Highlights
- Valorant, Riot Game's popular tactical shooter, has gained a massive playerbase of over 20.4 million active players since its launch.
- Despite its success, Valorant lacks essential features like an in-game Replay System, which is available in other popular games like Street Fighter and Overwatch via different functions and features.
- The addition of a Replay System would greatly benefit Valorant's playerbase, allowing them to analyze their gameplay, save clips, and provide footage for coaching or VOD reviews.
Riot Game's tactical shooter Valorant has seen a great deal of attention since its launch. Three years later, there are over 20.4 million active players in the game, based on numbers from Tracker Network. This is no small feat considering Valorant is Riot's first game to deviate from the world of Runeterra and its flagship game, League of Legends.
While the 5v5 shooter has been well-received by the gaming community, it has flaws. Not only have there been complaints about the current meta, the ping system, and solo queuing, but there are elements that Riot promised to add that simply haven't been yet. For example, Valorant was adding a Replay System "soon", according to an Ask Valorant blog post in 2020. However, it's been over three years since and Riot still hasn't implemented the tool.
Valorant Needs This Quality-of-Life Feature
Valorant added a ping system in its first year which has been helpful for signaling positions. Players can even do this when dead by opening the mini-map. As such, it's peculiar that the FPS doesn't have another standard feature, an in-game Replay System. Although, it should be mentioned that replays weren't available for League of Legends until 2015, seven years after the game was released.
There are methods for players to record their gameplay, but it requires the use of alternate programs. The options available include NVIDIA's overlay, Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), or a generic screen recorder. Unfortunately, there is still no native Replay System like Street Fighter 6's built-in recording feature, Overwatch 2's Match Replays, and Rocket League's Saved Replays. Without an in-game system, players can only record their own perspectives.
Since Valorant has become a direct competitor to games like Counter-Strike: Global Offense and Overwatch 2, this quality-of-life attribute should not be optional. Not only can players watch their own footage back to understand mechanical or situational mistakes, but usually they'd also be able to use it to save clips that they like. For those that like to invest in coaching or VOD reviews, having a full game to share with someone else is incredibly important.
Valorant could also borrow the idea of watching matches from other people's perspectives from the in-game replay tool in Fortnite. After all, it isn't always apparent what happened when something surprising occurs in-game. Watching it back from another teammate's point of view, or an enemy player's, can provide critical information. Sometimes this can even reveal bugs, like when Valorant accidentally let players walk through walls after Patch 1.06.
Though it was announced that a Replay System was coming in 2020, it seems that it's actively in development. Valorant Leaks & News' Twitter account suggested on June 28 that the main Valorant client will see a replay feature "early next year or later on". If this source is correct, the Replay System will be like Overwolf, a software that adds overlays, statistics, voice communications, and more.
Interestingly, this information does align with past tweets from Anna Donlon, SVP and Executive Producer of Valorant. In January, she mentioned that replays were being worked on, among other aspects. Sadly, no date was given nor were there any further details.
The faster a Replay System can make its way to the game, the better for its playerbase. There are other fixes that Valorant needs, but this feature would make the shooter feel all the more complete. Hopefully replays will come in 2023, but if nothing else it would be nice to utilize in 2024.
Valorant is available exclusively on PC.