Valorant - Riot Games’ Counterstrike Overwatch

Sounds like a lineup made by the suits. A mobile game, CCG, and an Overwatch competitor. Guess they figured with Blizzard trying to get into MOBA’s they would copy the rest of their lineup.

Even if Riot reckon they can hit it big with a mainstream fighting game that would be even bigger than Street Fighter has ever been, it’s not exactly a conservative risk-free bet for the suits that one. Seems like a strategic move to dominate the major sectors of the E-Sports scene to me, if their new projects gain traction in the marketplace. The Fighting Game is the odd one out and makes this seem like more than just the suits attempting to muscle in on whatever is making the most money currently; because Fighting Games and the FGC aren’t anywhere near as flush with piles of cash as something like CS:GO, Overwatch, or the MOBAs.

Fighting games are a big E Sport as well. I’m not following you.

Plus, it’s not like they don’t have any FG experts. They acquired Radiant in 2016 for the FG development.

In terms of money the FGC has nothing on the likes of DOTA 2, CS:GO and those major esports though for prize pools, sponsors and the like. Outside of the Capcom Pro Tour, and when WB\Neverrealm pump money into the scene for their latest Fighting game, you don’t currently play games like Tekken to make a comfortable living. Even the profitability of the games isn’t on the same level as Overwatch, CS:GO and the like.

The FGC has a lot going for it when it comes to having a sizable dedicated, rusted on fanbase and other things but the first winner of Fortnite’s esports made more money in one game than currently even the best FGC player could hope to make in a single season of playing tournaments and sponsorships.

They’re not a big e-sport in comparison to the lanes Riot runs in.

I love them to death, drove 80 miles out to a local last week, but I know it’s small-time. It’s part of the charm, especially when your game is something that is being kept alive entirely by community effort.

That said, I wasn’t impressed by the design of Rising Thunder- it was a SF4 clone in its gameplay, the gimmick was cooldowns (which is going to be in Granblue Fantasy Versus as well). The one thing it did well was netcode, and the main hope I’ve seen from folks is that it will drag Japanese devs kicking and screaming into making netplay up to American standards, and not Tokyo to Osaka standards.

So, was this a giant information dump of some kind from Riot games? People somehow found out about all their projects in the works even though they don’t even have names yet? I’m seeing reports in my news feed that there’s a Diablo-like ARPG as one of those games? Where’s the thread for that one @Telefrog? :)

They’re celebrating the 10-year anniversary of LoL. There’s tons of videos and stuff they officially released, it’s not some mega leak.

They released hours of videos, dozens of tweets, articles, AMAs on Reddit, invited streamers to play in the beta for the card game, …

Like @Menzo said and was mentioned in the League thread, it’s the 10 year anniversary of the game’s release and they have pulled out all the stops news wise. They are celebrating Riot, the League community and finally putting a real s into Riot Games.

You can check out their Twitter account for a taste of the current activity:

https://twitter.com/riotgames

Ah, I see. I had a feeling there was discussion going on somewhere about this that I was probably missing. (I don’t play MOBAs so I generally don’t read those threads).

Thanks for the info guys. So it sounds like Riot is growing huge and are trying to develop the kind of following Blizzard and id software have. I imagine in a few years they’ll start having their own equivalent of Quake-con and Blizzcon.

Still, from all these, it sounds like the ARPG will be the one I’ll be interested in, so I might finally play something from Riot Games.

Valorant is the title.

Ant’s are my favorite bug. I so much look forward to playing those valorous little fellows.

Riot certainly has the technical know how, the servers and experience to deliver that kind of target.

If you’re a CS player, does this look appealing?

It depends on a whole lot of things, but that everything in that tweet is highly attractive to any CS player.

It’s basically a solid foundation for less technical frustration, but only if they get the rest right.

Found this which is a more detailed overview of a few rounds. It’s good that most of the abilities are basically utility with charges purchased, so it ties into the economy like grenades and such in cs.

Lots of potential. There are plenty of people (like me) who can’t hang with Overwatch because it’s not a shooter first and this very much seems to be exactly that.

This does look like it could indeed attract the CS:GO / Overwatch gamer segment. Seems to have a bit of both:

Closed beta starts Tuesday.

If you link your Riot account to Twitch and watch one of the official streams today (prerecorded) you can possibly get access. But they at one point had basically a million viewers and something like 25k “drops” to go around.

It is definitely leaning far more towards the CS spectrum all around and looks really damn smooth.

My son scored one - he is very excited.

Sweet. It definitely has a lot of potential. Possibly as the first game that isn’t actually CS to have a similar structure and what appears to be a rock solid foundation for competitive play.

Should be very interesting.