Riot Games dropped a new patch for Valorant which addresses several gameplay consistency issues. This is not the first time that Riot Games has done something like this, and it is the second update of its kind. The patch addresses latency and buffering issues that plague Valorant and it seeks to offer quality of life improvements for all players. If you have been experiencing inconsistencies with regards to how the servers feel, there should be some noticeable improvements once you update to the latest version of Valorant.

Network instability issues have been looked into

Riot Games has found and fixed a few issues that can occur after bursts of network instability, low client framerate, alt-tabbing, or extended periods of high network jitter. Riot Games is shipping changes in Patch 4.10 that should improve how network buffering behaves in these situations and is making data available to players to show what’s going on under the hood.

These changes address the primary cause that Riot Games found for instances of inconsistent network latency and reaction times between games. The developers will continue to monitor and make improvements moving forward. The developers have requested players to continue reporting any issues so they can improve on Valorant’s server experience even further.

In online games like VALORANT, you send your inputs up to the Server to have them executed since the Server’s view of the game is the correct one. Every time the Server updates the game simulation (which happens 128 times a second), inputs from your game Client need to be played for your Agent. If your inputs get delayed while traveling over the internet, the Server will not wait for them to arrive and has to simulate a move for you.

This Server-predicted move often disagrees with the one that is still on its way. These disagreements cause Move Corrections which show up on the client as small teleports to the correct location. Too many of these corrections make the game feel “jumpy,” and at a high enough percentage, unplayable. Providing the correct amount of buffering is an important balancing act and Riot Games is making some changes to ensure players get a consistent experience.