game has set the framework for excellence in sports. Guns work differently, others should be used situationally, and getting enough resources to buy the weapons you want at crucial moments is something you're going to have to know. This is a factor that makes the skill gap distinct since it is that point where strategizing plays a vital role. At the current state of the game, it seems that playing the defensive side at least is a lot easier. But capitalizing small mistakes provides enough power for the offensive side to gain an advantage if they perform optimally. In Valorant, everybody has access to all the same resources, to the arms and skills of the heroes at their fingertips, which proves that this game is almost perfectly balanced.  

Valorant's Launch

During one of Summer Game Fest event streams, the executive producer of Valorant announced that it will be launching on the 2nd of June. This announcement led to a sudden buildup of hype and excitement in the nascent Valorant community, minutes after the video started populating Valorant fans’ twitter timeline.   

New Additions:

The first introduction of Valorant 's latest agent came in a bit of official art Riot tweeted out along with information regarding the beta player count. And recently, a new teaser from Valorant's Brazilian social networking accounts gave another glimpse at the previously unseen hero. Then Valorant's Latin American channels started to retweet an unusual video with the hashtag #ReynaIsHere. The only thing displayed regarding her in the trailer was her portrait, and the community still lacks additional information on the character. Agent Reyna “But the 11th Agent that people are gonna see on day one is definitely going to be an interesting one and a little spicy potentially.” Joe Ziegler, Valorant’s game director mentioned earlier about this character. Initially, there were going to be 12 characters at launch but since the launch is happening earlier than scheduled, the release of the 12th agent is postponed. Apart from a character, Riot will introduce a new feature - Battle Pass. This feature has been adopted by numerous other FPS games, and Riot taking it into consideration wasn’t a big deal. But it will be interesting to see the in-game cosmetics which are made available as a part of this battle pass. The following image was released by Riot for the battle pass: Ignition Battle Pass will be Valorant's first ever. Apart from the name of the battle pass, “Ignition”, this teaser doesn’t give out much. However, since the tradition of the battle pass is borrowed from other games, one could expect gun textures, accessories, and character profile cosmetics likely to be included. In addition, a new map will be released with the launch. Reddit's new post announced that the Riot Games were creating the fourth map. Right now, the three beta maps are Bind, Haven, and Split. It was confirmed by Fionn of ESPN when he announced a talk with Valorant game developers. He confirmed that the game would have four maps during its release. The 4th map was leaked by a data miner u/UlfricTheThird. He mentioned, “I have been doing some data mining, and I have found some information on the new map code-named “Ascent”. I’ve learned that it takes place in Italy, as there is a lot of Italian writing on the textures. I think it is in Venice because some of the textures reference a canal.”  Riot Games is also implementing additional servers around the world to reduce latency. Last but not least a new game mode is also being released. The ValorantLeaked Twitter page, which is devoted to news and speculation regarding Valorant, posted a snapshot of the game files that revealed similarities to the game mode that is apparently coming to the title. Valorant’s launch is only a few days away and It will be interesting to see how the game continues to prosper after its complete launch. Its esports potential is extremely promising, and it will be interesting to see how Riot tries to take advantage of this and plans on developing a competitive scenario. The passing of time will be the judge as to where this game heads. As of now, Valorant has a bright future. 
 

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