Valorant recently celebrated its third birthday and the game has gone from strength to strength since its launch. New agent Deadlock is one of the most interesting and fun additions to the game in a while, the overall balance of agents is as good as it ever has been, and after a few missteps, new and updated maps are consistently viable at high-level play.
But one area of Valorant that is showing its age is the battle pass. When Valorant launched the battle pass was never anything revolutionary, copying the formula that countless other games have used over the years to offer a range of cosmetic items which you unlock the more you play the game. But now, three years on, the items the battle pass offers feel boring compared to the premium skins that have been consistently added to Valorant, and the launch of Episode 7 Act 1 has only made the issue worse.
Each battle pass will set you back $9.99, and for that you get 50 levels to work your way through and unlock cosmetic items. Some will be skins for weapons, the thing you would actually want, whereas most will be other cosmetics such as gun buddies, sprays and items to show off on your in-game profile. It’s never been an incredible value for money, but if you play enough to unlock everything then you’ll typically end up with 12 weapon skins and a melee skin which in the early days of Valorant was a decent way to make sure you don’t run around with the boring default skins.
But now, with three years of premium skins and battle passes behind us, the skins on offer in the battle pass feel more underwhelming than ever. The current battle pass for Episode 7 Act 1 features the Blush skins, which make your guns a bit pink, the Digihex skins, which make your guns blue, and the Composite skins, which make your guns orange and slightly change the shape of them.
For anyone who has purchased any premium skins, or a couple of battle passes, it’s difficult to see why you would want any of these skins, other than just to have something new. None of these skins can hold up against the fancy premium ones, and even past battle pass skins have looked significantly better.
But the real death note for the battle pass in Valorant is the recent introduction of Kingdom Credits, the new free-to-earn currency that you can use to unlock previous battle pass content. Now, this isn’t a free way to earn skins, they remain exclusive to the battle pass for now, but the other content such as sprays, gun buddies and player cards are all available to buy with Kingdom Credits.
With a rotating store of items from previous battle passes you can’t instantly jump in and cherry-pick whatever you want from previous battle passes, but as the weeks go on most if not all of the previous battle pass content will be available for free. So now, I look at the battle pass for Episode 7 Act 1 knowing that a lot of it will be available for free in a few months, and the only thing I’d really be paying for is the weapon skins and it feels incredibly underwhelming.
Maybe the battle pass is no longer for players who have dropped cash on a few premium skin lines, but surely Riot would rather have something that all players can enjoy rather than just have it as a more budget-friendly option. It’s also something I want to purchase, having an overarching meta-game to earn rewards for playing is fun, and adds a sense of progression I’m never going to get from improving my rank as I’m not good at the game.
Now, I’m not saying I have amazing solutions to this issue. The Kingdom Credits clearly aren’t going anywhere and do actually provide some value to entirely free-to-play players, while the simple answer of making better skins would cheapen the value of the premium skin lines which presumably make Riot a ton of cash. Challenges tied to the battle pass could improve things, as could exclusive game modes or mini-games, something Dota 2 has previously done to much success, basically anything to add a bit more value and interest to the battle pass.
With Valorant’s success and rumored console port, it’s likely that Riot doesn’t need to be selling a battle pass to every player, but with reasons to buy one quickly disappearing it wouldn’t be surprising if sales are starting to fall off. If that is the case then we may finally get some updates to the boring battle passes we have been getting recently, but until then I won’t be buying one again.
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