Rito should've made champions skins glow if team is winning.

Posted by Steve

Thursday, August 25, 2022 1:29 AM

Isn't this a team game? They could easily incentivise and support winning as a team but instead, they chose to support top fragging. Apart from not every role being designed to top frag, it also enables people to chase for kills instead of playing for winning the round. I don't think they will change it but I wish they would.

Edit: It seems like there is a confusion about why I suggested this. I, personally don't use any skins. Also, I don't suggest it because certain roles will have harder time activating the effect. It is about what message the design sends. Design of the skin says "You should get the most kills." It is a subtle message from the developers, whether intentional or not, and the behavior you reward is the behavior you will get. It is like developers whispering in your ear. You reap what you sow. It is as simple as that. If you reward selfish behavior in your game, then people will behave selfishly and this is in direct contradiction with Valorant's structure.

A very exaggerated example would be a ranked system that gives you RR solely based on your KDA, not caring if you won the match or not. If that would be the system, do you believe people will play cooperatively and try to win because everybody wants to win or try their best to get the most kills even if it means losing the rounds and eventually losing the match?

What "winning" is different for every player. People feel like they "win" (they feel satisfaction) when they reach their personal goal. This goal doesn't always align with game's apparent goal (think about throwers, smurfs, griefers etc.). When devs provide a reward for a certain thing, they are making that thing a personal goal for players.

Believe me or not, game designers control player behavior with numerous of ways, some obvious and some not so much. When players get to a fork in an RPG and left road leads to a visible treasure chest, which way the most players go first? They probably won't think that "Designers want me to go the left.", they will think "Oh, shinies!" and go left. Therefore, details like why the skin glows is important. It guides the players to a certain outcome albeit however gently.

References

  • https://www.reddit.com/r/VALORANT/comments/wvxf4u/rito_shouldve_made_champions_skins_glow_if_team/
  • https://reddit.com/wvxf4u

More Like This