One of the biggest sources of annoyance in VALORANT is the peeker’s advantage afforded to players with higher ping, but Riot Games is looking to do something about one instance of high ping player advantage in their latest update.
In Patch 6.02, the max server rewind limit has been reduced to 140 ms, down from 200 ms. When the server determines the outcome of a shot, it rewinds character positions around the bullet to match their locations at the time when the shot was initially fired, to account for the time needed for player input to reach the server.
With 200 ms, players were facing too many occasions where they felt they had to lead their shots, or were getting shot after moving to cover. To the players experiencing the latter, due to server rewind, they felt they had gotten safely into cover before the shot had registered, leading to a great deal of frustration.
So based on player data received by the VALORANT team at Riot, the decision has been made to reduce that max server rewind limit to 140 ms. To players who already play on a low ping (i.e. less than 50 ms), the change shouldn’t even be noticeable. But for players playing against opponents with higher ping, there should be fewer instances of getting shot after moving behind cover to bullets fired earlier.
Related: How to fix high ping in VALORANT
For players who have to play on high ping though, they’re in for a tougher time, and will likely experience more hit registration inaccuracy. But this should really only affect players on super high ping; consistently over 100 ms.
For VALORANT players that play against high ping players, there will still be instances like the ones described above, but Riot is hoping this change can reduce the more extreme examples, and reduce the amount of frustration that comes with playing against high ping.
