Is VALORANT’s new Vandal skin pay-to-win?
VALORANT is currently one of the most popular first-person-shooter games, beating out classic titles like CS:GO, Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch, and even Call Of Duty. Its comical appearance and free-to-play nature are very inviting to new players, and the only purchasable enhancements to the playing experience are skins for the guns used. Skins are paid models for different guns that alter the visual and aural experience in first-person as a player is shooting, reloading, or inspecting their gun. Clearly, VALORANT skin designers are doing something right — some skins (like the Champions Vandal) rake in up to $18.7 million in revenue.
Among all the weapons available in the game’s arsenal, the Vandal is the most-picked with a 41.54% pick-rate among all rounds in all games to date. The Phantom is a not-so-close 2nd, with a 10.32% pick-rate. While it is debated whether the Phantom or Vandal is a “better” weapon, the Vandal remains a strong contender due to its versatility and immense satisfaction brought by a 1-headshot kill at any range.
Because of the Phantom and Vandal’s popularity, each new skin bundle includes at least one of the two. Due to the Vandal’s 1-headshot kill, skin designers are more inclined to create skins that are satisfying and enhance the specific appeal of its gun by making precise aiming and shooting feel smooth.
But, does this mean that skins can really be “pay-to-win”?
The Vandal as a weapon has game-specific non-negotiable conventions like fire-rate, reload speed, and magazine size. Taking a look at the default Vandal, which is available to all players and provides the “base model” for skins to build on, we can identify the conventions that must be adhered to.
Visually, the gun’s plain black outward appearance signals that it is a default skin, meant to be built on with other colors or modifications. Its general silhouette with a curved front handle is what defines the Vandal among other rifles, and VALORANT designers ensure that skin models “match both the 1st-person and 3rd-person silhouette of the base weapon, and [are] recognizable when on the ground” as recognizing weapons can be crucial in gameplay. Aurally, we can hear that all the sounds are very sharp and clicky, notably the equip, reload, and shooting sounds. This helps characterize the Vandal as a rigid, “snappy” gun that rewards precise aim with the ability to kill using only one bullet. It also sets up general traits (albeit shared by all guns) like playing a sound upon getting a kill, making a hard/piercing sound while shooting, and having a recoil pattern unique to the Vandal.
None of the mentioned conventions can truly be modified in a skin — the only aspects are silhouette/visual design, equip/reload/shooting animations, and shooting/kill sounds, all of which must still resemble the default Vandal and retain its stats in game.
Because all ability-related conventions of the Vandal are non-negotiable, equipping skins can’t really affect gameplay. In rare cases, though, they have — for the worse. Upon release, the RGX Vandal reportedly dropped users’ FPS (frames per second) rates, directly worsening gameplay. An opposing example is the minima skinline that generally sports smaller silhouettes and thus increases visibility around the gun. But these are minimal effects, and people don’t tend to base their purchases on them. In fact, the minima skin line is often mocked for being a waste of money because of its plain design, though it offers this raw “advantage.”
But if all skins are technically the same, why do people buy them? What’s the use of having more than one? And why does every video about VALORANT skins have “AiMBOT” in the title?
What makes VALORANT’s skin situation unique is the way the “shop” works. For 1–2 weeks upon release, you can buy the skin impulsively based on video reviews like “The *NEW* AiMBOT VANDAL (ION 2.0)” — yes, that’s a real title — or try the skin out in game first, if another player in your lobby drops it, allowing you to equip it. Otherwise, you have to wait for your desired skin to randomly appear in one of the four slots of your personal shop that refresh daily. This aspect of time-sensitivity decreases players’ elasticity in demand, as it poses once-in-a-blue-moon offers that would be upsetting not to take. Because of this pressuring purchasing system, once these skins are finally bought, players may expect some sort of additional payoff in game.
While the non-negotiable conventions obeyed by each Vandal skin assure that skins don’t directly aid their users, different negotiable convention choices create different “feels” in skins. This can indirectly affect gameplay through player confidence and comfort.
Considering the traits of three popular “AiMBOT” Vandal skins — the Ion, Prime, and Reaver Vandals—can help discern common conventions that may contribute to this phenomenon.
As previously stated, the changes skins bring must still resemble a Vandal. This is why the Vandal was initially seen as a bad choice to include in the Ion skin bundle, as it features softer shooting sounds which wouldn’t mesh well with the Vandal’s hard bullet. However, due to the Ion’s immense popularity, a second Ion bundle was released, which included the Vandal.
Visually, the skin retains the non-negotiable basic silhouette of a Vandal, while incorporating a white and blue plastic-like exterior along with blue orb and border details, which all bring out a futuristic theme characteristic to Ion. As for shooting, a light blue laser-like bullet is emitted. The futuristic look aids in creating a “clean” and snappy feel when the gun is in use, which may create a psychological “placebo effect” that players’ aim is also more “clean” and snappy, allowing them to aim more precisely. Traditionally, all Ion skins share a somewhat muted bullet sound, and this Vandal retains that hollow sound while keeping bullets hard and discrete, like each bullet is strong enough to kill (which they are!).
The Prime Vandal, showcased beside the Ion Vandal above, was part of the first ever VFX-altering skin line in VALORANT, and is still widely equipped due to its reputation of giving users “aimbot,” or enhancing raw shooting skill (without actually doing so).
Visually, the skin pursues a similar “clean” look, with a black and white body, gold detailing, and a glossy finish. Its model replicates the default, but differs in its reload animation and sliding sound, which solidifies the laser aspect of Prime and creates a smooth feel. Aurally, the shooting sound is hard and separated while still resembling a laser’s “pew,” which keeps the weapon and its unique one-tap feature recognizable.
The Reaver skinline, originally released in the game’s beta testing environment, was highly sought after — enough to be re-released after the game officially came out. The Reaver Vandal is among the most popular in the game, praised for a similar reason to Prime.
Thematically, this skin differs the most, while still holding an “aimbot” label. Straying from futuristic lasers, this exterior adds a jagged and cursed look to the base model, but has shine and metallic borders. Though it sports a unique reload animation like the Prime, Reaver’s defining characteristic is definitely its audio. It still has very separated bullet noises (with a soft echo following each shot), but differs in its satisfying kill noise, similar to a two-chime bell. This sound can be credited for increasing player “hype,” thus increasing attentiveness and possibly performance.
It can be seen that theme, weapon exterior, and animations proved to be widely negotiable, while retaining a hard, discrete shooting sound, glossy or shiny exterior, and base weapon model seemed common among Vandal skins. Overall, the most important binding aspects seem to be a feeling of snappiness and rigidity given by distinct shooting sound, and a “clean” feeling that increases player confidence and can thus make them play better. This rigidity creates a clean “tap-fire” that aligns with the Vandal’s main feature, and results in an accurately clunky spray of bullets.
While VALORANT skin designers maintain that there is “No pay-to-win. No pay-to-lose. Nope. Never,” the creation of a feeling for each gun solely through the visual and aural modes allows players to further immerse themselves into the game and allow for factors of the battlefield to affect their unique play-styles. The fact that pushing buttons on a keyboard is now enough to physically judge a virtual gun model as “heavy” or “clunky” gives us a crucial look into how the interactions between humans and online media are evolving. Maybe the Metaverse isn’t so far, after all.
