YMMV / Valorant

• Awesome Ego: Most of Jett’s voice lines are her openly boasting about her skill and abilities with a tendency to belittle her opponents. Given her status as being one of the top-tier agents, her pride in herself isn’t unwarranted.
• Broken Base: Fans have a pretty conflicted relationship regarding Valorant and its varying level of influence from one of its biggest inspirations and contemporary competitors: Counter-Strike. To some fans, this similarity is a strength, with the idea that Valorant has made the game style more accessible and streamlined to broader audiences as CS:GO shows more of its age. However, others accuse this similarity of being a major weakness that hampers its originality and identity. Beyond that, there's also the issue of whether or not this should even change, especially relative to the flaws/mistakes of it and CS:GO: some desire for expansion beyond copying CS and other contemporaries, others consider such experimentation unnecessary and potentially harmful for a perfectly good system, and when Riot does make a move to change or add things, arguments for and against them relative to how other games do it are everywhere. That's not even counting how some fans outright deny any accusations of similarity at all, arguing Valorant stands alone as its own superior title to CS.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • At launch and throughout the first competitive season, playing ranked matches without a Sage on your team was asking for trouble. Back then, character classes largely fell into three groups - fragging experts, area control and defense busters. Sage, however, was notable for not only having oppressive tools for area denial in the form of durable solid walls and movement-slowing area-of-effect orbs, but also filled a vital "support" archetype with her healing and resurrection abilities. She was the only class capable of directly healing other teammates, her healing was so potent she could bring players back up to full health in a couple seconds with one use,^note Not helping matters was the fact that this healing ability was timer-based rather than frag-based, meaning she and her teammates could camp out until the ability was refreshed and win practically any gunfight via attrition assuming the enemy team also didn't have a living Sage and her Resurrection was and often still is considered the best ultimate ability in the game due to how heavily it can skew rounds in her team's favor. The dev team themselves have admitted that balancing Sage competitively was one of the most difficult ordeals they've had to overcome since launch, as subsequent healing and area-denial nerfs, along with the introduction of another agent with a strong ally-healing ability in the form of Skye, have seen her pick rate decline quite drastically in competitive play and put her overall viability up in the air.
  • For entry fragging, it really is as simple as picking Jett. Tailwind gives her a huge burst of mobility that allows her to initiate and flank enemies (especially when combined with her smoke) or back off if things get too hairy, and combined with her ultimate being made with multi-assassinations in mind, she's really good at killing. Lord help you if the enemy Jett has a good grasp of the Operator, which complements her so well that she's effectively the paradigm the gun is balanced around, with many arguing that she's the only agent that can viably use it. Since the game's release, she's had a ridiculously high pick rate (appearing in anywhere from 60-80% in casual and ranked, close to 100% in professional play) because no other Agent has proven to be an equal in terms of her mobility (Yoru was an attempt, but ended up low-tier for just how limited and telegraphed he is), and despite many nerfs, players still think that her speed puts her at a huge step above every other agent in the game.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Ever since its closed beta, the game developed a rivalry with Overwatch since they both are cartoony, team-based Hero Shooters targeting the esports scene.
  • There's also one with Counter-Strike, namely because Valorant is majorly influenced by its gameplay and its pro competitive market. Calling Valorant a "CSGO clone" is sure to create a massive amount of friction and bitter debate no matter which camp you're on.
  • A rivalry with Rogue Company also forged once it was announced, as it's another bomb-defusal tactical shooter. As Rogue Company is developed by Hi-Rez studios, this rivalry is a carryover of the League of Legends vs Smite rivalry.
• Good Bad Bugs: Throwing a Toxic Screen on an ally Jett while she's hovering will boost Jett way further than her mobility allows.
• Harsher in Hindsight: A lot of Fade's dossiers/agent fear teasers invoke this:
  • Breach is a congenital amputee (someone born missing one or more limbs), which led to many people treating him as an object of pity. His criminal past is described as an attempt to prove himself.
  • Killjoy's quip about 'building literally everything on this battlefield' and her Insufferable Genius qualities. Killjoy's dossier points out that her "invention for invention’s sake" mentality has led to many of her creations being used for purposes that she never intended and would abhor if she knew.
  • Chamber's Magnificent Bastard qualities. The extent to which he has lied, betrayed, and destroyed is enough that, regardless of his intentions, he'll be treated as a monster by his allies if they find out. It's made very clear that he fears this almost above all else.
  • Cypher's Sinister Surveillance is turned around on him. Fade points out that he has made so many enemies, he has to hide his face even from his loved ones for fear of betrayal.
• High-Tier Scrappy:
  • Jett is one of the most consistently powerful and popular agents in the game due to her mobility being inherently really strong. With her swift access to angles no characters can reasonably reach, as well as an ultimate that has no damage falloff and theoretically infinite ammo per kill, she's almost completely imperative for competitive matches as the best entry fragger, and hated for just how dominant she can be.
  • Chamber has seemingly supplanted Jett's high-tier scrappy state of "most meta agent", due to his aggressive playstyle that's difficult to counter. With his teleport enabling him to lock down a site and essentially act as a get-out-of-jail-free card, a pistol that's extremely economical and has the damage capabilities of a Guardian, and an ultimate that can single-handedly take down an entire team, he's become the go-to Sentinel pick for a team due to no other Sentinel being able to hold a site like he can. In fact, at VCT Masters Copenhagen, Chamber's pick rate reached a whopping 80%, cementing his status as one of the most powerful agents in the roster at the time.
  • Astra on her debut made a huge splash for being incredibly powerful, with her ability to place her abilities anywhere on the map with impunity making her supremely oppressive when used by a skilled player with a well-coordinated team, with little to no actual inherent weaknesses aside from the skill floor. She became an extremely prominent pick in pro play for her power to singlehandedly control the map, but when combined with the fact her whole Astral Form gimmick makes her setup-heavy and almost totally divorced from gunplay for a good chunk of time, Astra became increasingly hated for being boring to watch. She ended up being heavily nerfed in patch 4.04 (lower amount of stars to place and overall higher cooldowns), which was widely seen as perhaps being too much and made her almost irrelevant, but was in many ways seen as necessary given that she's just too inherently strong to be left as merely "good".
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Sage's Brazilian voice actress found her character was popularly paired with Reyna by shippers (after all, Reyna even has the line "Sage, we're the perfect pair... you give life, I take it."). So when the Netflix show Feel Good cast both dubbers as a couple, she couldn't help but laugh at how it was the ship fulfilled in a way.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Viper had a consistently cold reception as a low-tier scrappy following launch, largely coming down to having mechanics that are complicated and tricky to use, yet lacking in any practical strengths to justify them. None of her abilities had the oppressive utility required to compete with other agents in damage or zoning capability (many of whom have a vastly lower skill floor, like Phoenix, Omen, and Brimstone), and while the theoretically infinite duration of her area-denying Viper's Pit sounds cool on paper, the fact she needs to remain in it and its fixed position at all times makes sustaining it almost a liability. She remained ineffectual for almost a full year despite a plethora of buffs, and it wasn't until she received a really powerful buff in patch 2.06 (causing her abilities to instantly deal damage on top of the gradual damage her poison inflicts) that people started to take her more seriously.
  • Yoru came out to very disappointing initial reception, ironic considering that several of his abilities (fakeouts, stealth, and teleportation) were hyped up as being potentially game-breaking. The fatal flaw to these tricks is just how predictable they are — aware enemies are very rarely going to fall for his footstep fakeout more than once, and for a duelist, his abilities are too telegraphed to let him serve as an entry fragger, at least in a way that actually takes advantage of what they were designed for. Some try to make the most out of him by playing to more mundane strengths (such as his stealth ult letting him gather intel rather than popping up behind enemy lines for a flank), but he's overall seen as a huge step below other Agents. It's so bad that in the patch 3.03 notes, Riot announced that Yoru had to be put in balance limbo since he was need of much more serious work than just a few stat buffs. As of patch 4.04, Yoru has received a rework that made him much more viable, giving him the ability to use his utility in his ultimate alongside other much-needed improvements.
  • Deadlock was an attempt at creating a more aggression-oriented Sentinel counter to more passive meta options like Killjoy, but despite some conceptually neat features (including her four-corner Barrier Mesh and theoretical One-Hit Kill ultimate), she overall came out to underwhelming reception, with the complaints being that she simply doesn't have the utility to justify her over any other Sentinel option. Her audio-based traps are much less reliable at defensive recon than Cypher's tripwires, her cover doesn't have the vertical options of Sage's wall, and her Gravnet isn't an especially deadly projectile (being forced into crouch-walking isn't exactly pleasant, but it's also not as innately deadly in ways that other grenades in the game can be). During VCT Champions 2023, Deadlock was the only agent to never be picked (even pre-4.04 rework Yoru saw some pro play as an unexpected pocket pick), with pros and coaches all agreeing that Deadlock needs a lot of assistance to be useful, but in that case, it's just easier to pick a different agent altogether.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The "Valorant Accent"^Explanation A frequent joke among players (especially Twitch streamers) of low-level players who speak with the same annoying, "droning" voice tone (one streamer comparing it to the noise of a race car engine)
  • Widejoy^Explanation The "wide Killjoy" meme, originally from an infamous bug that made Killjoy's loading screen banner go extra-wide. Riot uses this for an April Fools Trailer featuring her.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The flourish that plays when you perform an 'ace'^note Kill the entire enemy team yourself in a single round truly makes you feel like a bonafide badass. Even better is that with each kill the background motif crescendos more and more.
  • Really, the announcer calling out special victories in general, such as a round where nobody on the team dies ("FLAWLESS!") or a round where every player on the team scores a kill ("TEAM ACE!"), is always super empowering to hear.
• Narm: While some of the Agents' voice clips for their Ultimates are silly or cheesy to some degree, Neon (as an opponent) was saddled with perhaps the least intimidating in the game: "I'm pissed!"
• Nightmare Fuel: Whenever Vanguard detects someone cheating, it automatically terminates the match and shows a stark red screen saying "CHEATER DETECTED". This can be quite the Jump Scare for unsuspecting players.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The game's required anti-cheat software, "Riot Vanguard" (or simply "Vanguard" to most) became universally loathed in the playerbase and the press from as early as the closed beta due to the fact that it was a kernel level anti-cheat that was always on, regardless of if you were in the game or not. While the former being kernel-level isn't unusual (both EAC and BattlEye are also kernel-level, and are used on games like Rainbow Six Siege, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite, among others, the key difference is that it only runs when the game does), Vanguard sparked a massive debate over player security. Riot did partially concede to this complaint by allowing players to turn it off via taskbar icon and uninstall it from their PC, but owing to it being a required program, it still nonetheless requires users to restart their system in order to play the game. Lots of people found this method highly invasive, with many reports of it silently interfering with other programs like pc performance tools and...Notepad, and it's over-zealous blocking quickly became a meme.
  • Bullet spread. Unlike most modern shooters that have predictable recoil patterns for their guns, the guns in this game can randomly deviate from the aimed crosshairs very much like Counter-Strike. For several gamers, this gunplay adds a frustrating luck factor that doesn't reward recoil control in the hands of a skilled player.
  • The game has come under some fire for its questionable map design, which, while not being a "mechanic" in and of itself, has been criticized for being either a proponent or victim of the rest of the game's gunplay. In general, Valorant's maps are much more segmented and cluttered compared to those of other competitive shooters like Counter-Strike or Rainbow Six Siege, with an abundance of boxy rooms connected by hallways, resulting in issues like claustrophobic fights with relatively short-ranged sightlines, and an abundance of deep corners that have to be checked on virtually every turn, limiting mobility. The official defense is that this was done in part to accommodate the game's increased utility from Agent abilities, but a vocal portion of players find that sacrificing map integrity for the game's unique mechanics isn't a worthy trade.
  • The game's cosmetic microtransaction system has gotten a lot of negative attention due to adopting similar monetization methods from other games — some of which are already contentious to varying degrees — but to significantly harsher extents, with several issues in how cosmetics are obtained overlapping one another:
    • The fragmentation between the cosmetics themselves and their subsequent "upgrades" have been widely criticized. The baseline gun skins are obtainable through direct purchase either individually or in full sets in Valorant Points, both of which have been slammed for being high as is (the cheapest for one skin being roughly $10 USD, a set for multiple netting around $50), made worse by requiring additional purchase through a different currency, Radianite, in order to upgrade them with different colors, alternate animations, or other cosmetic flair. One of the most oft-discussed instances of this is with the Elderflame skins, as the full set of weapons costs $95, and that doesn't even include the extra work required to upgrade it and obtain their advertised qualities like the actual unique dragon animations and special effects, which can rack up to a full $300 if you didn't grind for Radianite.
    • The Battle Pass system also has detractors due to not being as intuitive as Fortnite's popular example. For starters, the amount of work required to obtain the potential gains from it has often been criticized as being too intense and grindy than otherwise just purchasing the most desirable rewards upfront. However, obtaining the pass and grinding contracts is the most economically efficient means to obtain the aforementioned Radianite needed to upgrade skins, which themselves are only mostly available only through direct purchase in Valorant Points (skins exclusive to Battle Passes are conspicuously non-upgradable). Much derision has been thrown at this system, with many seeing it as Riot baiting players into a gridlock, forcing them to relying on daily grinding and spending as much money as possible just to make their arbitrary "rewards" not useless; Radianite in particular is seen as having no purpose whatsoever to those with no intent on buying non-BP skins.
• That One Level:
  • Split is frequently cited as an apotheosis of many complaints made regarding the game's overall map design, being seen as too cramped and claustrophobic to both maneuver around and sensibly fight in (with major issue towards the abundance of tight, deep corners that constantly need to be checked), with too many safe spots and off angles that heavily bias towards the defense side. When Riot implemented the map rotation system in Patch 5.0 and introduced new map Pearl, Split was the map chosen to be taken off rotation, with no date set on when it is expected to return.
  • Icebox has arguably gotten a worse reception in many circles. The map is huge and emphasizes verticality to a degree not present in other maps, but is littered with the same general issues of many corners and terrain to check behind, compounding the slow claustrophobia with increased distances and a third dimension that makes rotations for both teams even harder and interactions feeling more one-sided. The map has seen a warmer reception following Riot implementing significant layout changes not long after release (mostly centered around making it less vertically intense), though it's become something akin to a Beef Gate; competitive players like it specifically because it's open just enough to be fair when played at a coordinated level (especially where smokes are concerned), but it can still be a chaotic pain in the ass in solo queue.
  • Breeze was released to controversial reception from its initial patch 5.0 incarnation for having an abundance of open space, seemingly in an attempt to address the complaints of previous maps for being too claustrophobic, but this had the consequence of creating enormous long-range sightlines, ironically limiting strategy as only a few agents that could consistently handle its open space and rotations with cover and zoning to handle rotations, with Viper and Chamber being considered imperative have a chance against the enemy. It was removed from the map rotation in patch 6.0 before returning in 7.2 with significant changes to decrease the amount of open space, which in many ways became even more controversial due to it becoming once again far too narrow and cluttered.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The biggest criticism (apart from the Riot Vanguard Anti-Cheat above) leveled at the game is that it doesn't really have any original ideas in it in terms of gunplay; it's quite literally just 5v5 Counter-Strike with Hero Shooter elements, with abilities that are seen in the likes of Overwatch and Paladins, or that just replicate utility items from Counter-Strike. Even Rogue Company, another bomb-defusal game that came out a few weeks later, differentiates itself by using Third Person and having hero-specific weapons. Given that Riot built their company off the back of a game that was (initially at least) heavily based on another massively-popular game, it's led to accusations that, creatively speaking, they can't do anything other than play Follow the Leader.