For those unaccustomed to forms of currency in Valorant, players have two options on the table. The ‘primary’ currency is Valorant Points — used either to purchase cosmetics of Radianite Points.
The former — which we’ll refer to as RP — are available via exchanging your Valorant Points or levelling up your Battle Pass. So what’s the problem? Well, before delving into the problem at hand, lets first take a look at the primary means of obtaining RP — the Battle Pass.
Valorant’s Battle Pass will set you back 1,000 Valorant Points, which is around $10 (USD) or £9 — great value for money, considering the plethora of cosmetics on offer. So what about RP? That’s where things get tricky…
The Valorant Radianite crisis
If you’ve thrown some dollar into the arduous Battle Pass, you have a total of 130 RP on offer. If you’ve chosen to keep your hard-earned cash firmly in your pocket, there’s only a measly 20 RP available — providing you can make it to Level 35 of Episode 1: Act 1.
To put that into context, 20 RP will grant you two VFX upgrades on the recently released weapon skins in the Oni Collection — which will set you back a cool 7,100 Valorant Points for the whole bundle, or 1,775 per weapon.
So, as it stands, after investing almost $75 (USD) / £67, you wouldn’t be able to add a cool finisher or new variant to the skin which has just set you back a hefty chunk of change. So what’s your option?
Let’s do the math…
Let’s assume Player Juan has invested into the Premium Battle Pass and has managed to grind to at least Level 27. This will have banked Player Juan 80 RP, which is enough to evolve one weapon from the Oni Collection (total cost = 75 RP).
But hang on, there’s only another 50 RP left in the Premium Battle Pass? So how would Player Juan level up the rest of their brand new collection? Yep, time to dig back into those pockets.
So providing Juan reached Level 49, while saving those 50 RP along the way — and didn’t get overzealous on a VFX for their Shorty — they’d now have 55 RP, and would need an extra 20 RP. How much, you ask? 1,600 Valorant Points…
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
Solving the Valorant Radianite crisis
So by now, it’s probably safe to say that you get gist: there isn’t enough RP and RP is expensive. So how is this solved? Firstly, weapon cosmetics are there to make players feel special when they put that weapon in their hand — not to remind them of how much they spent on a whim.
So why not play on this? Why not give players an opportunity to earn RP as a reward for completing their weekly challenges? Not only will this reward players with XP from their challenge, but it will also grant them the chance to bank some RP along the way.
To top things off, it would give players another reason to continue their grind after completing all 10 Chapters of the Battle Pass. Sure, you could still buy RP from the Store if you needed to top up, but overall, this would make the secondary currency much more accessible to the vast majority of Valorant’s playerbase.
Not only that, but the weapon skin would now have that ‘special feeling’ that would come off the back of earning the RP through challenges and investing them into the base level of a skin, to really add that personal touch and make it their own.
This by no means covers all of the issues will RP and weapon cosmetics in Valorant. For example, players could do with having the ability to devolve weapon upgrades that you don’t like and be reimbursed with the RP.
But for now, this is would be a good place to start. One step at a time…
