Olivia R. May 2, 2020
Former Overwatch League pro Daniel "Dafran" Francesca has been discovering a lot of tricks and techniques while playing Valorant.
Recently, Dafran decided to play around with foosteps, a big part of Valorant's gameplay. He turned the master volume up to show his followers something possibly game-breaking he'd discovered.
Working with the enemy team in chat, Dafran instructed them to make their way through Split's B site. With no gunshots, Dafran commented that you could hear the team "stampeding" in. In a game like Valorant, hearing the enemy's footsteps gives away their location entirely, this is a big advantage for you and your team. That's why people usually walk to avoid making sound, which has even led to some people to say watching the game is boring due to its slow nature.
After establishing how noisy the opposing team was, Dafran asked them to go back and then walk through B site again. This time, he wanted to hear them approach while someone shot the Vandal, a fully automatic rifle.
"Impossible! Impossible! This shit is OP," Dafran exclaimed as the team made their way back.
Due to the Valorant's gunfire, their foosteps were almost inaudible.
"You can't hear them until it's too late. What the fuck. Holy shit," he said.
It's not clear if this discovery will lead to any strategies, since firing a Vandal nonstop is also a dead giveaway to your team's location. Still, a team can definitely have a few members sneak up and overrun the point with the enemy team believing they're still back where the gunshots are coming from. While it makes ambushing the enemy team possible, it's not the sneakiest tactic, especially if people are aware of the strategy due to streamers like Dafran sharing it to their plentiful followers.
It's a possibility that Riot will balance the audio to fix situations like this before the game is released this summer.
Dafran's followers frustrated with him leaving Overwatch
This kind of audio discovery is only possible if you've dedicated a lot of time to playing around on Valorant. This is something Dafran has been doing a lot on stream, which has frustrated a few of his more outspoken fans.
Known for his insane DPS skills in Overwatch, he gained the majority of his fans from playing on the Overwatch League team Atlanta Reign. He spent a good chunk of his competitive career showing off memes and "retiring" due to stress. He made it clear multiple times that he preferred streaming, which is what he finally settled on after retiring from the OWL for good in March of 2019.
With Valorant's closed beta in full swing, Dafran has been playing Riot's new FPS a lot. He recently had to ban a fan for demanding he go back to Overwatch.
So far, Dafran has stuck to his word and continued to play Valorant on Twitch. In 2020, Dafran has streamed Valorant for the equivolent of 10 days and 15 hours. He's played Overwatch for 14 days and 8 hours, meaning it's not long before Valorant becomes his most-played game of 2020. Of course, once the closed beta is done, Dafran will probably stream Overwatch again until the game is officially released.