Important improvements have been made in Episode 6’s second update.
Riot Games relies a ton on player input from their Public Beta Environment or PBE to spot bugs that the dev team would otherwise be unable to find on their own. The dev team’s dependence on PBE is made more apparent when a PBE server bug ultimately caused the delay in Patch 6.02’s release by a week.
Delays aside, Patch 6.02 is finally here, and with it comes significant improvements to gameplay, balance changes to an overperforming weapon in the Stinger, and various bug fixes.
High-ping Nerfs
Typically, you’re going to have a bad time when playing a fast-paced shooter game with high ping. The same can’t be said for VALORANT, however, where players with high ping have an unusual advantage when swinging out of corners.
To address the issue, the devs have opted to adjust their server rewinding values which have remained untouched since the game launched back in 2020.
- Adjusted max server rewind limit down to 140 ms from 200 ms.
With this small change, Riot Games hopes to make the impact of playing against other players with a high ping less noticeable. The devs also expect the following gameplay pattern changes:
- 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.
There’s an important correlation between ping and hit registration in VALORANT, so it’s important to get the server-side values tuned to give players a fair gameplay experience regardless of their ping. In a game that has a very low time to kill, having gunplay behavior that feels consistent in every match helps a ton with gameplay.
Stinger Nerf
The Stinger is one of the most unpredictable guns in VALORANT. In one patch, the Stinger will be a powerful eco weapon that can take down enemies in seconds, but in another patch, you’ll find the high-fire rate SMG to be a good alternative to other long-range weapons such as the Phantom.
The latter was becoming a problem with the Stinger before Patch 6.02, where pros such as Tenz have found a way to maximize the Stinger’s unintended long-range capabilities.
The devs have addressed the problems by increasing the gun’s cost and damage fall-off at longer ranges.
- Cost increased 950 >>> 1100
- Damage fall-off changed:
- Previously
- 27 damage per bullet (0-20m)
- 25 damage per bullet (20m+)
- Now:
- 27 damage per bullet (0-15m)
- 23 damage per bullet (15m+)
- Previously
Social Updates
In an ongoing effort to quell toxic behavior in VALORANT, Riot Games silently launched the Riot Voice Evaluation system in North America back on July 13th last year. Back then, Riot Games promised to use the system to train their language models to better recognize speech patterns across multiple regions.
Riot Games is moving RVE to a limited beta phase in Patch 6.02 to “improve the impact of our comms-related behavioral interventions.”
Bug Fixes
Agents
- Potentially fixed bug with KAY/O’s Zero/point (E) not showing the correct enemies that it has suppressed.
- Pathfinding has been improved on Raze’s Boom Bot (C) when chasing an enemy. It can now more consistently jump up small heights and will do so with smoother movement.
- Fixed a bug with Boom Bot (C) getting stuck in a wall and rapidly shaking while making a loud noise. It will now bounce off the wall per usual.
- Fixed a bug where Yoru’s Fakeout (C) could get stuck in mid-air in various locations.
- Fixed bug where Cypher’s Neural Theft (X) would only reveal one time if he had been killed or the round had changed during a previous cast.
- Fixed a bug where Cypher’s Neural Theft (X) reveals would be interrupted when he was killed after it had been deployed.
Maps
- Players will no longer make footstep audio when dropping from the Lotus B site platform to the fountain.
- Lotus door volume has been lowered further (already lowered in Patch 6.01) during the rotation phase.
- On Lotus, players next to each other while rotating door should feel smoother.
- On Lotus, fixed an issue where players were spawning on the wrong side of the barrier near the C site if standing on the rotating door at round end.
- On Fracture, fixed a bug where the “Paul Delmann” badge could be stuck on the screen after Buy Phase ends.
Weapons
- Fixed an issue where Frenzy and Bulldog reload audio is quieter than other weapons in third person.
Social
- Fixed a bug that caused voice chat to no longer function when disconnected from the internet for less than 60 seconds.
- If the internet is disconnected for 60 seconds or less, you will be able to reconnect to voice chat without having to relaunch the game.
You can read the Official VALORANT Patch Notes 6.02 here.
