Riot investigating FPS issues from latest VALORANT patch

Riot Games is looking to implement a performance optimization patch for its new first-person shooter title VALORANT after players reported a drop in frames per second (FPS) in the most recent 0.49 update. 

Recently VALORANT players reported a significant decrease in FPS, which could have been caused by certain game elements like bullet holes, with some players suggesting that the map Split results in the lowest FPS out of all three maps available to play in the beta. The developer is actively investigating each issue. 

“We’re aware of reports that FPS is worse this patch, and we’re actively investigating,” Riot associate QA manager Kevin O’Brien said on Reddit. “Please keep reporting when this happens! We’re committed to improving performance in the game.”

O’Brien addressed several issues regarding the drops in FPS. He said that it’s important to focus on frametime, not frame-rate, which is the amount of time it takes to process one frame. A dip from 420FPS to 300FPS sounds like a large dip but it’s a relatively small increase in frametime. This is an easier and much more relative method of analyzing performance. Therefore, since there isn’t a huge frametime gap between large drops in FPS, these drops aren’t out of the ordinary, he said. 

Riot is likely actively monitoring Competitive mode also. This gamemode was introduced to VALORANT in patch 0.49 earlier this week but was enabled a few days later to prevent any issues. 

These FPS issues tend to be important since it affects gameplay, stability, and performance. The issues should be fixed in an upcoming update which could be released within weeks.