Hello to my fellow r/VALORANT members and possible Riot employees that I might encounter here.

This year has been nothing short of horrible: with the ongoing pandemic, tons of natural disasters, economic crisis, and more negative stuff that I wouldn't wanna involve here as most of us are depressed enough already. Hope everyone's day can be a little brightened up with this message.

I am a student in Italy but came back to my home country of Turkey before the pandemic has fully evolved to what it was (towards February-April). I was lacking motivation to do anything on online classes, exams, and life in general. I am the owner of a 10-year old laptop and have played 2000 hours of Cs:Go and a lot of Overwatch on it, though it is reaching its lifespan so won't run these games on a lot of FPS anymore. And then boom, on April, Valorant Closed Beta was live. I looked at it and thought, that's gonna be my game; and thankfully, my laptop was able to run it smoothly! Ever since I got the key to be able to play this game, I have probably played non-stop since the first day of beta up until what is now the ACT 3 of Episode 1. I am probably speaking on the behalf of everybody here, in saying, thank you. I am forever grateful to have taken part in the flourishing of this amazing game since its start. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, the devs at Riot and every single person involved in "Project A" has delivered us this game and all the new content without asking for anything in return other than encouraging us to play this free to play game.

Look, no one wants to be "that guy" but I have to adress the elephant in the room: no game is ever gonna be perfect at launch and needs years upon years to finalize as well as constant care from its developers. Though Valorant hit the ground running, there was a lot of stuff that lacked from the game. I remember seeing a post titled "What we want from the game" (https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/h86jrl/things_we_currently_want_in_the_game/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) . Not everything here is fulfilled, but have a gaze at what the game looked like in Beta (or full release) as well as what it lacked, comparing it to now is night and day. We got a Death-match mode, other events, New skins, 3 battle-passes with unlock able variants to some skins, 4 new agents (Raze, Reyna, Killjoy, Skye), the Omen update, Left-Handed model, more servers in the world, Ranked and being able to see your friends profile with their rank badges, custom game updates for tourneys, probably one of the best anti-cheats ever and more. There is no denial that the game still needs more to ever come close to it's full potential, for example I would really love the replay mode because i wanna learn from my mistakes, or more countermeasures against smurfs and so on; and this may take time to implement it, but I am fully supportive of the devs to keep on improving and stabilizing this game as one of the best games and e-sports ever, as seen with the First Strike tournaments, and cannot wait to see what they have in store for us in Episode 2!

So, moral of the story is, when you get upset over a mechanic of the game or a problem of the game, being a positive feedback will always create better environment in the community, the devs will see it quicker and respond faster; rather than if you were to come to this subreddit and complain with all caps words in the title. Though the ranked games may not make you realize it as there may be a lot of toxic people there, the community that has been built has really showed its good side on multiple occasions, and hopefully we can keep this up. Continue on being supportive to your fellow Valorant content creators, streamers, pros, casters, your teammates and especially, the developers. Remember, most of the people you play with are working towards the same goal of winning their games, making the game better (except cheaters and all those who negatively impact other people), therefore all your positive feedback on the community and towards everyone will speed up the process of everything and make the game better. And sometimes if you get frustrated, stepping away and taking a breather can work wonders.

To a better 2021 for the world, and a better 2021 for the Valorant scene. Much love to everybody reading this: if you're a student, good luck in your studies and exams, if you're someone who works, good luck on your work; whoever and wherever you may be, hopefully you can be happier after having read this.