Valorant players find new bugs all the time. This time it was the Youtuber Battle(non)sense who discovered that the Network Buffering feature of the settings could be misused.
Riot Games FPS runs on a 128- tick rate server. It's more powerful than a 64- tick rate server like the ones in CS:GO, this means that there are more calculations and more data processed per second by the game server. Valorant offers maximum fluidity, but this high calculation rate is also more demanding on the connection and hardware of the players.
As Riot Games often thinks of players with bad connections, they have added the Network Buffering feature, which adds a little extra time to process the data. The game becomes less fluid and responsive, but even someone who lives deep in the country has a chance to play the game.
When you clamp your connection, you're normally at a bit of a disadvantage compared to others, who process data faster and see what's going on more fluidly. However, Network Buffering in Valorant wouldn't affect the player who lowered his settings, but the others.
According to the Youtuber who made several tests and a detailed video, it's the other players who would pay the price. They would see the one who lowered his settings in a jerky way. Their own image would be less reactive — it would be more difficult to aim for example at the head or to react to its movements. This would ultimately be unfair, since they didn't ask for anything.
Riot Games should communicate on the subject in the coming days.
Riot Games relies on the active participation of its gaming community to report players who are guilty of toxic behavior. From now on, you'll be notified by email if one of your reports has been effective.
