In Valorant it is usually common to play on the lowest graphics settings. This brings FPS and performance. However, it has now been revealed that you can only see meaningful objects in the game world at high settings.
What’s up with the settings? Experienced players of shooters like Valorant or CS:GO don’t play to indulge in the graphics. They play to maximize performance, which only works if the hardware is optimal. Therefore, they rigorously turn off everything that costs precious frames per second (FPS) and usually play on the minimal graphics settings.
In Valorant, however, this can cost you the victory, as high-settings users have significant advantages.
Only for High Settings – The Clothesline of Death!
What happens when you increase the graphics? You may have already noticed that in the map Ascent shots in the air sometimes leave bullet holes. This is because there is actually a clothesline with clothes hanging, as one user found out on reddit.
However, you can only see these objects if you play the game on the highest settings. “Well,” one might say here: “There’s just a clothesline with clothes. So what?”
The joke is that some of these clothes are physical objects in the game world. This means you can do all sorts of tricks with certain agents in the game using specific skills. For example:
- Sova can cleverly place sonar darts for reconnaissance there
- Cypher can attach a spy camera in the air
- Viper can create particularly bizarre effects with her poison cloud
These and certainly many more nasty tricks are possible with such otherwise invisible objects in the game world. By the way, there is a less severe but still present location in the map Split where, next to a ramp, there is an otherwise invisible texture.
What can be done against this advantage? Many players are unclear why a purely optional decorative object like the clothesline is a physical object and has a collision check. If it is gameplay relevant, it should always be visible. Or you simply remove the collision check and it is really just pure decoration.
How Riot Games decides will be shown in the future. However, for the competitive integrity, which is particularly important to the developers, Riot should act quickly and fix the clothesline and the ramp texture. Everything else would be unfair.
What is not unfair, however, and is instead a fully intended feature: In Valorant, there is something called “Wall-Banging.” This means that with certain weapons you can shoot through walls at specific spots on the maps. This is part of the established tactics of many players in Riot’s team shooter.
