Most fans of tactical shooters can probably agree that there’s rarely a more satisfying sight than having your name at the top of that scoreboard. Sometimes, it doesn’t even matter whether the match went well; if you have the most kills, you’re the king of the world, and that’s that. However, Valorant Patch 13.06 seems to disagree that this is the best system for measuring skill in a tactical shooter. The new update caught players off guard as it completely changed the scoring system by switching its Average Combat Score with the so-called Performance Score.
From now on, the game will operate on a new 0–500 metric that accounts for every contribution players make during matches, including trades, assists, utility use, damage, adjusted kills and deaths, along with plants and defuses of the spike. Objectively, this new change might actually be fair. After all, it’s often a well-timed flash that grants someone else that sacred kill. The same goes for weakening an enemy enough for another player to finish the job. In other words, when the MVP is determined through kills alone, they might be receiving credit for a victory they didn’t necessarily achieve on their own. However, the players aren’t to blame. Tactical shooters have spent years reinforcing the idea that being at the top of the kill column equals being the best player, and it seems that Valorant is ready to challenge that mindset.
Counting Kills: A Tale as Old as Time
Even though Valorant has been using its Average Combat Score system for years before the recent changes, it’s safe to say that it isn’t the only game that contributed to people’s obsession with getting kills. Some of the biggest competitive shooters of the 90s have done just as much damage. For example, Quake 3 Arena, released in 1999 by id Software, added one point to the player’s score every time they killed another player, and the number of kills a person ended up with determined whether they would climb the score board or not. The same goes for Unreal Tournament, which followed the same rules, although it took it up a notch by rewarding long kill streaks as well.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Rearrange the covers into the correct US release order.
Easy (5)Medium (7)Hard (10)
This might be taking things a little too far, but one can start to wonder whether those loud Killing Spree, Dominating, and Godlike announcements did, in fact, brainwash us a little after all. Either way, titles like Counter-Strike introduced more team-based, objective-driven matches where assisting your teammates became just as important as getting kills. When Valorant was released in 2020, it followed the same logic, but unfortunately, both titles made those changes without making an effort to reconsider the old scoring system as well. This is especially important for Valorant, because it takes the idea of team effort even further by providing a variety of Agents, abilities, and assists.
Performance Score does NOT determine RR gains or losses.
Not All Agents Are Created Equal
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Image via Riot Games -
Image via Riot Games -
Image via Riot Games
How the tables have turned; suddenly, being one of the support agents does not sound too bad. Jokes aside, focusing heavily on kills is a slippery slope, especially in Valorant, where there are plenty of characters who weren’t designed to top the scoreboard by this standard in the first place. There is a pretty good number of support Agents in the game, whose entire purpose is to help their teammates achieve a higher number of kills.
Therefore, comparing the different roles through kills can make an otherwise perfect performance seem less significant. And what’s even worse, it sometimes gives the MVP title to a player whose kills were only possible because of a support Agent. With the recent changes, the system now takes the abilities of the Agents into account and judges them based on individual standards. As a consequence, the matches could become way more interesting; after all, without keeping score mainly of the kills, predicting who will become the MVP before the end of the game might be almost impossible.
Valorant’s Patch 13.06 Changes Were Probably Long Overdue
Looking at the bigger picture, the new changes implemented with Patch 13.06 are not exactly a groundbreaking invention. Rainbow Six Siege reworked its scoring system 8 years ago, trying its best to move away from the almost purely combat-focused scoring system as quickly as possible. Valorant, on the other hand, held onto ACS for a surprisingly long time, especially considering that Riot Games was fully aware of the need to update the rules. That’s why the changes don’t exactly feel like reinventing the wheel, but rather like implementing a long-overdue change that should have happened a while ago.
Of course, Valorant‘s new approach towards scoring raises an obvious question for games like Apex Legends, whose current Ranked system considers placement, kills, assists, and participations, but healing and revives do not contribute to players earning Ranked Points. Whether other FPS titles will follow Valorant‘s example remains to be seen, but Patch 13.06 is definitely the beginning of a whole new era for Riot’s shooter. What’s more, the new Performance system might also permanently alter what Valorant players value the most in a match, too.
- Released
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June 2, 2020
- ESRB
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T for Teen: Blood, Language, Violence
