(tl/dr on the bottom)

g'Day!

- Before clicking "POST" edit: This turned out to be a longer post than I initially thought it would be, but if you have felt the "something is off with the servers" feeling, I highly recommend you read this. It's mainly my Point of View and my take on how I perceive it, but chances are you might recognize some -or all of it.

First off, some introduction to why I'm creating this post with a slight touch 'o knowledge and experience. I mainly play Competetive (deathmatch/range to warm up, Spike Rush sometimes Unrated once every blue moon) Overall rank is in the Diamond spot, varying from Immortal to Dia2-3.

As thousands of others, I too, granted access quite early in the Closed Beta drops on Twitch. From somwhere in the mid-range of "Project A", I followed closely as I've played CS since 1.3 and always loved the 5v5 tactical shooter scene. Valorant, as it turned out to be, was highly anticipated and I immediately fell in love with the game from day 1. The concept, the vision from the devs (although pleasing a growing community of computer-gamers is straight up impossible) to the pure performance of a game in it's very early stages. Point being; I've spent a great amount of time playing Valorant. Throughout it's short life this far, I've played on a total of 3 different computer systems which yields some "feel" of how it is to play on low, mid and high end computers which, again, leads into the nature of this post:

- Something, is, off. Seriously off. We're not talking about the everyday "having a bad day" off, we're talking fundamentaly wrong. And it seems to be affecting alot of people. Not everyone, but more than "just the few unlucky ones"

In the very first release of Closed Beta, the game had it's hitches. But performance? Holy moly, it was 1:1 true raw gunfight galore. Then patch v0.50 hit, and so did my FPS. And yours too. And the next person. Everyone shat frames after v0.50. Fair enough, the devs narrowed it down to be some sort of assets/decals of bulletholes were printed on the wall loaded in and some agent's (*cough*sage*cough*Viper) abilities were deployed. Nevertheless, it was patched pretty quickly and we all lived happily ever after.

Further patches had some network tweaks to them. And I remember this, because it introduced a very weird yet neat rubberband to occur whenever I would hug a corner and jiggle-peek quickly to obtain fast information about enemies' whereabouts. If nobody was there, I jiggled freely. But *as soon* as an enemy were in close proximity, or about to swing the corner I was holding/jiggeling, a slight rubberband hitch occured which in return gave me solid info that "yes, my client just shook hands with the server which had also shook hands with enemy client" - Advantage? Perhaps. But that same hitch was the same that caused rain to hail down on Reddit on "lag when I die". As if the game "teleported" your dead body to be slightly offset from where you were standing when you saw yourself die to the enemy (like the server 'corrected' your location) - This too, got fixed pretty fast. But it seemed to be a shockwave of effect, as it got fixed for alot of people, but not everyone. And once "the others" had their end fixed, it shifted on to be someone elses' problem.

The closed beta came to an end and the withdrawals kicked in for the final release of the game.

June 2nd arrived and the gates of heaven re-opened. With even more players hitting the servers harder than Miley Cyrus came in on her wrecking ball, the overall performance and feel was back to the first release of Closed Beta. It was _amazing_ and continiued to be so for quite some time.

---- One thing to keep in mind here; throughout the versions and patches of Valorant, Windows too, has had it's fair share of updates shipped in bulks upon people. v1703, 1809, 1909, 20H1, 21H2 etc. etc. etc. - These versions also introduced some spicey flavors for the ultra low sensitive hardcore input-lag munching tweaker heads. Me being one of them, although I'm fine with having my system as responsive as I can get it, then play along with the set amount of input lag I can have. As long as it's consistent, I can get used to it.

So, here we are. Currently flexing Level 390 on my account (no alts, no smurfs. Just the one) and enough hours on Sova to double shock AverageJonas from Norway to Los Angeles without moving an inch. I've played it all, seen it all. And overall I've had as much as 1 penalty on my account for being AFK. I could blame electricity or my little brother (which I don't have, but I digress) or even Klara (those who know, know ;D~)

The whole point of this long and quite uneccessary introduction is to declare the fact that I am, as many others, quite experienced with the game. I'm not narrow sighted, I'm always up for suggestions if I feel something is "off" or if I can improve. Anything from physical seating position, mouse sensitivity, tweaks (the infamous 'disable fullscreen optimizations to name one of them) and ingame settings. Anything that can make the game run silk smooth and _consistent_-Consistent, being a very important word to remember through my next section.

Lately, I've had the worst losing streak of my entire career of these few seasons and brief acts we've had. Sure, losing streaks, amusing as they are, I've dealt with. Ranging from poor self performance to "out of my control" elements (teammates having the same experience, not playing their best, enemies smurfing etc. etc.) - the whole shebang which isn't the purpose of this post. Winning streaks too, we must not forget about the sudden change of mood. As if baby Thanos snapped his fingers, suddenly my entire career is a green carpet. So, yes. Those come and go. And then, in between, the red/green/red/red/green/green/green/red/green/red career. The "you win some, you lose some" everyday mood lookin' career. Sure, it happens.

However; The term "consistent" is what I would like to emphasize here. Not personal performance consistent, but the game overall consistent. And this is a can o' maggots to open, as this varies from location to computer system to personal performance to underlying thoughts such as "did I turn off the oven?" psychological deep deep stuff.

Something, lately, has been very off with Valorant, and I simply cannot put my finger on an exact word to use it. So alot of "it feels like" terms are the best way to describe what it is.

Because the _desync_ that's been going on lately, is NOT to be confused with peekers advantage. Network lag. Packet loss. ping spikes. FPS drops. mouse polling rate frequency. thermals on CPU or GPU. I've troubleshot and paid close attention to every detail over the past few months, and none of these should be the key factor to the desync that's been going on with the servers lately. Now, alot of the players that I meet 'n greet throughout any gaming session "feel" it too. Whenever it's brought up I can even hear the tinfoil hats chirp abit. That's kinda when I "sign out" of the conversation ;b

But it's definitely been getting worse and worse.

- "It feels like I'm constantly playing with an additional 50ms behind the enemies on the server"- "I hear enemy gunshot, I die, enemy slide in swinging"- "Feels like I'm playing on 30Hz monitor with 80fps versus enemies 360Hz 6000fps"- "Enemies seem to be able to move, stop, instantly shoot where if I do, my bullets go sideways"- "Animations not in sync with what I see; enemy had knife out, pull out gun but shoot me dead before the gun is pulled 'out of their chest' animation"

These, are just a few examples of how I've gotten the initial feel after playing a few games.It's worth mentioning that in turn, I too, have games where I'm straight up free to do whatever god damn pleases me. Everyone dies if they reach a certain threshold around my crosshair wether I stand still, walk or run. The entire "zero zone" (run, stop, gun is ready to fire first bullet accuracy) is extremely tightened up for me. Or, as it has been lately; my zero zone = 0.8s and enemy zero zone = 0.1s

It just _feels_ like enemies are playing dibs on the server. As if, I'm constantly playing against a slight replay of what's really going on. At one point, I started to think that there are some sort of "lag compensation" going on. If enemies have slightly higher ping to the server than my team, the server adds a slight delay to what it choose to read and interpret from my side versus enemies side.

I'm all too familiar with the peekers advantage term. The tug 'o wars angle game, server -to- client latency and the whole "swing or be swungeth" abuse whenever you're in the position of having higher ping than the opponents. But this isn't it. This is a constant "red or blue" team where the server chose a favorite team and grants said team (-dear lord I hate myself for saying this, but I have no better way of describing it) "constant headstart" abilities.

And these "headstart" abilities lean into the term "consistent" which sums up my entire reason for making this post. I've thought about doing it, read around the sub, found THIS amazing post created by u/Fetaplays not too long ago which is exactly what I'm talking about, yet I figured I'd make a post which goes more "in depth" describing it from the view of someone who plays the game abit more than just "the occasional Valorant hit 'n run".

It didn't use to be this bad. Sure, some players are indeed straight up better. Their reflexes, their FPS is higher, their ping is lower and their mouse is probably modified with aftermarket soldiered cherry switches which grant them a louder click when they press Mouse1 than my mouse does. But the way it's been with the "desync in enemy team favor" lately has turned any Plat 1-to-Immortal into ScreaM.

Here's some numbers and specs for those interested. I've played around with some settings occasionally, but found that _consistent_ framerate, inevitable system latency (input lag) and overall 1:1 ratio is key. Under-tweak your settings and it will cripple you. Over-tweak and you will suffer from fluctuations which, again, cripples and makes you inconsistent. So the best overall settings I can obtain with my setup has been set and I've stuck to it 98% of the time. Alternating too much after you die will, in the long run, hurt your ability to build muscle memory and having that same overall feeling of your own, true, consistent 1-to-1 ratio. Although my system isn't top spec for today's standard, it sure runs this game sufficiently puking out frames and low input/render which is, you guessed right; consistent. FPS rarely drops below 165, and if it does, it's for a brief moment never going below 152 which doesn't give any massive sudden change of mouse sensitivty 'n feel.No packet loss, ping stays consistent, Game-to-Render stays consistent between 0.3-0.5ms and gpu/engine render floats around 9-11ms (which depends on the activity on screen, lower is naturally achieved by either upping Max Framerate or not limiting at all)

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SYSTEM SPECS _____________________________________

Mobo: Asus ROG Strix Z270H-GamingCPU: Intel Core i7-7700kCooler: DeepCool Castle v2 RGB 240mm AIO WatercoolerRAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB @ 3200MHz (CL16)GPU: Asus ROG Strix 1080 (8GB)PSU: EVGA BQ 650WMouse: Logitech G Pro X Superlight (800dpi, 1000Hz)Keyboard: Steelseries Apex 7 TKLMonitor: Asus VG249Q (144Hz, GSync disabled in OSD)Network: 500/500 Fiber, directly connected to modem with Cat6E Ethernet Cable

// General thermals while playing: CPU: ~52-66C | GPU: ~44-52C// XMP Enabled

INGAME SETTINGS _____________________________________

Disable Fullscreen Optimizations: YesOverride High DPI Scaling: ApplicationDPI: 800 (1000Hz polling rate)Ingame Sensitivity: 0.223Scope/ADS Sensitivity: 0.9

// ServerLocation: EU (Norway)Server: Optimal - Stockholm 1 (21ms) | Frankfurt 1 (30ms) | London (37ms) | Paris 1 (43ms)Network Buffering: Minimum

// Video > GeneralFullscreen: YesResolution 1920x1080 16:9 (144Hz)Max FPS Always: 165NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: On

// Video >> Graphics QualityMultithreaded Rendering: OnMaterial Quality: LowTexture Quality: LowDetail Quality: LowUI Quality: Low

Vignette: OffVSync: Off

Anti-Aliasing: NoneAnisotropic Filtering: 1x

Improve Clarity: Off[BETA] Experimental Sharpening: OffBloom: OffDistortion: OffCast Shadows: Off

// Additional Tweaks to Game*>> GameUserSettings.ini*

[ScalabilityGroups]

sg.ResolutionQuality=100.000000sg.ViewDistanceQuality=0sg.AntiAliasingQuality=0sg.ShadowQuality=0sg.PostProcessQuality=0sg.TextureQuality=0sg.EffectsQuality=0sg.FoliageQuality=0sg.ShadingQuality=0

To end the post I'd like to thank you if you took your time reading. If you feel the same, or the opposite or if you have any suggestions at all, I'd love to read it. Trust me when I say this; It took me quite some time to even get to write this post. After doing some research thinking it might just be me/placebo etc. I quickly found some extreme posts around the web where people get so frustrated and hung up in the fact that something feels "off" that they spin into placeboville of uneccessary "tweaks" and things to blame. As I kinda touch on the same subject myself, I might find out that it was all along "just me" and maybe I grew an inch over night causing the game to just "feel off". But until then; something is wrong and it ain't just me ;b

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- Peace! ;D~

EDIT

tl/dr:
While maintaining a stable framerate of 165fps @ 144Hz monitor, all low settings, 500/500 fiber internet directly wired to modem with cat6e cable, no packet loss, no lag spikes, consistent numbers across the board, the servers have been more and more desynced in a per-team favored style for the past few months. 9/10 games, the enemies are playing on what feels to be "true 128 tick" where I'm playing on what feels like 16tick. Peekers Advantage is a per-fight subject which I understand. This, however, is a consistent "add on" delay added from start to finish.