Valorant: Riot considers bringing new and improved VFX for melee weapons

When it comes to weapon cosmetic concepts in Valorant, the Riot design team has been breaking the creative barriers for some time now.

Not only are their weapon skins some of the unique designs in the entirety of the fps genre, but are also some of the most coveted purchasable items in the game.

However, just because the Valorant weapon skins are incredibly unique, it doesn't mean that the design team is immune to any form of criticism and scrutiny.

The Valorant cosmetic range is costly, and the Ultra Edition sets like the Elderflame, do not go for anything less than 9,900 Valorant Points, which is indeed a lot of money.

Moreover, aspects of some of their latest skins have been heavily criticized as well. Bundles like the EGO, and the Smite, have been under fire with how dull and uncreative the melee weapons look for both these skin lines.

The melee weapons for Valorant's EGO and Smite sets are just a simple retake of the base knife, without any special animation of its own.

Riot will be considering new VFX for Valorant's melee cosmetics

The EGO and SMite have disappointing melee cosmetics (image from Valorant store)

In a recent Reddit thread by Slimshady4 about the G.U.N Skin bundle, Valorant fans discuss how the melee skins aren't exactly as good in the new cosmetic bundles.

One user who goes by the Reddit handle of cupidstoleyograndma says that "if there's a different animation to this knife instead of a flip or boring default pull out (I'm not calling current animation uncreative just want something different) I would probably buy this bundle twice lol, other than that this is a really cool bundle will fs get the classic and operator, but hopefully a new pullout animation."

The Valorant fan is hoping for a better melee animation in the upcoming Valorant skin, G.U.N, because the previous ones of EGO and Smite were very disappointing. And it has indeed been putting players off of purchasing these two skin lines.

Moreover, it would seem Riot is curious about what the fans have to say about, and Riot's oniram177 replied by saying:

Im curious to hear your thoughts on how different of an animation you'd want to see for something like this? we get this feedback a lot and in a hopes to understand a bit more, im going to pick you to begin helping us with that. Say you had a regular knife, similar to the Ego or Smite ones.

Would a new equip animation on that be exciting? or for you is it more of the animations with a new type of weapon? We always try to find opportunities to add to melee weapons where we can without completely reinventing the wheel, so id love to hear from your perspective what amount of change would be exciting for you?

Riot is quite serious about selling their cosmetic skin line and don't want to leave any stones unturned when it comes to making the Valorant weapons as attractive as possible.

Another Reddit user underlines certain issues and suggests that, "I think for melee's in particular, they have to be different from the default knife for them to sell well. There are so many default skin recolors that people just don't find it worth it to consider purchasing them anymore. I guess a new animation on a default knife might be a bit more interesting than a normal default knife. Still, I'm sure a completely new knife like the prime, elderflame, sovereign or glitchpop is way more preferred because of how unique and distinct they are in comparison to the default knife and in relation to each other."

The Valorant devs might just be bringing new melee VFX to a lot of the existing skin lines in the coming months.