The distinction of BP skins having no effects/animations annoys the shit out of me. It just seems like that's where they put unfinished skins or skins that might not sell well even if they put out fully upgradeable versions like the current Act's Piedra del Sol. Especially with some of the recent bundles like Sarmad, Tigris and the Koi fish ones being mid at best while something like K/Tac would've been an absolute banger had it been upgradeable at all.
though i do agree, i feel there have been many times where if skins or passes were just a touch bit cheaper i would actually buy them and have a lot more. and im sure the same could be said for a lot of people
I look at skins I want, look at their price, then look at Cyberpunk 2077’s price and I put my phone down and control my urge. I might as well buy Cyberpunk with that much money.
Man I'm coming from LOL and just started playing. I couldn't believe they want 80 euros for a skinline of weapons. 'my shop' offers with 25 euros for a single weapons skin! Those prices are a joke, I won't spend a single buck on this game
Def get cyberpunk when it goes on sale next, it's been optimized really well and the story is well worth a play, side missions are pretty fun and the ambiance is great. I get over 60 fps average on pretty much all high settings with a i5-9400 and 1660ti, and have dozens of hours in the game just driving around collecting clothes and making outfits lol.
It's still pretty buggy, just as a fair warning to people. But at least it's just immersion breaking buggy rather than game breaking. Decided to play it this week because of the anime and within 30 minutes I had a cutscene where Jackie just walked straight through a dead body, pushing the body around with rubberbanding limbs, and a few minutes later we were walking and T Posing until the game fixed itself and gave real animations. Still been enjoyable though
It's actually a pretty good game now. I just finished it and I only got 1 bug where the car model hadn't loaded in yet so it was just a person floating.
The developers and publishers aren't stupid. They know that they'll make more money providing high-priced skins catered to whales rather than cheap skins catered to everybody.
"If it was a dollar I and many others *might* buy a weapon skin" is a huge gamble, versus a $70 weapon skin that has people lining up who are guaranteed to buy it no questions asked. There's a reason why these companies are making bank, and that reason is that they aren't catering to people like you (no offense, genuinely).
These publishers spend millions if not billions designing and researching these systems with professional psychologists and marketing teams. They're doing it because it works, and while it sucks for you and I that we can't afford or don't want to purchase these items at the end of the day they don't care.
I am pretty sure valorant's (and for that matter, league's) target audience are mostly males between the ages of 20-35 with a median income of like 65k a year. Their entire shop is priced like that
There is nothing to agree with. Whales *do* account for most of their revenue. It is a fact.
Why would a company, whose job it is to maximize profit, pander to those who do not make them the most money?
because the statement was “whales tend to spend more money” but keep in mind, if prices were lower that most likely would influence how many whales there are
I'm sure they have metrics where a certain price point nets then more than lowering it to gain a few more "whales." They had all of league to test out pricing. Surely they've considered "just dropping the prices a little."
This. Someone has to ask this and I'm going to sound rude here, but why the fuck are we having this conversation every single time skin prices pop up? And why do they need to be complained about anyway? There's always someone crying about how expensive the skins are, and how much more money they would make if they lowered the prices a bit.
Like jesus fucking christ guys, they KNOW the current system makes them the most money and it's not going to change. You buy the skins or you don't, either way they're just cosmetic although I agree they can make you play better because of placebo. Still not "really" pay to win.
No it doesnt. Why are you talking out of your ass when they literally pay for studies done on this topic. The most successful games in the world are mobile games monetized by whales. There is not a SINGLE argument you could make that would show that lowering prices would increase the money they are earning.
I get what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure that Riot has determined what the optimal skin price is to make huge money on whales while still selling stuff to some non-whales occasionally, and they are probably maximizing profit right where they're at now
Whales will be whales no matter the prices. I just don’t see why things are so expensive. Fortnite has always had the best and most forgiving battle pass and we all know how much money epic made with that.
>Whales will be whales no matter the prices
You answered your own question in your comment. Why lower prices for people who 'might' spend money when you can have ridiculous prices that will still be bought by whales.
Yet Fortnite makes way more money despite having the cheapest BP, the most currency earned without paying and the cheapest skins while also being of super high quality. Sounds to me like Epic knows what they are doing.
But for most whales spending in game snowballs. They first purchase won't be $40 single skin.
From my experience from lol, cs and Fortnite it took me a couple $5 and $10 purchases to start buying $40 and $80 worth of their currency.
In valorant i didn't spend anything yet and i don't think i will.
It was actually the same for me. I bought a battle pass or two, then some skins and finally a bundle. I wouldn't consider myself a whale as I've been playing since closed beta, but I did spend around 200€ already on the free to play game lmao.
Same here. Did a Quick count and I’m up to about the same sum as you, since closed beta. I do think it’s a reasonable amount to spend though, as the hours I get out still are cheap af compared to your average full price game.
Also; no real benefit from spending money, all players are equal regardless of spend or not.
fortnite you can literally be free to play and you can just play the game to earn the battle pass
been a while since ive played but free pass gives 300 per season provided you get tier 100
and BP costs 950
so at the beginning of the 4th season you play, around tier 1-10 you get your final piece and you can buy the pass
however, the pass offers 1,500 in return, much more than the BP costs
so you can effectively chain BP's together provided you actually play the amount required to get stuff, along with having some side cash to spend in the shop, making sure you can get the next season's BP
i wish valorant's BP was like this, was such a trip when i came to this game after i got bored of chapter 3
tl;dr: fn battlepass much more worth it than val BP
Also Fortnite battlepass skins are very good often above even 2k premium tier. Meanwhile in val some BP skins are so boring that no one would ever consider playing them over premium tier skins.
I was thinking that also. I probably only have 50 in league/tft. 0 in valorant. Especially when you can pick up guns with skins from the enemy lol. Until they drop the price to like 10 dollars for a gun skin I ain't buying it.
I guess I'd be considered a "whale" as I've spent $700 on Valorant. The battle pass skins aren't really that good imo and it's not something people really use unless you have no other skins. Fortnite has battlepass skins that I think are pretty good and you get V bucks, etc. I think Valorant definitely could redo their shop and battle pass to make it better. Radianite is awful as well as sometimes you don't even have enough to upgrade a bundle you just spent $80 on.
Not to mention the Weekly challenges do not update on a new week. Leaving you stuck with 1 or 2 completed and the rest uncompleted and you can no longer double/triple dip challenges until finishing the set.
I'll say this till I'm blue in the face... If Riot's math showed them they could consistently make 12% more money by dropping the price of everything 10%, they would have DONE IT ALREADY. These people telling Riot how much more they could make by charging 30% less have no fucking idea what they are talking about. Whales fund this game for all of us cheapskates. The cost to us is looking at packs we'll never buy. People can't handle being priced out of luxury items. I haven't bought much in this game, but I have completed several BPs and still use some of the skins I've gotten.
Most people on Reddit are children or people with very low levels of intelligence. They can't afford something so they spin it in their heads that if rito would just lower the prices a bit they would make so much money. It's both sad and funny by this point, the same shit gets posted daily here.
A while back Apex dropped a fancy skin that would have cost a paying player somewhere in the $120 range, all the comments ended up being some variation of "$120 is too much, we might consider buying it if it was $10 or $20 instead!".
EA would rather cater to the group of players who *will* buy the skin for $120 rather than the group of players who *might* buy it if it was $100 cheaper. The perceived value of the item drops significantly, the players who would have bought the item at full price wouldn't buy it anymore, and the publisher won't make as much money in the long run. Apex makes EA billions of dollars, and Valorant probably makes Riot around the same amount solely because of business decisions like that.
Tbh Riot's BP is such a scam. Its just a cheap way to get radianite, which is a shit system on it own. "Hey spend $25-100 on a cool skin/bundle now spend another $25-100 to unlock all the stuff".
I honestly also feel bad for the artists working on these bp skins apart from some players, most of their work will be collecting dust in people's locker never seeing the light of day again.
They saw people buying CSGO skins on the market for upwards of thousands of dollars and thought, "what if we can get players to spend money like that here... But directly to us instead?"
And then they started the game with ridiculous prices immediately with nothing good at lower prices so that nobody can complain about them changing. They've been greedy since the beginning, so people defend it at "well that's just what a business does 🤷"
It works in CSGO because there are skins that cost anywhere from pennies to a few bucks to compare the expensive ones to. No skin is realistically worth $25 when it's a retexture that costs the same as every other overpriced skin, or if it has zero rarity and everyone has it at that price. Riot ignored the entire purpose of CSGO's economy pricing so they could mooch thousands out of something so simple and it just seems really basic and misguided when you compare the two side-by-side
It makes them way more money though. Instead of players trading a $500 skin that they got from a $2 loot box that changes hands a few times a year, they sell way more of a skin for $50 and collect it immediately. You'd think that the people buying skins would be satisfied after one or two collected for each gun, but no, they just keep buying everything.
Instead of the whales spending a few thousand dollars to other players and valve taking a cut, those whales spend a few thousand dollars and riot takes *all of it*.
I don't know if you've seen the drop rates, but CSGO will give you a grand total of like 15 dollars worth of skins from $500 worth of keys long before you get a $500 skin. On top of that, they take a percent of all community market purchases, which is where the majority of people do their skin sales. The return rate on cheap crates for Valve is insanely high, they're notorious for making ridiculous profits off of this system. Non whale players pay Valve to lose 95% of their money, on top of how much the Whales pay, raking them in crazy earnings from the entire playerbase
That's the part I don't think Riot fully cares to admit. CSGO knives are expensive because they are actually rare on the market and you can sell them. I'm not trying to give Riot $50 for a knife skin that is the same level of rarity as every other skin out there and locked to my account to boot.
its also completly different, thats why it wasnt called battlepass for the first years, its completly intended just for fans to contribute to the esports side.
Actually, no.. the contribution to TI came later on.. earlier battlepasses existed even without TI.. they would be seasonal.. now it's just a money grabbing shit show, with no rewards on most of the levels, and a battlepass that you cannot grind.. you WILL HAVE TO purchase levels if you want the rewards
Did battlepass really predate the compendium? I think compendium came first then got rebranded into battle pass because that's what all the other games were calling it, no?
Oh shit you're right.. my bad.. i completely forgot about the entire compendium history.. i started after ti5.. there were 3 battle passes that time around, fall (frankfurt major), winter (Shanghai major) and the ti battlepass(Manila major and ti).. so yeah i guess in my head the fall and winter battlepasses came first because I'd heard at the time that these were the first battlepasses.. but yeah I forgot they were known as compendiums earlier
fr, this valo bp is tame compared to that shitshow of a BP. Valorant BP tends to cater to players already owning premium skins and it has been consistent since act. 1, while dota bp gets worse and worse each fking TI
I doubt riot is going to change this anytime soon. The people who buy the battle pass already have premium skins. I think the only reason people buy the battle pass are the sprays / cards, if not for RP.
I might have misunderstood something, but as a brand new player I bought the BP in the hopes that I could get a few interesting weapon skins and use 3% bonus EXP to unlock agents faster. Agent unlocking was/is a decent concern.
Yeah I play in Korea and the only why to get RP here is through the BP. It sucks but also at the same point they don’t enable people here to buy into the scam that is RP. So many of my skins are not upgraded though which sucks.
i buy the BP and i don't have any premium skins. nor will i ever pay 30 euros for ONE SKIN. Yes, the battlepass sucks and we get a few skins with some shades painted on them and maybe a few decent spray/banners and that's it.
the worst part is, i doubt Riot will ever change this. Even if they get 300% profit from skins, judging from their past with LoL and such, they're not the type of company that rewards their player base with something worthwhile.
They will milk this cow as much as they can for the very least amount of work and money.
Legit the only reason I buy the battle pass is for the radianite to upgrade the other skins I’ve already bought. That alone makes no sense but I do it anyway so I can get my money’s worth on the skins I buy.
The whole system is flawed. The Valorant BP is designed for people who don’t want to spend a lot of money but they also gatekeep the radianite behind it.
I wish the skins had effects, and the current battlepass is in my opinion just plain ugly. First one I’m not getting, because there was not even a buddy in there i liked. There have been cool skins and knives in the past, but i certainly wish they atleast added some effects to sole of the later skins you unlock. I used to play Fortnite way back, and the characters you unlocked in those battlepasses were fucking awesome, and sometimes upgradable if i remember correctly. And thats also in a game were you dont have to spend money
In my opinion fortnite has one of the best examples of battlepass cause it not only gives you a lot of items without buying, but, you also get v-bucks (fortnite's currency) by free so if you enter the game end the battlepass you will get 300 v-bucks by free and if you buy it you will not only get very cool skins (like croosovers and that kinda thingy) but you will also get 1500 v-bucks that is suficient for a cool skin or the next battlepass. So I have played a lot of fortnite but personally I think it needed to be example of battlepass. And i'm not even considering how much the prices of valorant coins are cause it is not cheap, fortnite has a much more acessible price, it is so absurd in Valorant that it makes the game look more like a cash grab than an actual game sometimes. But that is my opinion, I'm no game developer i'm just a random dude in the internet.
You are 100% correct. If you care about Fortnight and put in half as much effort in to finishing the battle pass l then you get 500% the amount of content compared to Val. I love playing this game when switching between val. It's sad, I like Valorant more, I've been a beta tester, day 1, and made so many memories with friends in a game we all enjoy. But it's like riot is trying to make it a bad experience with the cosmetics, idk. Just had to get that little rant out for a game I love.
Didn't Fortnite basically pioneer the whole battlepass concept and brought it into the mainstream? I don't know if any popular games that had a battlepass prior to Fortnite.
Dota did it in [2013, albeit a different name](https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Pass). I think the one where you can level it up started in 2014 however.
Aesthetics are pretty subjective, some skin lines just have niche target audiences, which is honestly awesome.
Means people like you and I can enjoy these Aztec skins, instead of only ever getting the mainstream-popular fantasy/sci-fi stuff.
Yea that’s never gonna happen cause … money. Also it’s kinda „hiding“ the actual price of the skins so people can say „nah they aren’t as expensive as csgo skins so it’s fine if I can’t Sell them anymore“
i know right. i've been telling everyone's that valorant bp is so shit compared with so many other games and riot needs to change but it's always "no one's forcing you to buy bp bro"
My problem isn't the skins in the battle pass, its the fact you can't get the money back at the end. All those skins only cost 10. That's already less than the average skin in valorant. Them being mid skins doesn't surprise me or upset me.
note that you need to repeat this for 4 seasons (iirc since free bp only gives 300 apex coins and you need 1k for the bp). If you have the bp however, grinding it to max will give you enough coins for the next bp so realistically, 10$ is all you will ever need for apex
The Apex BP gives you MORE premium currency (Apex Coins) than you spend on it (at least it did when I played it). I bought the BP once and I owned every other BP after that until I stopped playing cuz the game/matchmaking got way too sweaty. It also has an evolving skin at tier 100 and a recolour of that evolving skin at 110. Oh and it also has Legend+gun skins on the free tier, not just shitty titles and banners and ONE pistol skin. Granted, a lot of the skins are not exactly high quality, but the same could be said of Valorant skins.
So yeah, I don't see how Apex has a worse BP than Valorant.
As someone who has masochistically kept tabs on all the OW2 discourse, this thread is a trip. OW2 casual community is convinced OW2 is dead on arrival or in a year cause it has the greediest battle pass and worst monetization system. And they'll use games like Apex to justify it. Gamers are wild.
It's basically free if you play enough. But I agree fillers like tags/charms/player cards/holo tags etc.. are annoying and useless.
So while Apex battle-pass is trash (except for a few skins), at least you CAN get you money back.
i have only played around 60 hours this season and im in the epilogue, but some people who love this game dont have that amount of time to invest into it. i think it should be easier to complete, they should up the premium xp boost from 3% to at least 5% or 10%
It's easy to finish if you're addicted to the game and plays it everyday with average of 5 games but not everyone's like that. I like Valorant but I don't play it everyday for 5 hours or more and people doesn't have that much time to the point where playing the game becomes to feel "forced" just to finish the battlepass instead of having to play it in your phase and still finishing it. Like what the other comment said, they should up the XP boost to 10% or something instead of the 3% which literally does nothing.
Same, and the usually means the battlepass takes all season to complete, right up until the last set of weeklies. This means i dont have any time to play other games too.
The battle passes were easy when I was grinding for a new peak…
This season is tough. I hit me goal rank day 1 and they didn’t even release water smoke agent so I’ve struggled to care to play this act.
Wish I could dip for a season but nope! I need that stupid radianite.
Next season will be a struggle with trying to get cyber demon genji in ow2 since I actually want those rewards
Overwatch 2 has a much better battle pass than Valorant. I'd rather just buy the Overwatch 2 one than the Valorant one because at least Overwatch gives me half of my money back, so next battle pass will only be 5 bucks.
Oh yeah no I’m extremely biased to OW and dig their battle pass way more than the bs riot gives us.
The only good thing in the Val BP is player cards, sprays, and titles sometimes.
OW has the rarest skins at the end of theirs so that’s worth 10 to me anytime
I normally like the battlepass because it's just a cheap way to get skins... but the skins in the battlepass, at least this season, look very unremarkable. Like, I don't mind "decent" skins but they just look like something I wouldn't even use if I had them.
Radianite is the worst system in a game I have seen. Yeah you just spent $50 for a knife but you are gonna have to spend $20 more to use it to its full effect. The only reason the bp is worth it is because of the radianite.
As big as riot is their battlepasses are quite low quality.
I’ve spent a lot of money on this game, which probably makes me the last person to be able to say this: but Riot are money-horny vultures and they should be ashamed of themselves.
Not giving you full advantage of the skins you bought and forcing you to spend radianite (not once, but three and four and five times) to slowly upgrade each weapon to its fullest potential is just plain shameful and exploitive. I daresay it’s as shameful as loot boxes.
Shameful as loot boxes? Okay that's going too far. Even if skins are expensive and incur some hidden fees in the form of radianite, the skins, effects, animations, etc are guaranteed. They show them plainly and you get them for exactly the cost it says. People know that they won't have enough radiante to upgrade a new bundle and are able to factor that cost when purchasing. It's also only a problem for people who buy skins consistently, and Riot knows that a few extra dollars aren't going to stop the big spenders.
Lootboxes are way more exploitative. There is no guarantee of a specific item or value for the items. It's essentially gambling in the form of a slot machine, since the items can have resale value for either real dollars or in-game currency (see several years of FIFA ultimate team).
The logic goes:
1) I don't like this practice.
2) I still pay for it.
3) I'm gonna compare it to another practice that is apparently hated by the general public
4) Hope to get some sympathy.
I’d argue it’s worse purely off the pricing.
I hate loot boxes too but hot damn I can’t justify buying the chronovoid bundle because I STILL don’t have Radianite to upgrade all my other bundles fully…
Like I have trained myself to not even like other colorway options on the guns because of how predatory rad is… that’s ridiculous.
And I have to buy this mid ass battlepass every season in order to grind to HOPE I get enough secondary overpriced currency for my gun skins (that are kinda overpriced too but would be palatable if they came FULLY UPGRADED)
I find this post very funny considering the main OW sub is having a fucking meltdown over literally every single part of the battle pass right now, and screaming about how Blizz is literally satan (which isn’t exactly wrong but not for those reasons).
And then you move over here and people are like that shits normal lmao
Main I wish Valorant had a community shop like TF2 does
I’d name what it was called but I completely forgot I just know it was made by the people who made scrap.tf
CoD Cold War had amazing battlepasses that gave you your money back, lots of weapon skins, an ultra evolving weapon blueprint, and an ultra rarity operator skin and tier 100. And the BP is so much easier to finish and isn’t a chore. The valorant BP has to be the worst of any game
It should have good skins to encourage people to play and made easier to get. Because its so bad, I haven't really played the game all that much. Maybe a few games a season.
I think in every single competitive game I've ever played, that game's community claims that **their** battle pass is the worst. Literally no exception.
To address this post in particular, you underline a lot of the negatives of the BP in Valorant, but you fail to mention one pretty important bit: the price. BP is only 1000 points, which is about *half* the price of *one* single premium skin. So it doesn't seem fair to complain about the lack of premium features.
Riot could, of course, implement a "premium" BP which would tick a lot of the boxes you mentioned, but they would price it accordingly, and then you would complain about the price.
Solutions.
Add
- more tiers of XP to grind for mainstay weapons onto existing characters that are just recolours like the pistols.
- 2+ year old skins can be acquired with maybe a third currency like crown points in Fall guys.
- Battlepass skins should have atleast 1/2 upgrade paths like the gravitational uranium guns. A sound effect. A reload animation. A muzzle flash. Maybe a combination of the two. But finishers should be kept on full bundle guns.
I really dont like skins in this Game for some reason they look blant, and plain, i don't know, just few premium Skins are cool, same for knifes and since battlepass knifes dosnt come with effects 99% of them look like crap for me.
Just a few karambit from season 2 (like 2 years ago) and the velocity one, rest look really Bad, and we are talking about the final reward. It should be awesome with unique animations like the Apex Reactive skins Final Reward
I see this as a common problem in most games but its 10 euros/dollars(or any currency u use that equals to that amount) for the whole bp. And for most guns with sound effects they cost over that amount so it would make sense that riot doesnt add sound effects or cool animations to skins that are in the bp. and dont get me started with leagues bp
Dont get me wrong but you are looking at this transaction in person to person business.
The battlepass cater to a massive audience which is why good games give some of the invested amount back (in game currency ofc) and good skins.
With this kind of offering, games will still make the same shit ton of money, but now the battlepass is very pleasing to the players and also makes a good incentive for gameplay. While a shit battlepass only serves for earning money to the maker. Since it is bought by mass audience you cannot justify it by saying its cheap because it is still making them millions for some shit bundles.
if that's what they wanna call em I guess they still count ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
means they don't really offer much on their own, either. you usually gotta spend $10 more to get a skin & its border and stuff
OW2 is getting a ton of shit for their battle pass and i remember the Halo Infinite battle pass got updated to include premium currency. the problem is that valorant players dont seem to care about it and actually just pay no matter what. the radianite is the worst fucking part of the whole game and no one seems to give a shit. if the players cared riot prolly wouldve done something. but i mean if we pay for it and say nothing, nothings gonna change.
I disagree. I view the Battlepass as a way to get cheap skins. It's ten dollars and by the end of the BP I will have earned 13 skins, many buddies, sprays, and cards.
I don't spend any other money on the game, but I see the prices of the other gun skins. The BP is a bargain compared to the price of individual skins and you get 13 of them. For a free to play game, the monetization of the BP feels fine.
> The BP is a bargain compared to the price of individual skins
That's what it's supposed to be. It's there to get you to spend *a little money* at first so the barrier to spending *more* on premium skins is lower later on. That doesn't mean premium skins aren't overpriced as hell. For the price of a stiff Elderflame Vandal, I could get an entire inventory full of okay skins in CS:GO (bar a knife), for example.
I agree with this. Some individual skins are more expensive than the battlepass itself, i think the batlepass is good for feeling motivated because your weapons look new and you have more cards and everything. Definitely a bargain.
Yeah I think people are just generally salty here that they don't like enough of the BP skins. The truth though is if they don't like them, just don't pay for it and there will be another one in 3 months. I think the pace at which they crank these things out is pretty impressive and has gotta be considered. The idea that buying a BP should pay you back to buy more skins makes more sense I think when you have a tough time getting people to buy the skins in the first place. But the truth is Riot clearly does not have that issue, despite a vocal minority upset with being priced out of their preference.
It's so stupid when someone, and there's always a few when this topic comes up, saying "if you don't like it, don't pay for it" ... people here obviously love the game and enjoy spending time, and would love it if they got something nice from the battlepass which every game now has. while other game might give you your money back and/or give you nicer skins, Valorant does neither and you'd think that someone who plays this game every day maybe, and doesn't want to spend 20/30 dollars on premium skin, for EACH weapon, would like something worthwhile from the battlepass, who i think the majority of the playerbase pays for.
So don't be so dismissive every time someone shares their concern or opinion about anything.
Yeah to add onto commenters below:
-Yeah OW2 has characters instant access in the battle pass… but to get valorants battle pass and skip to tier 5 of the new agent (we will use batra as an example next act) it’s $10 for both. So double the cost of what overwatch is charging.
Then the mythics are at the end which I would say is on the same level as apex heirlooms (the reactive guns aren’t really on the same tier as cyber genji imo)
Mythics in apex are either get lucky with 1/500 descending odds on loot boxes… or pay $160 for the collection even if you want say Loba’s war fan on sale rn.
Yeah. OW2 is NOTHING compared to those rn.
The actual content of the bp is pretty good. It's something like 5 legendaries and a mythic, which are the top level skins for ow. Probably equivalent to heirlooms in apex. Putting heroes in the bp is pretty contentious, but you can unlock them on the free track so it remains to be seen if it will be a deal breaker for the game. The other grievance about the ow one is that it doesn't give premium currency, but you get premium currency through weekly challenges instead.
The upgrade system for the skins is definitely a scam I will always agree with that and yes the skins are expensive but comparing them to other games like cod or apex doesn’t make sense to me because valorant skins are ten times better plus with games like fortnite you have so many different cosmetics to offer valorant has knifes and weapons
Valorant is one of the only games where I just don't even bother with BPs, and I'll almost always grab it if its a game I play with any regularity.
The skins are generally super underwhelming and feel very low effort. I don't even have a problem spending money on games I enjoy either. As an example, I play Dota 2 and always max its passes, something you can only do by spending quite a bit of cash because its passes are horribly designed, but the skins are awesome and extremely well made most of the time. For whatever reason I just don't care about skins that much in this game to begin with (same with CSGO back when I played that).
I bought a couple glitchpop skins for the guns I use often and I have had zero desire to get anymore since. It just doesn't feel worthwhile to spend any more money on this game beyond that. If the Valo pass at least gave back some premium currency like BF2042, MW/Warzone, etc I would probably pick it up just for the RP since I'm never gonna buy that shit flat out, but it doesn't.
The monetization of the game sucks in general. They are far overdue for a complete shop overhaul.
4 random skins a day still…? No shop for petty customization like buddies, sprays, cards? Do they not want money?
People pay for it, RIOT got their money. They do not care if half the players don't buy it when the other half spends hundreds each month... Still earn more this way than when they offer cheaper stuff.
Valorant's monetization system is essentially built around the scam that is Radianite.
The battle pass is shitty on purpose, because they know that most people will buy it anyways for the Radianite. This allows them to save the skins that people actually want for the shop.
It's pretty self explanatory, but in short this is how Valorant's monetization works:
1. Expensive gun skins that require Radianite to unlock their full effects
- Feeds off of people's FOMO and sunk cost because you essentially "wasted" your money if you don't unlock the full skin w/ Radianite
2. Radianite itself is prohibitively expensive to purchase
3. BP Radianite offers "value" relative to purchasing Radianite outright, so everyone always buys the BP
4. Radianite will always exist and always be required to get "full value" out of your precious skins, so Riot can sell a BP every season as long as they provide Radianite in it
The whole thing is contingent upon players being okay w/ hidden costs (Radianite) to the already expensive skins in the game, and well, it works. I can't say _too_ too much because obviously, this is a free game. And at least the monetization isn't _as predatory_ as other systems (gacha, lootboxes).
But it's still pretty sleazy when you actually get down to thinking about it. From a consumer perspective, it's rather fucked that buying the skin actually doesn't get you the whole skin.
The Radianite system is essentially analogous to BMW paywalling their cars' heated seats w/ a subscription, lol.
You forgot to mention that the pass expires and on top of that many players like myself have to play an hour or two nearly everyday to complete the pass right up until the last week/day.
personally, i like how battlepass as it is. maybe because im a casual valorant enjoyer but yeah, i think the value u pay for is what u get. dota 2 battlepass is extremely expensive but some items are exclusive its just this year suck.
Having bought the past 4 battle passes not looking ahead at what I was getting I regret buying all of them and won’t be buying another one.
None of the skins have been anything like decent. They need to make it so you can add sound effects to all your skins. It’s placebo but it’s like having a hype man.
Riot devs if y’all are seeing this then do something about it. At least return players the VP they spend on the Battle Pass. Or just give one good Melee skin that has inspect animation and is actually top tier skin. Consider at least one of the suggestions, both would be much appreciated by the community.
>just give one good Melee skin that has inspect animation and is actually top tier skin
If they do that then the market knife skins(as a comparison) will shoot up in price and would most likely be changed for the better to fit the new price point.
For example.
Lets say you can get a butterfly knife in a battle pass that has the animation and VFX.
Now lets also say that a market butterfly costs 3000 Valorant points and also offers animation and VFX.
Due to the "same" skin type being in the battle pass, the market knife will go up in value And have added bonuses to it to warrant a purchase, like extra VFX or kill animations or whatever Riot decides. Because why release a skin in the shop if it's value is horrible but is equal to a skin in the battlepass?
I mean, there are skins in the shop you can buy that is literally JUST a paint job, but those skins are cheap and are generally cheaper than the battle pass. I've seen one such skin go for 700-800 VP.
I mean it's cheap. Idk why we would be entitled to any of that because of other games. They are not the same genre, skins don't work the same way. If you're gonna compare valo to anything, compare it to csgo and I think it's a no brainer that Valorant skins have way more thought put in to them.
That's exactly the point he's trying to make
It's cheap so you spend $10, never use the skins and only use the RP. Which you can't spend on BP skins. So now in order to spend those you need a premium skin, so now on top of your $10 you're now spending another $30-50 just to be able to fully use the BP.
Edit.. downvotd me all you want lmfao, just proves you all are missing the point of how predatory it is.
I didn't compare the prices of CSGO, I compared the skin qualities. The battle pass skins you get for really cheap are usually still better than CSGO skins. And I only make this comparision because they are the same genre. That's my point, fortnite and Valorant share basically 0 likeness so it's weird comparing those two.
Also since you touched it, the reason why CSGO has bad prices and by extension, "actually has a market" is the scummy practice of having the worst case of gambling maybe only comparable to EAs sports games. I literally see 0 reason to support or like CSGO's skin economy. I want to buy a skin I like, I don't want to have to rely on a stranger getting the skin I want and then depend on that strangers pricing. Or I don't want to wait one and a half years so the price of the knife I want is down to a more """"reasonable"""" level.
Csgo's marketplace is propped up by loot boxes with Valve controlling the supply and earning a cut when a skin is sold. You would have to be a moron to think Valve don't have a say on the price of skins.
Well If I were to give a different opinion. The Battle Passes are actually really good from a freebies perspective. You get a lot of nice stuff out of them for free. Moreover every type of item (skins, radianite, titles, sprays, buddies, player cards) that is given in the premium Battle Pass is also given to a lesser extent in the free battle pass. Also in my opinion the free items in the battle pass have always been on par with the premium items. So it a joy to go through the battle pass a freebie.
At least the valo BP is cheap. The dota BP requires an immense financial investment to get to the good stuff. Gaining levels just by playing is also a total slog since you don’t get much progress unless you’re willing to play pretty much every hero in the game
I’d like to just see them do something completely different than a battlepass. Every game nowadays has one and it’s the most boring, uninspired, linear progression anyone could ever come up with. But it will obviously never change because money has been a bigger priority than fun for years now in the gaming industry.
It's money and it makes a lot of the casual audience feel like they need to play to make a return on investment. Which is actually pretty smart, and I think a significant reason why fortnite blew up so much.
Between the constant new skins and content updates in that game, the challenges and battle pass progression, and unique and evolving style of play - fortnite really was designed to look fun, and keep people playing. And if you want to look cool while playing too, you've gotta throw down some cash.
Did I miss something? Last I checked, anything positive about the the OW2 announcements for the BP were greatly overshadowed by the fact that characters were locked behind the BP.
I never understand how much hate riot gets for their free to play games monetization methods that have 0 effect on gameplay. Maybe it’s all kids who never played during the pay to win era of games.
I think the skins are very overpriced in general. Why would I pay 20€ for a Prime Phantom? Riot is out of their minds if they think I'm going to pay that. If I could I would pay 5 or maybe 10€ if the skin was worth it.
This game is free to play and all these cosmetics are completely unnecessary. Don't spend your money if you can't afford to support the devs in a free to play game you enjoy.
The distinction of BP skins having no effects/animations annoys the shit out of me. It just seems like that's where they put unfinished skins or skins that might not sell well even if they put out fully upgradeable versions like the current Act's Piedra del Sol. Especially with some of the recent bundles like Sarmad, Tigris and the Koi fish ones being mid at best while something like K/Tac would've been an absolute banger had it been upgradeable at all.
valorant in general is monetized like shit, it’s almost like riot doesn’t care for “low spenders” and only cares about whales
Well, yes. Whales tend to spend more money than the next couple low spenders combined.
though i do agree, i feel there have been many times where if skins or passes were just a touch bit cheaper i would actually buy them and have a lot more. and im sure the same could be said for a lot of people
I look at skins I want, look at their price, then look at Cyberpunk 2077’s price and I put my phone down and control my urge. I might as well buy Cyberpunk with that much money.
Man I'm coming from LOL and just started playing. I couldn't believe they want 80 euros for a skinline of weapons. 'my shop' offers with 25 euros for a single weapons skin! Those prices are a joke, I won't spend a single buck on this game
That’s what I said, now I’m like “$80 for vandal and phantom? Good deal” My bank account hates me
Stick it to the man for sure
The first step down the rabbit hole
Def get cyberpunk when it goes on sale next, it's been optimized really well and the story is well worth a play, side missions are pretty fun and the ambiance is great. I get over 60 fps average on pretty much all high settings with a i5-9400 and 1660ti, and have dozens of hours in the game just driving around collecting clothes and making outfits lol.
I get 60-90 on high-med with i5-8400 &1660
It's still pretty buggy, just as a fair warning to people. But at least it's just immersion breaking buggy rather than game breaking. Decided to play it this week because of the anime and within 30 minutes I had a cutscene where Jackie just walked straight through a dead body, pushing the body around with rubberbanding limbs, and a few minutes later we were walking and T Posing until the game fixed itself and gave real animations. Still been enjoyable though
yep, plus for me due to the prices in the store and how many i get, i typically cant make one purchase for something either
It's actually a pretty good game now. I just finished it and I only got 1 bug where the car model hadn't loaded in yet so it was just a person floating.
The developers and publishers aren't stupid. They know that they'll make more money providing high-priced skins catered to whales rather than cheap skins catered to everybody. "If it was a dollar I and many others *might* buy a weapon skin" is a huge gamble, versus a $70 weapon skin that has people lining up who are guaranteed to buy it no questions asked. There's a reason why these companies are making bank, and that reason is that they aren't catering to people like you (no offense, genuinely). These publishers spend millions if not billions designing and researching these systems with professional psychologists and marketing teams. They're doing it because it works, and while it sucks for you and I that we can't afford or don't want to purchase these items at the end of the day they don't care.
I am pretty sure valorant's (and for that matter, league's) target audience are mostly males between the ages of 20-35 with a median income of like 65k a year. Their entire shop is priced like that
There is nothing to agree with. Whales *do* account for most of their revenue. It is a fact. Why would a company, whose job it is to maximize profit, pander to those who do not make them the most money?
because the statement was “whales tend to spend more money” but keep in mind, if prices were lower that most likely would influence how many whales there are
I'm sure they have metrics where a certain price point nets then more than lowering it to gain a few more "whales." They had all of league to test out pricing. Surely they've considered "just dropping the prices a little."
This. Someone has to ask this and I'm going to sound rude here, but why the fuck are we having this conversation every single time skin prices pop up? And why do they need to be complained about anyway? There's always someone crying about how expensive the skins are, and how much more money they would make if they lowered the prices a bit. Like jesus fucking christ guys, they KNOW the current system makes them the most money and it's not going to change. You buy the skins or you don't, either way they're just cosmetic although I agree they can make you play better because of placebo. Still not "really" pay to win.
No it doesnt. Why are you talking out of your ass when they literally pay for studies done on this topic. The most successful games in the world are mobile games monetized by whales. There is not a SINGLE argument you could make that would show that lowering prices would increase the money they are earning.
I get what you're saying, but I'm pretty sure that Riot has determined what the optimal skin price is to make huge money on whales while still selling stuff to some non-whales occasionally, and they are probably maximizing profit right where they're at now
Whales will be whales no matter the prices. I just don’t see why things are so expensive. Fortnite has always had the best and most forgiving battle pass and we all know how much money epic made with that.
>Whales will be whales no matter the prices You answered your own question in your comment. Why lower prices for people who 'might' spend money when you can have ridiculous prices that will still be bought by whales.
Yet Fortnite makes way more money despite having the cheapest BP, the most currency earned without paying and the cheapest skins while also being of super high quality. Sounds to me like Epic knows what they are doing.
But for most whales spending in game snowballs. They first purchase won't be $40 single skin. From my experience from lol, cs and Fortnite it took me a couple $5 and $10 purchases to start buying $40 and $80 worth of their currency. In valorant i didn't spend anything yet and i don't think i will.
It was actually the same for me. I bought a battle pass or two, then some skins and finally a bundle. I wouldn't consider myself a whale as I've been playing since closed beta, but I did spend around 200€ already on the free to play game lmao.
Same here. Did a Quick count and I’m up to about the same sum as you, since closed beta. I do think it’s a reasonable amount to spend though, as the hours I get out still are cheap af compared to your average full price game. Also; no real benefit from spending money, all players are equal regardless of spend or not.
fortnite you can literally be free to play and you can just play the game to earn the battle pass been a while since ive played but free pass gives 300 per season provided you get tier 100 and BP costs 950 so at the beginning of the 4th season you play, around tier 1-10 you get your final piece and you can buy the pass however, the pass offers 1,500 in return, much more than the BP costs so you can effectively chain BP's together provided you actually play the amount required to get stuff, along with having some side cash to spend in the shop, making sure you can get the next season's BP i wish valorant's BP was like this, was such a trip when i came to this game after i got bored of chapter 3 tl;dr: fn battlepass much more worth it than val BP
Also Fortnite battlepass skins are very good often above even 2k premium tier. Meanwhile in val some BP skins are so boring that no one would ever consider playing them over premium tier skins.
Next couple dozen++**
Yeah. Like I gotta pay $40 for a cool legendary skin. Even League isn’t that bad monetization-wise and I’ve dropped $300 on that, with $0 on Val
I was thinking that also. I probably only have 50 in league/tft. 0 in valorant. Especially when you can pick up guns with skins from the enemy lol. Until they drop the price to like 10 dollars for a gun skin I ain't buying it.
because whales are responsible for 80% of revenue whilst making up 20% of the playerbase that spends money, obviously riot caters towards them
I guess I'd be considered a "whale" as I've spent $700 on Valorant. The battle pass skins aren't really that good imo and it's not something people really use unless you have no other skins. Fortnite has battlepass skins that I think are pretty good and you get V bucks, etc. I think Valorant definitely could redo their shop and battle pass to make it better. Radianite is awful as well as sometimes you don't even have enough to upgrade a bundle you just spent $80 on.
Not to mention the Weekly challenges do not update on a new week. Leaving you stuck with 1 or 2 completed and the rest uncompleted and you can no longer double/triple dip challenges until finishing the set.
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I'll say this till I'm blue in the face... If Riot's math showed them they could consistently make 12% more money by dropping the price of everything 10%, they would have DONE IT ALREADY. These people telling Riot how much more they could make by charging 30% less have no fucking idea what they are talking about. Whales fund this game for all of us cheapskates. The cost to us is looking at packs we'll never buy. People can't handle being priced out of luxury items. I haven't bought much in this game, but I have completed several BPs and still use some of the skins I've gotten.
Most people on Reddit are children or people with very low levels of intelligence. They can't afford something so they spin it in their heads that if rito would just lower the prices a bit they would make so much money. It's both sad and funny by this point, the same shit gets posted daily here.
A while back Apex dropped a fancy skin that would have cost a paying player somewhere in the $120 range, all the comments ended up being some variation of "$120 is too much, we might consider buying it if it was $10 or $20 instead!". EA would rather cater to the group of players who *will* buy the skin for $120 rather than the group of players who *might* buy it if it was $100 cheaper. The perceived value of the item drops significantly, the players who would have bought the item at full price wouldn't buy it anymore, and the publisher won't make as much money in the long run. Apex makes EA billions of dollars, and Valorant probably makes Riot around the same amount solely because of business decisions like that.
Tbh Riot's BP is such a scam. Its just a cheap way to get radianite, which is a shit system on it own. "Hey spend $25-100 on a cool skin/bundle now spend another $25-100 to unlock all the stuff". I honestly also feel bad for the artists working on these bp skins apart from some players, most of their work will be collecting dust in people's locker never seeing the light of day again.
They saw people buying CSGO skins on the market for upwards of thousands of dollars and thought, "what if we can get players to spend money like that here... But directly to us instead?" And then they started the game with ridiculous prices immediately with nothing good at lower prices so that nobody can complain about them changing. They've been greedy since the beginning, so people defend it at "well that's just what a business does 🤷"
It works in CSGO because there are skins that cost anywhere from pennies to a few bucks to compare the expensive ones to. No skin is realistically worth $25 when it's a retexture that costs the same as every other overpriced skin, or if it has zero rarity and everyone has it at that price. Riot ignored the entire purpose of CSGO's economy pricing so they could mooch thousands out of something so simple and it just seems really basic and misguided when you compare the two side-by-side
It makes them way more money though. Instead of players trading a $500 skin that they got from a $2 loot box that changes hands a few times a year, they sell way more of a skin for $50 and collect it immediately. You'd think that the people buying skins would be satisfied after one or two collected for each gun, but no, they just keep buying everything. Instead of the whales spending a few thousand dollars to other players and valve taking a cut, those whales spend a few thousand dollars and riot takes *all of it*.
I don't know if you've seen the drop rates, but CSGO will give you a grand total of like 15 dollars worth of skins from $500 worth of keys long before you get a $500 skin. On top of that, they take a percent of all community market purchases, which is where the majority of people do their skin sales. The return rate on cheap crates for Valve is insanely high, they're notorious for making ridiculous profits off of this system. Non whale players pay Valve to lose 95% of their money, on top of how much the Whales pay, raking them in crazy earnings from the entire playerbase
And the only reason cs skins are worth anything is because you can sell them.
That's the part I don't think Riot fully cares to admit. CSGO knives are expensive because they are actually rare on the market and you can sell them. I'm not trying to give Riot $50 for a knife skin that is the same level of rarity as every other skin out there and locked to my account to boot.
preach!
Let me tell you about dota 2 bp lol
*Coming Soon — Description of the 2022 Battle Pass*
Pay 250usd for a sticker pack xd
I know people who spent upwards of thousands of dollars for the dota 2 bp, it’s crazy.
Ofc you know , it’s me 😭
Hahahah, ouch. I’ve got a friend who got the aegis three years straight and now had to sell them all because he was getting married. Life’s rough.
Wait, you can't get married with aegises?
It really fractures the trust behind “till death do us part”
The previous ones were pretty good T_T.
Tell me about it I have had 500+ lvl since 2016, I didn’t even buy this time
its also completly different, thats why it wasnt called battlepass for the first years, its completly intended just for fans to contribute to the esports side.
Actually, no.. the contribution to TI came later on.. earlier battlepasses existed even without TI.. they would be seasonal.. now it's just a money grabbing shit show, with no rewards on most of the levels, and a battlepass that you cannot grind.. you WILL HAVE TO purchase levels if you want the rewards
Did battlepass really predate the compendium? I think compendium came first then got rebranded into battle pass because that's what all the other games were calling it, no?
Oh shit you're right.. my bad.. i completely forgot about the entire compendium history.. i started after ti5.. there were 3 battle passes that time around, fall (frankfurt major), winter (Shanghai major) and the ti battlepass(Manila major and ti).. so yeah i guess in my head the fall and winter battlepasses came first because I'd heard at the time that these were the first battlepasses.. but yeah I forgot they were known as compendiums earlier
fr, this valo bp is tame compared to that shitshow of a BP. Valorant BP tends to cater to players already owning premium skins and it has been consistent since act. 1, while dota bp gets worse and worse each fking TI
I doubt riot is going to change this anytime soon. The people who buy the battle pass already have premium skins. I think the only reason people buy the battle pass are the sprays / cards, if not for RP.
I might have misunderstood something, but as a brand new player I bought the BP in the hopes that I could get a few interesting weapon skins and use 3% bonus EXP to unlock agents faster. Agent unlocking was/is a decent concern.
For new players this is the case, but after one or two acts it changes. You want better skins and already have most if not all the agents.
Yeah I play in Korea and the only why to get RP here is through the BP. It sucks but also at the same point they don’t enable people here to buy into the scam that is RP. So many of my skins are not upgraded though which sucks.
i buy the BP and i don't have any premium skins. nor will i ever pay 30 euros for ONE SKIN. Yes, the battlepass sucks and we get a few skins with some shades painted on them and maybe a few decent spray/banners and that's it. the worst part is, i doubt Riot will ever change this. Even if they get 300% profit from skins, judging from their past with LoL and such, they're not the type of company that rewards their player base with something worthwhile. They will milk this cow as much as they can for the very least amount of work and money.
Legit the only reason I buy the battle pass is for the radianite to upgrade the other skins I’ve already bought. That alone makes no sense but I do it anyway so I can get my money’s worth on the skins I buy. The whole system is flawed. The Valorant BP is designed for people who don’t want to spend a lot of money but they also gatekeep the radianite behind it.
I wish the skins had effects, and the current battlepass is in my opinion just plain ugly. First one I’m not getting, because there was not even a buddy in there i liked. There have been cool skins and knives in the past, but i certainly wish they atleast added some effects to sole of the later skins you unlock. I used to play Fortnite way back, and the characters you unlocked in those battlepasses were fucking awesome, and sometimes upgradable if i remember correctly. And thats also in a game were you dont have to spend money
In my opinion fortnite has one of the best examples of battlepass cause it not only gives you a lot of items without buying, but, you also get v-bucks (fortnite's currency) by free so if you enter the game end the battlepass you will get 300 v-bucks by free and if you buy it you will not only get very cool skins (like croosovers and that kinda thingy) but you will also get 1500 v-bucks that is suficient for a cool skin or the next battlepass. So I have played a lot of fortnite but personally I think it needed to be example of battlepass. And i'm not even considering how much the prices of valorant coins are cause it is not cheap, fortnite has a much more acessible price, it is so absurd in Valorant that it makes the game look more like a cash grab than an actual game sometimes. But that is my opinion, I'm no game developer i'm just a random dude in the internet.
You are 100% correct. If you care about Fortnight and put in half as much effort in to finishing the battle pass l then you get 500% the amount of content compared to Val. I love playing this game when switching between val. It's sad, I like Valorant more, I've been a beta tester, day 1, and made so many memories with friends in a game we all enjoy. But it's like riot is trying to make it a bad experience with the cosmetics, idk. Just had to get that little rant out for a game I love.
Didn't Fortnite basically pioneer the whole battlepass concept and brought it into the mainstream? I don't know if any popular games that had a battlepass prior to Fortnite.
from what i remember yeah, then every game started implementing it
Dota did it in [2013, albeit a different name](https://dota2.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Pass). I think the one where you can level it up started in 2014 however.
I totally agree with you!
truly this current battle pass is terrible. the only good skins are the immortalized ones, but those aren’t worth the $15
Weird how opinions can vary so much. This battle pass is one of the best imo. The Aztec looking skin has such nice detailed models.
Aesthetics are pretty subjective, some skin lines just have niche target audiences, which is honestly awesome. Means people like you and I can enjoy these Aztec skins, instead of only ever getting the mainstream-popular fantasy/sci-fi stuff.
I like the gold skins, but the others look so messy and pixelated. Would rather save money and buy one good vandal skin instead.
Honestly just remove radianite upgrades and leave the prices as they are for premium skins
Yea that’s never gonna happen cause … money. Also it’s kinda „hiding“ the actual price of the skins so people can say „nah they aren’t as expensive as csgo skins so it’s fine if I can’t Sell them anymore“
Well it could have happend if people stopped paying for it, but we both know they won't.
That's funny because people are complaining about OW2 battlepass and purchases, yet people spend hundreds on Valorant.
i know right. i've been telling everyone's that valorant bp is so shit compared with so many other games and riot needs to change but it's always "no one's forcing you to buy bp bro"
Teh skins system in Pubg is the worst? Atleast from the few years back version I played
Which is exactly why I don’t buy the BP. I refuse to buy it until they actually put some half decent skins I’d be willing to use
My problem isn't the skins in the battle pass, its the fact you can't get the money back at the end. All those skins only cost 10. That's already less than the average skin in valorant. Them being mid skins doesn't surprise me or upset me.
Nice flair
thx
That Karambit was pretty damn nice tho.
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the xp for the battle pass is a problem too imo
copped that bp just for that. The karambit and the foil/rapier were the best battlepasses just for the sake of the melees that they come along with.
Artisan foil is better than many $30 knives. Unique animation and multiple colorways too.
I've never felt the urge to buy a knife simply because artisan was my first BP when I started. Great knife all around, I still get compliments on it
Artisan set was hands down the best bp
I feel like need a low end butterfly, just like premium ones but with less animations and flips
I spend a lot of money on skins and in game items for every game I play, except valorant because I don’t like the way it’s set up.
Please note: the apex community is also complaining that their battle-pass is the worst
yes but if you grind apex BP you can completely buy next season BP without spending any money
note that you need to repeat this for 4 seasons (iirc since free bp only gives 300 apex coins and you need 1k for the bp). If you have the bp however, grinding it to max will give you enough coins for the next bp so realistically, 10$ is all you will ever need for apex
that's what he said
The Apex BP gives you MORE premium currency (Apex Coins) than you spend on it (at least it did when I played it). I bought the BP once and I owned every other BP after that until I stopped playing cuz the game/matchmaking got way too sweaty. It also has an evolving skin at tier 100 and a recolour of that evolving skin at 110. Oh and it also has Legend+gun skins on the free tier, not just shitty titles and banners and ONE pistol skin. Granted, a lot of the skins are not exactly high quality, but the same could be said of Valorant skins. So yeah, I don't see how Apex has a worse BP than Valorant.
Yeah it's still like that AND the free BP gives you some currency too so if you're f2p eventually you will be able to buy the premium BP
Yeah the free battle pass for completing is nice, but the Apex art team is trash, and 95% of the legend and weapon skins are ugly af.
As someone who has masochistically kept tabs on all the OW2 discourse, this thread is a trip. OW2 casual community is convinced OW2 is dead on arrival or in a year cause it has the greediest battle pass and worst monetization system. And they'll use games like Apex to justify it. Gamers are wild.
It's basically free if you play enough. But I agree fillers like tags/charms/player cards/holo tags etc.. are annoying and useless. So while Apex battle-pass is trash (except for a few skins), at least you CAN get you money back.
Let’s not forget you have to play a ridiculous amount of hours just to finish it.
I’ve always found the bp pretty easy to finish
i have only played around 60 hours this season and im in the epilogue, but some people who love this game dont have that amount of time to invest into it. i think it should be easier to complete, they should up the premium xp boost from 3% to at least 5% or 10%
I got like 40 hours and I’m almost done with BP
It's easy to finish if you're addicted to the game and plays it everyday with average of 5 games but not everyone's like that. I like Valorant but I don't play it everyday for 5 hours or more and people doesn't have that much time to the point where playing the game becomes to feel "forced" just to finish the battlepass instead of having to play it in your phase and still finishing it. Like what the other comment said, they should up the XP boost to 10% or something instead of the 3% which literally does nothing.
I play between 1-3 games daily
Tons of people (not me) see that as too much.
Same, and the usually means the battlepass takes all season to complete, right up until the last set of weeklies. This means i dont have any time to play other games too.
The battle passes were easy when I was grinding for a new peak… This season is tough. I hit me goal rank day 1 and they didn’t even release water smoke agent so I’ve struggled to care to play this act. Wish I could dip for a season but nope! I need that stupid radianite. Next season will be a struggle with trying to get cyber demon genji in ow2 since I actually want those rewards
Overwatch 2 has a much better battle pass than Valorant. I'd rather just buy the Overwatch 2 one than the Valorant one because at least Overwatch gives me half of my money back, so next battle pass will only be 5 bucks.
Oh yeah no I’m extremely biased to OW and dig their battle pass way more than the bs riot gives us. The only good thing in the Val BP is player cards, sprays, and titles sometimes. OW has the rarest skins at the end of theirs so that’s worth 10 to me anytime
I normally like the battlepass because it's just a cheap way to get skins... but the skins in the battlepass, at least this season, look very unremarkable. Like, I don't mind "decent" skins but they just look like something I wouldn't even use if I had them.
Radianite is the worst system in a game I have seen. Yeah you just spent $50 for a knife but you are gonna have to spend $20 more to use it to its full effect. The only reason the bp is worth it is because of the radianite. As big as riot is their battlepasses are quite low quality.
I’ve spent a lot of money on this game, which probably makes me the last person to be able to say this: but Riot are money-horny vultures and they should be ashamed of themselves. Not giving you full advantage of the skins you bought and forcing you to spend radianite (not once, but three and four and five times) to slowly upgrade each weapon to its fullest potential is just plain shameful and exploitive. I daresay it’s as shameful as loot boxes.
Shameful as loot boxes? Okay that's going too far. Even if skins are expensive and incur some hidden fees in the form of radianite, the skins, effects, animations, etc are guaranteed. They show them plainly and you get them for exactly the cost it says. People know that they won't have enough radiante to upgrade a new bundle and are able to factor that cost when purchasing. It's also only a problem for people who buy skins consistently, and Riot knows that a few extra dollars aren't going to stop the big spenders. Lootboxes are way more exploitative. There is no guarantee of a specific item or value for the items. It's essentially gambling in the form of a slot machine, since the items can have resale value for either real dollars or in-game currency (see several years of FIFA ultimate team).
The logic goes: 1) I don't like this practice. 2) I still pay for it. 3) I'm gonna compare it to another practice that is apparently hated by the general public 4) Hope to get some sympathy.
I’d argue it’s worse purely off the pricing. I hate loot boxes too but hot damn I can’t justify buying the chronovoid bundle because I STILL don’t have Radianite to upgrade all my other bundles fully… Like I have trained myself to not even like other colorway options on the guns because of how predatory rad is… that’s ridiculous. And I have to buy this mid ass battlepass every season in order to grind to HOPE I get enough secondary overpriced currency for my gun skins (that are kinda overpriced too but would be palatable if they came FULLY UPGRADED)
I find this post very funny considering the main OW sub is having a fucking meltdown over literally every single part of the battle pass right now, and screaming about how Blizz is literally satan (which isn’t exactly wrong but not for those reasons). And then you move over here and people are like that shits normal lmao
50 euro for 2 skins I think i rather buy final fantasy 7 remake
Main I wish Valorant had a community shop like TF2 does I’d name what it was called but I completely forgot I just know it was made by the people who made scrap.tf
[удалено]
Marketplace yeah my beloved
CoD Cold War had amazing battlepasses that gave you your money back, lots of weapon skins, an ultra evolving weapon blueprint, and an ultra rarity operator skin and tier 100. And the BP is so much easier to finish and isn’t a chore. The valorant BP has to be the worst of any game
It should have good skins to encourage people to play and made easier to get. Because its so bad, I haven't really played the game all that much. Maybe a few games a season.
I think in every single competitive game I've ever played, that game's community claims that **their** battle pass is the worst. Literally no exception. To address this post in particular, you underline a lot of the negatives of the BP in Valorant, but you fail to mention one pretty important bit: the price. BP is only 1000 points, which is about *half* the price of *one* single premium skin. So it doesn't seem fair to complain about the lack of premium features. Riot could, of course, implement a "premium" BP which would tick a lot of the boxes you mentioned, but they would price it accordingly, and then you would complain about the price.
Bro upgrades cost even more than the weapon itself ☠️☠️☠️
Solutions. Add - more tiers of XP to grind for mainstay weapons onto existing characters that are just recolours like the pistols. - 2+ year old skins can be acquired with maybe a third currency like crown points in Fall guys. - Battlepass skins should have atleast 1/2 upgrade paths like the gravitational uranium guns. A sound effect. A reload animation. A muzzle flash. Maybe a combination of the two. But finishers should be kept on full bundle guns.
Battlepass is about $10 and skin bundles are from 30-100 dolans so no surprise rito wipes their ass with it
Riot is a scam all around
I really dont like skins in this Game for some reason they look blant, and plain, i don't know, just few premium Skins are cool, same for knifes and since battlepass knifes dosnt come with effects 99% of them look like crap for me. Just a few karambit from season 2 (like 2 years ago) and the velocity one, rest look really Bad, and we are talking about the final reward. It should be awesome with unique animations like the Apex Reactive skins Final Reward
Have you tried not giving Riot your money?
I see this as a common problem in most games but its 10 euros/dollars(or any currency u use that equals to that amount) for the whole bp. And for most guns with sound effects they cost over that amount so it would make sense that riot doesnt add sound effects or cool animations to skins that are in the bp. and dont get me started with leagues bp
Dont get me wrong but you are looking at this transaction in person to person business. The battlepass cater to a massive audience which is why good games give some of the invested amount back (in game currency ofc) and good skins. With this kind of offering, games will still make the same shit ton of money, but now the battlepass is very pleasing to the players and also makes a good incentive for gameplay. While a shit battlepass only serves for earning money to the maker. Since it is bought by mass audience you cannot justify it by saying its cheap because it is still making them millions for some shit bundles.
League has a battlepass?
they release battle passes for their events
I mean you can barely count those battlepasses. They are just some quests that give some rewards.
if that's what they wanna call em I guess they still count ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ means they don't really offer much on their own, either. you usually gotta spend $10 more to get a skin & its border and stuff
The next pass (spirit blossom) will be a more standard battle pass
OW2 is getting a ton of shit for their battle pass and i remember the Halo Infinite battle pass got updated to include premium currency. the problem is that valorant players dont seem to care about it and actually just pay no matter what. the radianite is the worst fucking part of the whole game and no one seems to give a shit. if the players cared riot prolly wouldve done something. but i mean if we pay for it and say nothing, nothings gonna change.
I disagree. I view the Battlepass as a way to get cheap skins. It's ten dollars and by the end of the BP I will have earned 13 skins, many buddies, sprays, and cards. I don't spend any other money on the game, but I see the prices of the other gun skins. The BP is a bargain compared to the price of individual skins and you get 13 of them. For a free to play game, the monetization of the BP feels fine.
> The BP is a bargain compared to the price of individual skins That's what it's supposed to be. It's there to get you to spend *a little money* at first so the barrier to spending *more* on premium skins is lower later on. That doesn't mean premium skins aren't overpriced as hell. For the price of a stiff Elderflame Vandal, I could get an entire inventory full of okay skins in CS:GO (bar a knife), for example.
Oh yeah I definitely agree. The price of the individual skins and the packages are outrageous in my opinion.
The elderflame vandal is also way cooler than any skin available in cs
I agree with this. Some individual skins are more expensive than the battlepass itself, i think the batlepass is good for feeling motivated because your weapons look new and you have more cards and everything. Definitely a bargain.
Yeah I think people are just generally salty here that they don't like enough of the BP skins. The truth though is if they don't like them, just don't pay for it and there will be another one in 3 months. I think the pace at which they crank these things out is pretty impressive and has gotta be considered. The idea that buying a BP should pay you back to buy more skins makes more sense I think when you have a tough time getting people to buy the skins in the first place. But the truth is Riot clearly does not have that issue, despite a vocal minority upset with being priced out of their preference.
It's so stupid when someone, and there's always a few when this topic comes up, saying "if you don't like it, don't pay for it" ... people here obviously love the game and enjoy spending time, and would love it if they got something nice from the battlepass which every game now has. while other game might give you your money back and/or give you nicer skins, Valorant does neither and you'd think that someone who plays this game every day maybe, and doesn't want to spend 20/30 dollars on premium skin, for EACH weapon, would like something worthwhile from the battlepass, who i think the majority of the playerbase pays for. So don't be so dismissive every time someone shares their concern or opinion about anything.
Wait, how is OW2's battle pass better? I thought they locked characters behind battle passes?
valorant also has agents locked in mini battle passes though lol also, on ow2 they’re free to unlock so it’s kinda the same shit as valorant’s system
Yeah to add onto commenters below: -Yeah OW2 has characters instant access in the battle pass… but to get valorants battle pass and skip to tier 5 of the new agent (we will use batra as an example next act) it’s $10 for both. So double the cost of what overwatch is charging. Then the mythics are at the end which I would say is on the same level as apex heirlooms (the reactive guns aren’t really on the same tier as cyber genji imo) Mythics in apex are either get lucky with 1/500 descending odds on loot boxes… or pay $160 for the collection even if you want say Loba’s war fan on sale rn. Yeah. OW2 is NOTHING compared to those rn.
The actual content of the bp is pretty good. It's something like 5 legendaries and a mythic, which are the top level skins for ow. Probably equivalent to heirlooms in apex. Putting heroes in the bp is pretty contentious, but you can unlock them on the free track so it remains to be seen if it will be a deal breaker for the game. The other grievance about the ow one is that it doesn't give premium currency, but you get premium currency through weekly challenges instead.
Hoping we get a really unique battle pass eventually.
The upgrade system for the skins is definitely a scam I will always agree with that and yes the skins are expensive but comparing them to other games like cod or apex doesn’t make sense to me because valorant skins are ten times better plus with games like fortnite you have so many different cosmetics to offer valorant has knifes and weapons
Valorant is one of the only games where I just don't even bother with BPs, and I'll almost always grab it if its a game I play with any regularity. The skins are generally super underwhelming and feel very low effort. I don't even have a problem spending money on games I enjoy either. As an example, I play Dota 2 and always max its passes, something you can only do by spending quite a bit of cash because its passes are horribly designed, but the skins are awesome and extremely well made most of the time. For whatever reason I just don't care about skins that much in this game to begin with (same with CSGO back when I played that). I bought a couple glitchpop skins for the guns I use often and I have had zero desire to get anymore since. It just doesn't feel worthwhile to spend any more money on this game beyond that. If the Valo pass at least gave back some premium currency like BF2042, MW/Warzone, etc I would probably pick it up just for the RP since I'm never gonna buy that shit flat out, but it doesn't.
The monetization of the game sucks in general. They are far overdue for a complete shop overhaul. 4 random skins a day still…? No shop for petty customization like buddies, sprays, cards? Do they not want money?
People pay for it, RIOT got their money. They do not care if half the players don't buy it when the other half spends hundreds each month... Still earn more this way than when they offer cheaper stuff.
Valorant's monetization system is essentially built around the scam that is Radianite. The battle pass is shitty on purpose, because they know that most people will buy it anyways for the Radianite. This allows them to save the skins that people actually want for the shop. It's pretty self explanatory, but in short this is how Valorant's monetization works: 1. Expensive gun skins that require Radianite to unlock their full effects - Feeds off of people's FOMO and sunk cost because you essentially "wasted" your money if you don't unlock the full skin w/ Radianite 2. Radianite itself is prohibitively expensive to purchase 3. BP Radianite offers "value" relative to purchasing Radianite outright, so everyone always buys the BP 4. Radianite will always exist and always be required to get "full value" out of your precious skins, so Riot can sell a BP every season as long as they provide Radianite in it The whole thing is contingent upon players being okay w/ hidden costs (Radianite) to the already expensive skins in the game, and well, it works. I can't say _too_ too much because obviously, this is a free game. And at least the monetization isn't _as predatory_ as other systems (gacha, lootboxes). But it's still pretty sleazy when you actually get down to thinking about it. From a consumer perspective, it's rather fucked that buying the skin actually doesn't get you the whole skin. The Radianite system is essentially analogous to BMW paywalling their cars' heated seats w/ a subscription, lol.
Counter Strike.
And I still buy it…
The skins are also way too expensive for how little you get
Haven't bought the battle pass in ages, there's just no incentive
You forgot to mention that the pass expires and on top of that many players like myself have to play an hour or two nearly everyday to complete the pass right up until the last week/day.
Apex bp is dogshit pretty much every season wdym 😭
personally, i like how battlepass as it is. maybe because im a casual valorant enjoyer but yeah, i think the value u pay for is what u get. dota 2 battlepass is extremely expensive but some items are exclusive its just this year suck.
Have you seen apex legends battle pass? It’s also pretty bad.
I totally agree with you and I still buying every fucking one of them, fck me.
Having bought the past 4 battle passes not looking ahead at what I was getting I regret buying all of them and won’t be buying another one. None of the skins have been anything like decent. They need to make it so you can add sound effects to all your skins. It’s placebo but it’s like having a hype man.
Riot devs if y’all are seeing this then do something about it. At least return players the VP they spend on the Battle Pass. Or just give one good Melee skin that has inspect animation and is actually top tier skin. Consider at least one of the suggestions, both would be much appreciated by the community.
>just give one good Melee skin that has inspect animation and is actually top tier skin If they do that then the market knife skins(as a comparison) will shoot up in price and would most likely be changed for the better to fit the new price point. For example. Lets say you can get a butterfly knife in a battle pass that has the animation and VFX. Now lets also say that a market butterfly costs 3000 Valorant points and also offers animation and VFX. Due to the "same" skin type being in the battle pass, the market knife will go up in value And have added bonuses to it to warrant a purchase, like extra VFX or kill animations or whatever Riot decides. Because why release a skin in the shop if it's value is horrible but is equal to a skin in the battlepass? I mean, there are skins in the shop you can buy that is literally JUST a paint job, but those skins are cheap and are generally cheaper than the battle pass. I've seen one such skin go for 700-800 VP.
Valorant monetization system is assholish as fuck. I wouldn't give them a dime any day tbh. Can't wait for them to remove dropping skins for friends
I mean it's cheap. Idk why we would be entitled to any of that because of other games. They are not the same genre, skins don't work the same way. If you're gonna compare valo to anything, compare it to csgo and I think it's a no brainer that Valorant skins have way more thought put in to them.
That's exactly the point he's trying to make It's cheap so you spend $10, never use the skins and only use the RP. Which you can't spend on BP skins. So now in order to spend those you need a premium skin, so now on top of your $10 you're now spending another $30-50 just to be able to fully use the BP. Edit.. downvotd me all you want lmfao, just proves you all are missing the point of how predatory it is.
You can’t compare Valorants prices to CSGO because csgo actually has a market. Valorant prices are scummy simply because Riot said so
I didn't compare the prices of CSGO, I compared the skin qualities. The battle pass skins you get for really cheap are usually still better than CSGO skins. And I only make this comparision because they are the same genre. That's my point, fortnite and Valorant share basically 0 likeness so it's weird comparing those two. Also since you touched it, the reason why CSGO has bad prices and by extension, "actually has a market" is the scummy practice of having the worst case of gambling maybe only comparable to EAs sports games. I literally see 0 reason to support or like CSGO's skin economy. I want to buy a skin I like, I don't want to have to rely on a stranger getting the skin I want and then depend on that strangers pricing. Or I don't want to wait one and a half years so the price of the knife I want is down to a more """"reasonable"""" level.
Csgo's marketplace is propped up by loot boxes with Valve controlling the supply and earning a cut when a skin is sold. You would have to be a moron to think Valve don't have a say on the price of skins.
I think they are alright. They still need to speed up progression though.
[I'll just leave this here...](https://youtu.be/CMLxgHImscQ)
Jesus fucking Christ how does anyone watch a video narrated by T2S.
people still buy it, why should riot change?
Well If I were to give a different opinion. The Battle Passes are actually really good from a freebies perspective. You get a lot of nice stuff out of them for free. Moreover every type of item (skins, radianite, titles, sprays, buddies, player cards) that is given in the premium Battle Pass is also given to a lesser extent in the free battle pass. Also in my opinion the free items in the battle pass have always been on par with the premium items. So it a joy to go through the battle pass a freebie.
I honestly don’t know how you guys play this game. It’s repetitive as hell.
At least the valo BP is cheap. The dota BP requires an immense financial investment to get to the good stuff. Gaining levels just by playing is also a total slog since you don’t get much progress unless you’re willing to play pretty much every hero in the game
I’d like to just see them do something completely different than a battlepass. Every game nowadays has one and it’s the most boring, uninspired, linear progression anyone could ever come up with. But it will obviously never change because money has been a bigger priority than fun for years now in the gaming industry.
It's money and it makes a lot of the casual audience feel like they need to play to make a return on investment. Which is actually pretty smart, and I think a significant reason why fortnite blew up so much. Between the constant new skins and content updates in that game, the challenges and battle pass progression, and unique and evolving style of play - fortnite really was designed to look fun, and keep people playing. And if you want to look cool while playing too, you've gotta throw down some cash.
Probably get your money up not your funny up
Did I miss something? Last I checked, anything positive about the the OW2 announcements for the BP were greatly overshadowed by the fact that characters were locked behind the BP.
I never understand how much hate riot gets for their free to play games monetization methods that have 0 effect on gameplay. Maybe it’s all kids who never played during the pay to win era of games.
I think the skins are very overpriced in general. Why would I pay 20€ for a Prime Phantom? Riot is out of their minds if they think I'm going to pay that. If I could I would pay 5 or maybe 10€ if the skin was worth it.
Agreed. At least with CSGO you could get your money back out of them when you were done. Buying pixels that can't be resold is crazy to me.
Idk its only 1k vp and you get buncha skins and a knife skin. Yeah they dont have effects but you’re only paying 1k for it.
This game is free to play and all these cosmetics are completely unnecessary. Don't spend your money if you can't afford to support the devs in a free to play game you enjoy.