VALORANT – New agent Killjoy polarizes the community

Riot has recently announced Killjoy as the new agent inbound for act 2. However her toolkit is polarizing the community.

Since the leaks and subsequent announcement of Killjoy in VALORANT a discussion has started focused around the German agent and her tech gadgets.

KILLJOY /// Germany
“Relax, I’ve already thought of everything.”https://t.co/ELe1bNM4P5

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) July 29, 2020

Wrong abilities?

Many in the community have been critical of a href=”https://www.esports.com/en/valorant-new-agent-killjoy-all-abilities-revealed-110766″ target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”>the abilities of the agent.

One of the reasons for that has been Riot’s statement prior to the beta that “you don’t kill with abilities”. Contrary to that several of Killjoy’s abilities deal damage and can easily control ares of the map, similar to Raze.

Some players now believe VALORANT to head into the direction of Overwatch. One of them is former CS:GO professional Spencer “Hiko” Martin

100T Hiko’s Response to Killjoy from r/VALORANT

Riot responds

The developers are trying to put the players at ease. Morello, VALORANT’s character design lead has explained Riot’s reasoning behind the new agent:

According to him the abilities leave enough room for counterplay and are only lethal if said counterplay is not executed. The primary function of damage-dealing abilities is to exert pressure

Abilities doing damage are about generating threat or pressure – killing is what happens when you can’t (getting checkmated by overwhelming odds) or won’t (fail to make the right decision) deal with the ability. Other case, we use these to create angle or area control https://t.co/ww4PFVaivA

— Morello (@RiotMorello) July 29, 2020

Regardless of this specific agent the question remains if the criticized development is really that problematic. Many of the players in VALORANT have transferred over from Counter-Strike and obviously prefer Gunplay as dominant factor.
But players from other genres might prefer abilities playing a larger role as that will allow them to close the gap to CS:GO veterans.

Many argue, that abilities lower the skill ceiling, but perfect usage and counterplay revolving abilities still requires experience and skill.

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Image Credit: Riot Games