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Adil "ScreaM" Benrlitom’s tweet today provoked a long-standing debate about clearly defined roles in Valorant and its absence in CS: GO.
ScreaM was a star-studded player in his CS: GO days and had one of the best headshot ratios in the history of any Counter-Strike game.
Over the course of his career, ScreaM has played in several top French and European squads, including VeryGames, Titan, Epsilon eSports, G2 Esports, and Team Envy. While on G2, ScreaM helped the team reach #2 in the world. He was also notably ranked the #7 and #9 in HLTV's top 20 player rankings in the years 2013 and 2016.
Transitioning from a Counter-Strike legend to a Valorant professional started in Valorant's Beta. He played with Prodigy, one of the top teams in Europe. The team won a variety of tournaments during the beta. On August 2020, ScreaM joined Team Liquid, and he is still part of the team.
ScreaM praises Valorant's set role system
Valorant has a clearly defined division of roles in the game, namely duelist, controller, sentinel, and initiator. The agent roster is also distributed into these four archetypes.
For clarity, what each role in Valorant means is listed below:
- Duelist: Entry fragger
- Controller: Lurker and secondary entry fragger
- Sentinel: Support and in-game leader
- Initiator: Recon and crowd control
The clear division of roles in Valorant enforces a strict notion of the duties of a player depending on the roles they are playing. This is especially crucial in a pub environment.
However, the approach CS: GO takes with roles is much more open and abstract. Although the pro meta in CS: GO has players carrying specific duties like entry fragger, lurker, support, AWPer, and the in-game leader; the pub meta, on the other hand, is all over the place.
ScreaM's argument regarding the precise role distribution in Valorant is that it helps every player in a team environment. He mentioned that the absence of set roles in CS: GO became a reason for the struggle as players would interfere into other roles.
One argument that could be made for the absence of clearly defined roles in CS: GO is that it provides a much more abstract approach to the game. The resulting flexibility can often create uncommon scenarios that remain memorable. Fnatic's four AWPs peeking into the mid doors of Dust 2 is one such memory.
Although points can be made for either side of the isle, it would be best to move past this difference and embrace both Valorant and CS: GO for their distinct qualities.
