Sit down, open up Valorant, and look at your weapon inventory in your Collection tab. Really look at each weapon and notice the skin that adorns it. Why did you buy that skin? Was it part of a bundle or part of the Battlepass? Does it look good? Does it sound nice? Does it include a nice finisher? Does it look good, sound nice, and have a nice finisher? Did you just buy it because you feared that you would be missing out on owning it; to feel included?

If you did buy the weapon skin because of its audio or visual superiority, do you think that improves your gameplay or just your experience playing the game? In turn, does improving your in-game experience also improve your gameplay?

I believe in the school of thought that Hall of Fame Defensive Back Deion Sanders subscribes to. He explains in his famous quote, “If you look good, you feel good. If you feel good, you play good. If you play good, they pay good.” Now nobody here is going to become a Valorant professional player because the skin made them feel good, but I do agree that looking and feeling good positively effects your gameplay.

This is also why weapon Collection skins feel better to use than Battlepass skins. Riot made sure to add the little details in the more expensive skins so that they could feel premium and better to use. A gun that feels better to use feels superior on the server as well. It’s a nice edge to have to give you confidence going into your fights.

But what happens when a skin can negatively affect your gameplay? There was an instance where this was the case when Riot released Zedd’s collaborative skin-line Spectrum.

The Spectrum Phantom had a barrel that was slightly longer than any other Phantom skin’s barrel. This was a disadvantage when playing in smokes since players might see the gun poking out sooner if the person carrying it was advancing inside of the smoke. Because of this, a majority of pros avoided the skin. When a Valorant producer asked pro player “Mistic” why players weren’t using the skin, he informed him that it was a “pay to lose” skin because of the barrel length, something that Riot was not aware of. It has since been fixed, but the concept of “pay to lose” skins is not a novel one.

It can be something concrete in the data, like the barrel being longer in one skin and shorter in another, or it can be something that makes the user feel like they’re at a disadvantage.

I think the Neo Frontier line feels amazing; however, I do have a problem with the Marshal in particular. To me, it feels like it takes a longer time to equip because of the spinning animation your agent does beforehand. I feel like I have to wait a longer time to shoot it because I think the spinning animation takes a longer time. If you look at the data, it will show that the equip time is the same in both a default Marshal and a Neo Frontier Marshal.

However I feel that the first shot from a Neo Frontier Marshal takes a longer time to get to. It is all in my head since it is a feeling rather than concrete evidence showing that its equip time is longer, but that can be a skin that would feel like a “pay to lose” skin. For whatever reason this spinning animation does not affect how I view the Sheriff.

This problem of gun feel is very real and extends beyond Valorant. Wolfenstein had a very notorious dilemma when getting player feedback about two submachine guns, the Thompson and the MP40. The data showed that these guns were exactly the same. Players told them that the Thompson was the superior gun. Developers were confused by this until they saw the data that players were performing better with the Thompson rather than the MP40; how was this possible? It turned out that the Thompson had much more bass in its gun sound, which lead players to believe it was the more powerful gun. They felt that they had an advantage with the Thompson rather than the thinner-sounding MP40. They chose to balance the guns by simply changing the sound the MP40 made when firing it.

With that being said, Valorant’s premium skins can change the sound of a weapon. Can a better-sounding weapon give players an edge over the default-sounding one? From personal experience, I can say it does (again, non-statistically).

I bought the Reaver Vandal because the bell sound you get from a headshot feels good. The subtle sound effects make the Vandal feel hefty and powerful.

I purchased the Glitchpop Phantom because I picked it up off of the ground in a match and kept it a few rounds after that, having hit a number of headshots in a row. I loved how it sounded when I shot it, and I attributed that to my increase in headshots. Was this mental gymnastics or a real effect, or are they the same thing?

In the opposite effect, I liked how the Neptune Vandal looked, and I liked the gimmicky sound. In the game, it didn’t feel powerful like the Reaver Vandal. It felt like a toy, which is why I switched back to the Reaver Vandal.

I never liked picking up anything from Elderflame line because I thought it was too distracting and I couldn’t clearly distinguish the guns on the ground if I tried to pick one up.

Conclusion

Can skins affect how you play? Yes, whether subconsciously or consciously, a skin can affect how you play and enjoy the game. Some may be more sensitive to this than others. Some players can frag out no matter what is in their hands. But a skin will change your perception of a weapon. It won’t be a huge difference, but it is a difference nonetheless.

Sometimes skins are just nice to have because they look pretty or it’s a cool thing to own. To quote the late rapper 6Dogs, “Tell my mom that I’m sorry, I’m just flossing.” I can’t justify to my parents why I just bought a $30 skin, but I like the flex. It makes me feel good in-game, in turn, I’d like to think I play better, and that makes me enjoy the game even more. So let me floss with this Neo Frontier Sheriff really quickly for an Ace.