New Valorant Server Update Makes High-Ping Demons Less Annoying

In a skill-based, competitive game such as Valorant, there’s nothing more frustrating than when the game itself lets you down and not your own input. That is, unfortunately, often the case in Valorant when playing against high-ping players, but a change to its server code included in this week’s update aims to help solve the issue.

The update is concerned with adjusting the “max server rewind limit” to a lower value, which is currently set too high, according to Riot Games software engineer Kevin Lee:

“When we launched the game, the max rewind value was set to 200 ms based on what we deemed as acceptable networking conditions (factoring in some amount of additional input/processing latency) to play Valorant. Based on player data since launch, we’ve determined that this value is too high for the networking conditions experienced by most of you.“

So, what exactly does rewinding do in Valorant?

“When a player fires a shot, it takes time for the input to reach the server. To prevent you from needing to lead your shots, Valorant implements server rewinding. 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. Finding the right limit for a max rewind amount is important for reducing cases of anyone feeling like they need to lead shots, or that they can still be shot after safely repositioning themselves.“

If you’ve ever experienced a death in Valorant after moving behind cover then the rewind mechanic was probably to blame. It essentially makes the game more playable for high-ping players but worse for those who don’t have servers nearby. That might end up making Valorant a tricky game to play in regions such as South Africa, where the most viable servers to play on are thousands of miles away.

Here’s an overview of the changes, broken down as part of the wider Patch 6.02 notes (which you can read in full here):

• Adjusted max server rewind limit down to 140 ms from 200 ms.
  • If you only play in games where everyone’s ping is low, you shouldn’t even notice this change. In other cases, the impact from this change will be subtle, and most of you won’t notice the difference. That being said, we expect to see the following changes in gameplay patterns:
    • Playing against players with high ping should feel less like you’re getting shot after moving behind cover by a bullet fired earlier
    • Players playing with high ping may start to experience hit registration inaccuracy

• These behaviors already exist in Valorant , but we are shifting the needle for what we consider “high ping” to be less generous. We hope that this change reduces the frustration players feel when playing against high-ping players and continues to minimize the impact of networking conditions on gameplay.

Elsewhere in today’s patch notes is mention of a “potential” fix for one of the most annoying bugs affecting KAY/O.