Riot's tactical shooter went into closed beta in April 2020 and over the past year, a lot was added to the game. A new map, new agents, and new skins. But what about new weapons? Does Valorant need more of them?
In terms of gameplay or shall we say gunplay, not much has changed for the past year. Valorant went into closed beta with a total of 18 weapons (17 plus the melee) in its arsenal and the official release of the game in June didn't add more. A year later since the closed beta, the number of weapons in Valorant is still sitting at 18. Will we see any new additions anytime soon?
Does Valorant need more weapons?
That's the big question of the day as it's quite subjective. Overall, Valorant has 6 types of weapons (7, if you count the knife which is always the same):
- SMGs
- Rifles
- Shotguns
- Machine Guns
- Sniper Rifles
- Sidearms (pistols)
Most categories on the list have one expensive weapon that's better than the other, with the only exceptions being in the rifles department. There you can find the Vandal, Phantom, and Guardian, which are all way better picks than the Bulldog. You get the idea though, cheap weapon=bad, expensive weapon=better. In fact, rifles and sidearms are the only two categories with more than two weapons. For some players, that's enough, while others want more variety.
The most direct comparison to Valorant is CS:GO where we find a lot more weapons - 34 split into once again 6 categories. The only category with two weapons in it are the machine guns with Negev and M249. This puts Valve's title quite ahead in terms of variety. Is that a fair comparison though? Probably not. CS:GO has been out for almost a decade and the Counter-Strike series started all the way back in 2000.
There's one more difference, Valorant has agent abilities and many of those would use some sort of weapon - Raze's rocket launcher, Sova's Bow, etc. Then again, these are character-specific and only a single player on the team will have access to them, occasionally. Right now, Valorant is in a good spot with a weapon for almost every situation.
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Will We See More Weapons?
In a Q&A stream, Valorant Game Designer Nicholas Wu Smith shared some information regarding the future of weapons in Valorant.
chill AMA/Q&A till 12pst https://t.co/hcC67coNJ1
— Nicholas Wu Smith (@Nickwusmith) April 13, 2021
Smith mentioned that new weapons will be coming to Valorant, eventually, just don't expect them anytime soon:
Will we get new guns this year? Probably not.
Another interesting note was that "every weapon in Valorant will be hitscan, unless we do something very particular". What's hitscan? The bullets go exactly where you aim, meaning there's no projectile drop off. That's good news for consistency and bad news for anyone who hoped to see a bow in the near future. Smith also revealed that some weapons like an auto-sniper were scrapped before the game was released, as others like the Guardian filled that role.
What do you think about the number of weapons in Valorant? Would you like to see some new additions? Drop us a comment on Twitter or Facebook!
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