Riot Games has finally lifted the curtains on its upcoming FPS title, previously known only as “Project A”.
We now know that the game will be called Valorant, and it will be a free-to-play, tactical five-versus-five shooter, set for release this Summer.
Setting
Valorant is set on a near-future Earth, with real-world locations and cultures.
Maps in Valorant are designed to support a wide variety of strategies and team compositions, with plenty of different routes and terrain types.
Gameplay
The game will blend elements from both Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) and Overwatch, two of the most popular titles in the FPS genre.
Games will pit two teams of five players against each other in best-of-24-round matches, with teams taking turns on attack and defense.
Players will be able to choose from a wide cast of ‘agents’ from a variety of real-life cultures, each with their own unique abilities. All agents have access to all guns, which can be purchased via a round-to-round based economy.
Riot says that Valorant will have precise, high-fidelity gunplay with a low time-to-kill — most headshots will be instant kills, and most rifles can kill in 3-4 bullets.
Agent abilities have been designed to complement — not overpower — gunplay through tactical information and strategic support.
“Throughout Valorant’s development, we wanted to uphold the fundamental values of a competitive tactical shooter: precise shooting, lethal gunplay, and strategic execution,” said the game’s Executive Producer, Anna Donlon.
“By adding unique character abilities that complement the game’s gunplay we believe we’re expanding upon the traditional tac shooter experience and bringing something new to the genre – and we hope the launch of Valorant will be the start of a long-term relationship with tactical FPS fans from around the world.”
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128-tick servers and advanced anti-cheat
On top of bringing its own twist to the tactical shooter formula, Riot said that Valorant will have “unprecedented, best-in-class technical back-end” support in the form of dedicated 128-tick global servers, a custom-built netcode in pursuit of precise hit registration, server authoritative game architecture, as well as proprietary anti-cheat prevention and detection from day one.
“Ensuring high-fidelity gameplay and maintaining competitive integrity matter the most in Valorant, [the game is] highly consequential, so players should know for certain that their win or loss is the sole outcome of their own skill and strategy” said Riot.
Riot guarantees that Valorant’s dedicated servers will have less than 35ms ping for at least 70% of its players worldwide and will upsample all player movements to 128 fps, which means that players who are lagging will move at the same rate as others who have a better internet connection.
Riot added that those server features are a part of the studio’s efforts against “Peeker’s Advantage,” a common technical hurdle in shooter games where, due to poor or low-quality network and server issues, an attacking player can sometimes see and shoot a defending player before the defending player can react.
Riot also assured that Valorant will have stringent anti-cheat technology at launch, headlined by an in-engine ‘wallhack’-resistant Fog of War system which omits player locations until just before line-of-sight contact.
The studio added that all Valorant matches are server-authoritative, which will protect them from speed or teleportation hacks. The game will use League of Legends’ anti-tampering system. For good measure, they’re also including a new anti-cheat platform called Vanguard that allows for consistently evolving detection methods and the ability to instantly ban cheaters.
“Valorant demands pixel-perfect, high-fidelity gameplay, and Riot Games is committed to providing a best-in-class technical experience to support it,” added Riot.
Hardware requirements
Based on Riot’s official recommendations, the game doesn’t look like it will be too challenging to run, requiring just an Intel Core i3-4150, 4GB RAM, and at least an NVIDIA GeForce GT730 to hit 60 frames per second.
Here are Riot’s official minimum, recommended, and high-end spec for hitting 30, 60, and 144 frames per second:
Minimum (30 frames per second):
- CPU: Intel i3-370M
- GPU: Intel HD 3000
Recommended (60 frames per second):
- CPU: Intel i3-4150
- GPU: GeForce GT 730
High-end (144+ frames per second):
- CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz
- GPU: GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
PC hardware recommendations:
- Windows 7/8/10 64-bit
- 4GB RAM
- 1GB of VRAM
Release Details
Valorant is scheduled for a Summer 2020 release and will be a free-to-play game for PC.
For more information, you can check out the official Valorant website.
