These problems need to be fixed to make VALORANT a great esport

With the conclusion of First Strike the first larger esport tournament for VALORANT it is time to take a good look at where the nascent esport stands as of now.

Riot’s First Strike series was the first tournament that the developer hosted by themselves. While the competition was fierce within the regions it also laid bare some weaknesses of the current scene.

Specatating is confusing

VALORANT is not Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. A simple fact that every viewer in the stream noticed immediately. Because of the abilities of the agents a 1 vs 1 often becomes very hectical and with more than two players it is often unclear what and where it happened:
While you are still asking yourself where a player died Cypher’s ultimate suddenly reveals 14 agents on the minimap and the casters can’t keep up with the abilities being used.

This confusing spectating experience is a problem that is familiar to fans of Overwatch. VALORANT is not as bad in that regard as Blizzard’s FPS is as at least the reset at the start of each round makes it better. But for future events Riot needs to work on their overlay to give the audience a clearer picture of what is actually happening on stream.

Long broadcasting times

Another issue next to the complex game are unreasonably long broadcasting times. There is no reason for two Best-of-Three series to have a seven hour long broadcast. Instead of back-to-back action the broadcast is being padded by empty analysis. There is no reason that VALORANT which employs MR12 takes that long for a single series.

This early into the game’s history the broadcasts should be more focused on the gameplay and the match instead of storylines that have not really developed so far. The experts themselves are great and the studio looks amazing but the game itself deserves more attention.

It was still a thrilling tournament

Nevertheless what counts in the end are the games played. And those were extremely close and thrilling. With two underdogs coming out on top in NA and EU the scene is shaping up to be highly competitive.

You have stars like ScreaM dropping 39 frags in a single map but still losing, you also have 300,000 viewers tuning in for the North American finals. VALORANT’s esport most certainly has a lot of momentum behind it.

But the game does have a challenging start. Instead of offline events the scene can only play in regional online competitions due to the pandemic. Who knows how much better the game can be once the regions can truly compete against each other and determine an actual world champion.

Riot has already announced details for the upcoming VALORANT Champions Tour in 2021 and if they take the critique to heart, 2021 is shaping up to be quite a year for VALORANT.

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