Hey everyone and welcome back to another Valorant
weekly news roundup brought to you be SkillCapped.
My name's Modix and in today's video we will
be diving into this week's Ask Valorant news
article. Now normally whenever we do this
we cover questions that are normally answered
by Morello in his live stream, but today we
are going to be talking about 2 very controversial
topics in the Valorant community. These are
the Operator Meta and Sound issues.
But before we get into that if you haven't
already be sure to subscribe with notifications
on because every Sunday we release a weekly
news roundup covering all the valorant news
that happened in the past week. So if you
want to stay in the loop then be sure to subscribe
with notifications on.
So starting us off today we will be hearing
from Nickwu talking about the operator meta
in Valorant.
Here's the question that the community asked:
What are your thoughts on the opinion that
“the Operator is too OP”? And now here's
what Nickwu had to say:
We think the Operator isn't "too OP" but do
believe that the feeling sometimes comes from
a lack of personal agency against the weapon
(for Agents that don't have tools to break
line of sight for themselves), coupled with
an overwhelming amount of team coordination
to effectively counter an Operator. We're
looking into a lot of avenues to help smooth
out the experience but we do believe the Operator
should be powerful and should encourage a
team to thoughtfully enter a space where it
might be in play.
To give an anecdote: we've tried iterations
of the game where the Operator's strengths
weren't as sharp as they are today (especially
in holding defensive angles). We discovered
that without moments where a team was forced
to sit down and plan how to play against (or
around) a good Operator, a lot of gameplay
became about who could rush faster.
The Operator—like all weapons, maps, Agents,
etc.—is a part of our continuous holistic
review of the state of the game, and we’ll
make changes in the future if we feel it’s
needed. No changes now doesn’t mean no changes
ever.
So basically what we can take away from this
is that the operator itself will probably
not be getting any changes, but instead agents
utility might get buffed to help even out
the playing field going against oppers.
I've seen a lot of players express their opinions
on the same question and it seems as though
50% think that the operator is indeed overpowered
and the other 50% think that it's balanced.
So now I'm asking you. What do you think about
the opperator is it overpowered or is it balanced?
Be sure to let me know your thoughts down
below in the comments.
Well that's all the new info we have regarding
this topic so now let's talk about our next
controversial subject, Sound.
Here's the question that the community asked:
Sometimes it feels like sound is off in the
game, like footsteps are much closer than
they really are, or I hear them in the wrong
direction! Am I going crazy? Does VALORANT
do something different with sound?
I know that we have all been in that situation
where we think we hear something in one place
and then it is actually 180 degrees in the
opposite direction. This can end up causing
a lot of confusion so here's what the devs
had to say addressing the problem.
The footstep radius is set up to give players
who hear enemy footsteps time to use an ability
and re-equip a weapon before they are in danger.
I've also heard feedback around the fact that
people have a hard time telling how far away
a footstep is, which there is truth to. We
optimize for making sure footsteps are heard,
as opposed to optimizing for portraying distance.
What this looks like is an attenuation curve
that is somewhat flat, versus one that drops
off a lot over distance. There are a couple
reasons we do this. One is that under chaotic
conditions where abilities are being used
and you are probably hearing a lot of VOIP
otherwise known as coms, from your team, it
is essential that you don't miss a footstep.
Based on internal playtests, not hearing a
footstep and getting killed by someone you
knew had to run to get to you is very tilting.
This feels especially bad for players who
have internalized rotation times on the map
and have good communication and callouts on
their team.
We also know our game will be played in a
variety of contexts. NA players may be used
to playing in a quiet room and hearing every
detail, but players in China or Korea may
be playing in a loud PC Bang, where a footstep
that was quiet but gave more information on
distance would be lost. I have never played
professionally, but I imagine clarity would
also be appreciated for esports players who
may be in a noisy stadium (hopefully someday!)
Another reason for this is that we don't want
to give players the incentive to turn their
volume up to painful levels because they have
to listen for faint audio cues to be competitive,
or to add external DSP to compress their audio
(which happens for some other FPS games.)
If the game designers want you to have the
information, we want you to clearly have the
information.
While there's a drawback from having the attenuation
curve flatter, I think the advantages are
more important.
As far as panning direction goes, we have
heard reports of this both internally and
on live. When our design playtest has investigated
this in the past using videos of multiple
viewpoints, the panning has turned out to
be correct.
We currently mix the game in stereo, meaning
there is no difference between a sound 45
degrees to your left in front of you and a
sound 45 degrees to your left in back of you.
Some people expect to be able to hear this
difference, but that is not currently possible.
Also, engaging the “7.1” mode on various
headphones does not help. There is no way
for the headphones to decode our stereo sound
into 7.1 and may even make spatialization
much worse!
So overall a very interesting response by
Peter Zinda, the audio Director for Riot.
Personally I really wish that they add some
sort of feature to allow players to tell exactly
where sounds are coming from, but this could
take a while to create so we will just have
to play with what we have right now.
And that's all that this weeks Ask valorant
news article covered but before we wrap up
this weeks news roundup we need to talk esports.
So it has now been about 3 months since Valorant
officially released and many esports organizations
are finally locking down their rosters. One
of the first teams to do this was T1 back
before the game even officially released.
The team was made up of Brax, Azk, Crashies,
Food, and lastly Skadoodle. But on August
24th this all changed. This was when Skadoodle
officially steped down from the main roster.
Here's the tweet that Skaddoodle posted giving
his fans the announcement.
An update to my fans, and fans of @T1 As you
may have noticed, I haven't been playing with
the squad in competitions, and again won't
be competing in this weekend's event.
I have been grinding to expand my agent pool
and overall impact with the OP and will be
back with T1 when the time is right, but in
the meantime am going to be practicing with
other teams to stay sharp. I'll be back soon
and better than ever
If you didn't know Skadoodle always had the
role of sage is the T1 team comp, but when
the meta of Valorant shifted away from Sage
and toward the Jett Opperator combo, the other
T1 players felt as though Skadoodle was a
weak link and so they replaced him with their
coach Frod.
It will be very interesting to see how all
of this plays out and if Skadoodle will stay
with T1 and we promise to keep you updated
whenever we get more information on the situation.
Well that's going to wrap it up for this week's
Valorant weekly news round up and
If you enjoyed today's video then be sure
to like the video and subscribe with notifications
on because every sunday we release a weekly
news video talking about all the news happening
in the Valorant community.
Thanks so much for watching all the way through
this video. I'm Modix signing off and I will
see you all in the next one.
