I myself am not a CSGO player. I've got less than 40 hours on the game. I did play lots of 1.6 as a kid (mostly in PC bangs with 9 buddies, I don't really count that).

Yet, whenever I see "This is not CSGO" argument in Valorant discussions (and I see it all the time), I find myself on the opposite side of the argument. Latest being C9 TenZ yesterday, talking about good old CoD run and gun mechanics, how it is way too good and works much better than it should, and showcasing it with crushing DM matches with both Phantom and Vandal while constantly moving, not stopping for a single second. The only argument against it was "This is not CSGO".

And it goes back to every single legitimate and justified complaint to game mechanics, balance and design - Operator strength, poor map design, extreme amount of damage in certain agent's kit, slow movement, dull and gravely post plants, Lack of flash bangs and their infirmity (not anymore lol), snowball effect on teams economy, walking and shooting, running and shooting etc.

Every single time, there is "This is not CSGO" argument. CS is father of the genre. Original 5v5 tactical FPS, with bomb plant - detonate/defuse objective, that's been worked on and carefully polished and balanced for 20 years, and made into top 3 competitive / eSports games of all time, along with another game made by Riot Games, that shares a lot of developers and game developing policies with Valorant (competitive integrity being one of them, and most important in this case). Why would anyone not want to hold this game to a CSGO standard?

Valorant will always be an amazing game to queue up with 4 buddies, have fun and shoot it out. That will not and can not change with mechanics, balance and design improvements. Besides, those people are not the ones that go to reddit or internet in general to discuss these kind of things.

tl;dr So who are these people in the community that want this game to strafe away from CSGO as much as possible, and why is there so much hostility towards it?