 Is Valorant worth playing in 2024? If you are considering picking out Valorant again, or if you are a new player in 2024, this video is for you. First let's talk about the community. Valorant as of 2024 hasn't seen much of an increase or a drop when it comes to active players since the launch in 2020. Popular streamers that first streamed the game heavily, such as Mith or Ninja or Shadow, only play from time to time now. However, Valorant's rise gave rise to some really popular new streamers such as Zazam. The community itself started to get toxic, especially in the Silver to Plat range from 2021, and I can say it has gotten better. Main due to the limitations, on cons, and even one report can make you get banned for cursing out your team or something. However, the side effect is that I do notice that people talk less in voice chat in general. There are still some toxic moments here and there, but it's just less talking in general. I would say it used to be like 80% of my matches had something toxic going on between you and your teammates or the enemy team, and now it happens like half my games, and unfortunately it's a double-edged sword, as is just less fun if no one talks. And I actually preferred before when they didn't crack down on these things as sometimes I did have fun messing around with my team or being able to just stay stuff when I was mad or something. It also seemed like my team cared more about the game earlier as well. The overall skill level of players has of course increased, however it is relatively easy to climb to Silver or Gold with enough practice. They have deathmatch, the TDM, the range, there's Kovacs, and you have tons of amazing guides on YouTube to help you improve. People in Silver still don't have perfect aim or counter strafing, and it's really similar to how things were in 2021-22. Some good players leave, some new players join, and honestly I thought it was gonna get super competitive and Adult Valorant is a competitive game. It's still not too hard to climb the ranks. Just master your agent name and probably get to plat in a year of just grinding. Next up, updates. Now the updates in-game have been pretty consistent. They're not releasing agents as often, but that's to be expected as they already have like 24 of them. Bug fixes and updates are still regular, mapped updates are still welcome, buffs and nerfs still happen. I think they're still trying to balance every single agent, but there's always gonna be a little bit of bias here and there, because if you're adding a new agent it's just hard to predict how players will use it and how this change will affect the 24 other agents. Currently there are no bad or OP agents that stick out unlike before. A few years ago, you would see the same three agents in every match, like Reina, a Jet, Sage, and an Omen or something. But now we have a good mix of everything. There are no like underpowered agents either. I know before people just hated picking Yoru or Viber and they would have like a 1% pick rate or something, but now I feel like mostly every agent has a solid pick rate and maybe there are still some agents that are really popular such as Reina, which is like a lot of people just like playing it. It's not because it's overpowered. Like if you have good mechanics, you just want to play Reina naturally. And honestly, I think that was my goal for Reina. It's just great that you can pick anything and without having to question if it even is viable for the meta. Because now you can just play Cypher or something and you would actually have fun learning about the cages, the setups, the trip bars, like that, for example, without having to question, oh, it's just agent going to get nerfed really hard or something. But now it's like people are just less worried because it has a good track record of balancing everything out. Maps, they have added a few maps like Sunset being the latest. There are 10 as of April 2024 and they keep on switching them around and kind of improving it, making the defense and offense as balanced as possible. And honestly, I don't really think any maps are too defensive heavy or offensive heavy. I know like Split in the beginning, of course, it was really, really bad if you were on attack, especially if they had that Cypher or Kojoi. But honestly, like, I mean, split is still kind of defense heavy, but off the maps, like even the new ones like Sunset, I can't. I really enjoy playing and I really respect Riot's attention to detail when it comes to balancing stuff like that. I really haven't been keeping up with skin lately, but they have a good collection of skins. It's kind of hard to get the exact skin you want. As there's just so many items in the item shop now and it kind of fills up with stuff you probably don't like, but you can always find good skins around like 1750 VP or more and they have like a ton of collections. Like, I know before I would only consider Prime or Viver being an actual good skin, but now they have so many options. Overall, honestly, Valorant might not seem as appealing to some people, but to me, it's still a really fun game. Like I still play on and off from time to time. Riot isn't like Fortnite where it just takes things out and adds some overpowered things to just spice up the meta. Valorant is a competitive shooter and that's how Riot treats Valorant. So to be honest, I think just going the boring route, just keeping everything balanced is very specific. And that's what they're doing right now. And that's what I hope to see them continue doing. And it's great that the player base is still alive and healthy. And yeah, it can get kind of depressing when like no one in your team speaks. But overall, I do recommend playing Valorant if you haven't touched it or coming back to Valorant in 2024. Thanks for watching and have a good day.