Riot’s tactical shooter Valorant is a direct rival to FPS legend CS:GO. Many of the features in Valve’s title might eventually make their way to Valorant, such as left-hand view models.
Valorant has most recently announced a brand-new tournament series organized by Riot Games – First Strike. The tactical shooter is doing well in the competitive scene while also providing players with plenty of visual content on a weekly basis. The developers also don’t miss a chance to take player feedback to heart and try to answer the most asked questions. In the latest #AskValorant blog post, Riot revealed that left-hand view models will be making their way to Valorant.
We're answering more community questions with Ask VALORANT. This week, we cover the potential for a left hand view model, more on the recent map rotation update, perceived game-to-game inconsistencies, and updating weapon skins. Read all about it: https://t.co/k9n8cOmXv2 pic.twitter.com/Sw7XHtUp44
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) September 24, 2020
- READ MORE: The Latest Valorant Skin Bundle Is GUN
We know that this is something that a lot of players have been asking for and we've been doing some exploration into this. We're currently in the process of validating how this would work from not just a technical side but from a competitive and artistic front as well. While this may seem like a small technical challenge, we want to make sure this is done right for players.While this is something on our radar, we still need to ensure that we meet the criteria mentioned above and to do so we'll need to put these changes through rigorous competitive and artistic testing. With all that in mind, we unfortunately don't have a date we can share for when we think this will be available to players.
There’s no denying that the majority of players will prefer the regular right-handed model but switching to the left one might have certain benefits. People who are dominant with their left eye will certainly feel the difference. Left-hand view models exist in CS:GO and even though it’s such a small detail that’ll affect only a small portion of players it’s important for Valorant to add it.
By the looks of it Riot are definitely trying to implement it into the title but have to overcome several challenges along the way.
The first thing we want to consider is how we maintain the art fidelity of our awesome weapon skins, character models, and abilities. We don't frequently get to see different camera views of our first person weapons and viewarms so we'll need to make sure our art still holds up when we switch hands for players. We'll need to make sure that abilities still originate from the same place and that our hot fire still looks like... well... hot fire.The second aspect we need to consider is how this might impact the competitive integrity of the game. We want to ensure that there are no advantages or disadvantages to playing with a left handed view model and that we maintain a fair competitive playing field. We want to make sure that left hand view isn't the new meta or that players with this preference aren't nerfed.
It’s certainly not clear when the left-handed models will be released in Valorant but we’ll be sure to let you know when it happens. Still, it might be some time before the dev team finds a way to go around the two aspects. Make sure to check out the rest of the #AskValorant blog post where the team answers more questions like updating existing skins, queue times, and hit registration.
Stay tuned for more Valorant news and check EarlyGame or the EarlyGame Youtube channel for everything gaming and esports.
