Valorant

[crony 359]

Anyone play this yet? Keep trying to get drops from twitch, but I guess I'm not watching long enough. Just wondering if it's living up to the hype. 

[Sam Lin 3550]

Not touching it until they do something about the kernel-level anti-cheat. No way I'm giving a fucking game access to run anything in the kernel.

Watching gameplay vids it clearly is trying to be a CS alternative, but the pacing just 'feels' slow and the visual style is Overwatch cartoony. Will be interesting to see if a critical mass of players stays with it and the devs tune it into a good e-sport balance.

[Teryor 4449]

I'm having an absolute blast playing it, and I'm normally a pretty poor fps player, my moba skills have translated in being able to provide value and understanding the rotations and how to provide utility. The biggest issue I've noticed is a much higher rate of 4v5s for either team than in League of Legends which can be frustrating, but on offense especially it still feels like games are winnable. These unranked games feel like there isn't a ton of communication but that will change with the addition of ranked this week. 

[Hawndoh 2386]

I've watched a bit but will likely never play myself. Partly because it doesn't seem as fun unless you have an organized group of 5 talking in discord and partly because of the kernel level anti cheat like mentioned above.

Looks like an interesting game though. 

[ztejas 43411]

I was playing the shit out of it before I landed in rehab. I played 42 hours straight at one point (cocaine is a hell of a drug). Probably logged 150 hours in a couple of weeks or so.

It's a good game and I had a loy of fun but I'm not sure if I'll get back to it or not. My buddies that were playing seem to have moved on - apparently the cheating got really bad right after I left (which was right before they launched ranked). 

If they're going to have issues with cheating (which was what they were hanging their hat on - anticheating at least) then there's literally nothing that counterstrike doesn't do better. Something will eventually unseat CS as the premeir FPS esport but this ain't it. There's too much cheese and the strategy is not even remotely as deep.

It also suffers from the same disease that Overwatch had - being able to properly balance heroes. I think this is harder in an fps than in a MOBA - where the aspect has enjoyed much more success.