While the main complaint of this patch is the new MM system where Riot decided for some reason to desync your rank and your match making MMR, proving that during this pandemic a few people at Riot are hitting the good drugs real hard, it unfortunately has been drowning out the real problem with Valorant right now, the real problem that's causing people to leave the game.

You see, the battle pass being a bit naff, new champions, new maps, skins, Match Making systems, all of these are secondary to the real draw of the game. The shooty part of the first person shooter.

Take for instance the game Valorant is trying to surpass: CSGO. CSGO has a lot of issues. 20% of its population are cheaters, the default MM is so bad everyone pays or uses FaceIT instead, lack of weapon balance, lack of QOL changes, lack of updates or changes, visibility of brown on brown straight from a janky 90's mod. Utility usage based on janky physics engines, straight from a janky 90's mod. The fact that utility usage requires you to do fucking homework to provide the most basic of smokes.

Yet none of that matters, because the gun play is so crisp that it should come with a drug warning. Even the noobiest of CSGO players can remember their "first". The first time hitting that one tap headshot. That surge of endorphins and feeling of pure power that's more addictive than a line of the purest Columbian Coke. A feeling that drives them onwards, wanting more, wanting bigger highs. Wanting that first time winning a 1vX, first time solo destroying a site with crisp headshots, first perfect spray transfer, first Ace, first long range deag, first long range double usp headshot.

Right now 1250+ players are paying ESEA fees to play in the NA open division of a game they have no hope of being competitive in, because they want that feeling. CSGO as a game could literally punch its playerbase in the balls repeatedly, and they'd still come back for more because the entire playerbase are basically addicts, looking for their next hit.

A hit Valorant doesn't currently provide.

The gunplay in the game has steadily getting worse since Beta. Part of it is people working out just how broken running while shooting actually is, part of it is the slow and clear degradation of servers as Riot are clearly trying to squeeze every penny out of advertising 128 tick servers, the lack of animations and time required to be accurate, and just the complete randomness.

https://imgur.com/a/OGjJPWE

https://streamable.com/wk6xj7

Things like these shouldn't be happening, and players at all levels are seeing these issues, from Iron to Radiant.

Random RNG sprays, random first bullets, random running and gunning, random server desyncing between players (Seeing one bullet be fired from my enemy, being told I got hit 4 times isn't cool), randomly trying to peak vs peak so you get the peakers advantage that's so high in this game, random server hit detection that makes every game, every duel and fight feel like trying to win a competitive coin flipping game. It makes it easier, but it also makes it less fun, less crisp, less endorphins. If CSGO's gunplay is a line of pure Coke, Valorant's is half a mug of warm coffee.

Everyone I know has gone back to CSGO. Heck with the latest patch I've gone back to CSGO. The honeymoon period of what the game could be is running out, the game has been out for more than 7 months now, and the core gameplay, the gunplay, is somehow worse.

And that's just sad.