Valoranthas a huge technical advantage overOverwatch, developer Riot Games confirms in a new dev diary. Riot Games' newmultiplayer shooter has been compared heavily toOverwatchandCounter-Strike: Global Offensive, but this could help the game beat its two biggest rivals.
In aValorantdev diary, Riot Games confirmed that the game’s server tick-rate is 128hz. A server’s tick-rate is the rate at which the server updates the game’s state, and a rate of 128hz means that the server can do this 128 times a second. In comparison,Overwatch’s servers have had a tick-rate of 63hz since 2016 andCounter-Strike: Global Offensive’s tick-rate is 64hz, though players have petitioned developer Valve to update that to 128.
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Riot Games is able to offer this because of its own internet service provider, which it has called Riot Direct. Riot is now building that network, say the developers, but it will be able to use information from theValorantclosed betato see where players are. If a huge number of players are enjoying the game in a place where Riot doesn’t have any servers, the suggestion is that it will be able to create some there.
A game’s server tick-rate is important because of something called “peeker’s advantage.” In the video, Riot Games shows how someone who is doing the peeking can see the opponent before the opponent can see them, allowing them to fire before them. It also means that a game may not know if a player successfully hit an enemy or not. Riot has confirmed other features that will support the game’s competitive gameplay such asValorant’s controversial anti-cheat systemand this will be part of that.
Many otherValorantgameplay features will be important in helping the game to become more successful thanOverwatchandCounter-Strike: Global Offensive. Players also need to enjoy using thecharacter abilitiesand the feeling of playing together, as a team.
However, this could really help the game’s competitive side. TheOverwatchLeague makes hundreds of millions of dollarsfor Activision Blizzard andCounter-Strike: Global Offensive’s eSports have also been incredibly successful for Valve. Having a higher server tick-rate could allowValorantto steal more streamers and professional players away from other games.
TheValorantbeta has been popular on Twitchbut it’s unclear how the tick-rate may affect the game’s success in the long-term. Riot will likely keep growing the game’s servers once the game launches in summer.
Valorantwill release this summer for PC.
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