Cover art from @Taois Thu
BB Ji | wen
People who have graduated and attended class reunions will probably meet one or two old classmates. When they were young, they were unremarkable, and even some of them did not learn any skills, but after entering the society, they became polite and easy-going people's teachers, and it is likely that they will teach your children to be human in the future. If you put it in the game circle, fist is the old classmate who gave me the biggest contrast.
When "League of Legends" that few heroes can use first entered The country, not too many people are optimistic that it can be fired, but after years of operation and remodeling, "League of Legends" has not only become the benchmark of MOBA games, the youth of a generation, and the annual S tournament will also cause a global carnival.
But I didn't expect that the contrast would come again.
Just this month, in Berlin, Germany, the second "S Race" hosted by Fist also came to an end, with European club Acend defeating "Red Star" Gambit to win the first world championship in the shooter VALORANT project.
Moments to hold the cup!
In addition to the $1 million base prize, teams participating in championships can also share more than $7.5 million in crowdfunding prize money proportionally — yes, you read that right, Fist puts 50% of the proceeds from the sale of championship-related skins into the prize pool
Although because there is no Chinese team to participate, the competition itself is generally discussed in China, but it is not difficult to find that VALORANT has a hidden trend of fire. No, if you look at the world, VALORANT can even be called "debut and explosion".
At 4 a.m., you can find VALORANT living in harmony with the Temple of Knowledge in the New York University Library.
The source of the picture is @Eddy
Tap water is always misunderstood as a water army in this era, but when the lead singer of Lincoln Park spares no effort to confess VALORANT in public, it is indeed time to examine how broken it is.
More and more familiar high-level plays began to pour into VALORANT, former CSGO professional player "headshot brother" ScreaM, genius teenager TenZ, top stream anchor Shroud...
In June this year, the UP master "Xiao Biao xb" made a video, interviewed several million fan UP masters who usually play VALORANT, and threw out today's question for everyone: Why did everyone run to play VALORANT? How did this game become popular?
Two years ago, you could say that Fist knows a lot about esports, but almost no one would admit that Fist can make a fun shooter.
Especially when VALORANT was just announced, when the evaluations of "the picture is not beautiful", "the gameplay is not understandable", "is not the overwatch of the fist", "the stitching monster" are placed in front of passers-by players, just like sprinkling kiwi fruit on the pizza in front of the Italians, and the cult has arrived home.
But now? A story like "Fists in Turn Teach You to Be Human" is staged again.
The reason is actually quite simple. Any player who joins VALORANT with the mentality of "casually throwing skills up" will realize that fate is joking with them. This TM is a pure shooter!
There is indeed exquisite geometry here.
But more often, the situation in hardcore gun battles is changing rapidly:
The most mainstream gameplay of VALORANT is the traditional "bag-unpacking" CT blasting mode.
The heroes in the game do have a variety of skills, but most of them can't take the head directly, but create the output environment - buried tactics, cutting the battlefield, buffing teammates or debuffing enemies...
"Night Kill" with displacement ability
For example, is the hero Viper's skill very similar to the smoke and fire in CSGO?
The source of the image is @Ma1p1aN
Even the 20-second tactical preparation time for each inning seems to remind you to play the game with your little brain and don't send it too fast.
Hero skills are mostly purchased and have a limit on the number of times they can be used
VALORANT also has an internal economic system, there is no money to start a gun, you may wish to use the system's request function to ask your teammates to "snipe". A big guy with skin, go to Southeast Asian clothes for a walk, afraid that he will be able to meet the children who follow him to the gun.
Rich to gun posture
But that doesn't mean VALORANT is just a skin on the old-school gameplay. On the contrary, one of valorant's major contributions is to make more possibilities for the explosion mode that everyone feels cannot be changed.
In order to design a superb map, Fist not only "dug" the core designer of LOL from the inside, but also recruited Volcano, one of the producers of the CSGO race map Cache (commonly known as "forklift"), and other gods of various parties to make several maps that subverted the industry's cognition.
In the three maps when VALORANT was first launched, Bind placed one-way portals in the middle and left of the map, which greatly improved the strategy of attack and defense transfer. Even throwers and skills can be teleported
Haven implements the "three-pack point" design that is often discussed by the shooter community, and the fun of the game is full.
Overlooking the view, all three routes can be taken
Later updated Flacture (Gap of the Desert), not only using a vertical structure, so that the same package point up and down two layers can be packaged;
Image source @ Storm Daddy
He also boldly added a zipline across a wide range in the middle, and it was not a dream after the opening round. As soon as this figure came out, it caused a wave of heated discussions among overseas media and game practitioners.
The offensive and defensive spawn points of the VALORANT map are not necessarily at both ends of the map
Therefore, from the gameplay and map, it can be seen that VALORANT is cloaked in an animation style, taking the route of suspected stitching monsters, but the bones are full of competitive depth.
The fist, which knows this, has also put a lot of effort into the life of the shooter game , anti-cheating. According to the official, after a battle of wits with plug-ins, VALORANT's cheating rate dropped to an all-time low in October this year.
What players can see is that there are Twitch anchors playing games, and the camera that is banned by the name is spread on the Internet - redefining the "instant ban".
A look of confusion, moistened
However, just having a hard enough basic skill does not explain VALORANT's popularity among mass players, after all, shooting games still have a threshold for getting started.
But when I really played it for a few days, I found that this concern was superfluous, because the player could live on his own without moving, or the design of the game itself was easy to spark with the player's brain hole.
For example, there is a tower in the training range of VALORANT, there are players who have nothing to do to climb up, at first everyone thought that they could climb high is stuck with the model BUG, until someone in the community climbed to the top of the tower...
Guys, how come there's a bear here? In order to dig up more official hidden Easter eggs, there are still a group of "parkour stream" players digging the secrets of the training ground.
For example, the "flash bomb" (flash) effect in VALORANT is a burst of light points, and the flashes of different heroes will have their own colors, so someone cuts the picture that is blinded by continuous flashing into a collection and transmits it to the Internet, which has the smell of a disco.
In the more casual Revival mode (similar to the clone mode in LOL), players don't mind playing the shooter as a maze brawl.
Playing deeper, you will always be impressed by some of the designs in the game that are as fine as the fingernail slits.
For example, a technology-style skin of Frenzy (a type of weapon in the game) adds a "small graphics card pendant" on the side, and according to the frequency of the player's shooting, the small graphics card will also rotate at the corresponding frequency. Don't ask me why I miss a shuttle of bullets when I go out, in order to see the special effects, I itch ah~
It is not uncommon to say that VALORANT also has the gun skin of the dragon, but this dragon is "cultivated", and the dragon's posture, special effects, and killing effects can be upgraded. You think I'm playing VALORANT? In fact, this is a "dragon trainer".
Many shooters can examine weapons - buying skins always has to be forced, but I have seen Gu Fang's self-congratulatory and can still cut songs. With valorant and a well-known DJ's cooperative skin, press the view button, and the electronic music party begins!
The technical power of the skin is also reflected in the use of light and shadow:
Battle of the Twin Cities?
Since it comes to skins, we have to mention the coolest kill effects in the game. For example, the exclusive skin of this S race is like this:
Of course, don't worry about balance, these effects will only be displayed when killing the last person in the enemy team.
So many cool skins, but the fist is not in a hurry to make money, the virtual store in the game only puts 5 goods (1 set of 4 single pieces), and the items are randomly refreshed, players want to buy their own skins that look good, but also need a little luck.
Under the blessing of imaginative special effects, VALORANT's game excludes the appearance of violence, but is more like the American comic/two-dimensional play terrier, which may also be one of the reasons why new players are less frustrated after getting started and take the initiative to join the whole army.
All of the above details have no real impact on the core gameplay, but the fist still does it. This persistence and dedication make VALORANT and other games on the market look different.
But if there is anything that can make the game of fists open up a dimension with the perception of peers, it is still due to the artistic temperament.
The "Fist is a music/film/entertainment company delayed by games" has been played badly, but VALORANT is the first work to fully inherit the cultural power of Fist, and it was endowed with a strong artistic cell from birth.
With the experience of "League of Legends", VALORANT has a complete world view from the beginning of the launch, and the hero has his own background story and exclusive CG.
Even character songs will be synchronously online Spotify, with flesh and blood, and the funky value is full.
The official in-game actively links with various music stars, DJs, and trendy people, and attracts celebrities in the entertainment and sports circles outside the game.
What is it about the game that makes Aguero "not do his job"?
In July, Fist brought in Parkour god Krystian Kowalewski to shoot a short film in Berlin that broke down the dimensional wall between extreme sports, street culture and games.
From the production and packaging of the e-sports event, it can also be seen that Fist tried to integrate multiple artistic concepts, using holographic projection, fully combining the characteristics of the venue, and creating a shocking audition scene.
The emphasis on multiculturalism is also the reason why VALORANT can successfully absorb powder all over the world. In the overseas version, although the heroes speak English, their English pronunciation is different depending on the background setting. On the B station, there is also the English teaching UP master, who specializes in using valorant materials to analyze English accents around the world.
Even if it has not yet launched the national service, VALORANT has long been a hero with a Chinese background - sage Sage. As the only hero in the game with the ability to revive his teammates, Sage's strategic position is self-evident.
Tencent is also amused, announcing the introduction of VALORANT national service on the first promotional map in September this year, placing Sage in the C position, which deeply embodies China No.1. Sage's four skills of national costume translation, Jade City, Bo Bing, Feng Chun, and Re-rising, reveal a strong national style atmosphere.
Perhaps standing at the present, to predict whether VALORANT can replicate the overseas explosion after entering the country, it is still too early, the game's gameplay innovation, circle-breaking culture can cause a wider range of resonance, but also depends on the follow-up longer line operation, but the current VALORANT is indeed called "cool enough to be cool enough to be fun".
"Comb your hair like an adult"
The people who only knew the fist because of "League of Legends" this time have to adapt to its new identity as a "shooter game manufacturer".
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