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If you are a part of the Valorant community, you know that every couple months or so, Valorant ends up releasing a new bundle of skins. The common saying goes in Valorant “Skins equals wins”. For those that may not understand what this saying is, let me explain.
When you start off Valorant, you end up with the generic skins that everyone has (shown below)
Many people believe that their aim and the type of Valorant skin go hand in hand. If they have a different skin bundle, their aim gets better.
This does beg to question, does Valorant skins actually have an effect on better aim?
VALORANT SKINS
Buying a skin bundle honestly is not cheap. Valorant’s collaboration with Zedd is probably the most expensive bundle you can buy. Bundles in general are not cheap, we are talking about a price range of $50-$110 for 5 guns, a knife, couple sprays and a keychain like thingy.
Ever since the game has been around, the Oni bundle and the Reaver bundle have by far been the most popular for Valorant players.
I have been a victim of this too, whenever I see cool gun skins in my shop, I can’t help and feel inclined to spend my hard earned money just to be able to flex in game. Granted they do look cool and it’s definitely a whole lot better than having the generic skins, but at the same time, is it really worth paying top dollar? Personally, I’m not so sure if it is.
A lot of big Valorant streamers have spent upwards of $5000 on just skins. Whenever a new bundle comes out, they end up buying it. Popular streamers like Ethos end up doing giveaways for the bundle where the winner will be Paypaled the amount of the entire bundle. Then again if they are a staple in the Valorant community, it does make sense for them to purchase every new drop and do a review on it. Granted this lasts for about a week and then they return to their original skin layout.
THE MYTH
As noted earlier, the idea that having new gun skins equating to better aim seems to be all just a myth. People playing the game feel that Valorant has become a pay to win game, which to be honest is not the case. The game relies heavily on ability usage combined with aim. If you aren’t able to use your abilities correctly and you have terrible aim, skins or not you will lose those 1v1 fights 100% of the time.
This seems to be more of a mental thing rather than a technical skill thing. Some people are able to respond to stimuli better than others so some visual effects may actually help them focus better, but at the end of the day, you’re still demonstrating your skills. It’s not because the skin helped you get headshots, you just happen to be more confident or more focused while playing. There are multiple factors that contribute to it and to say it’s the gun skin is not necessarily the case.
It seems that it’s more of a placebo effect. If top professional players are saying this skin is guaranteed to help you win your gunfights, you are more inclined to believe in it. That would be like if top athletes say that Subway helps you lose weight. A lot of people would be inclined to believe these top athletes because they are the top 1% of the world being able to keep their body in shape. In a similar sense I believe this is the case.
Let me know what you think in the comments. If you play Valorant, do you believe that better gun skins equate to wins?
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Ernie Kim is a writer at All Ages of Geek. You can follow him on:
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