Valorant is officially getting a replay system, but we don’t know when.
Since its launch in 2020, Valorant players have been vocal about their need for a replay system. This feature, which would allow them to review their gameplay, analyze mistakes, and strategize better, is not just a luxury but a necessity for esports production companies, esports players, and competitive Valorant players. Riot has been attentive to this demand and has been working on the system.
The developer has finally offered the first look at the Valorant replay system. While this is excellent news, it doesn’t mean the new feature is ready. Instead, it’s merely a prototype laden with bugs and glitches.
Here’s how the replay UI looks in Valorant:
The prototype showcases a regular Valorant game being played with a control bar at the bottom of the screen. Players will be able to use this bar to rewind a clip, change the agent’s POV, activate a free camera, and more. At first glance, the replay system in Valorant looks flawless and ready to ship, but it’s actually super buggy.
From visual bugs to mechanical ones, the replay system is currently not ready to aid players in improving their gameplay. For example, an issue completely messes up the timing of smoke being dropped in the replay. This could cause serious issues at higher-level scrims, where timing can be a difference-maker.
“We built [Valorant] gameplay logic and in-game assets around a multiplayer session. The player does a thing, their game client relays that thing to a server, and other players in the game see that thing in real-time. Replays, though, introduce new requirements that aren’t present in normal games.” Marcus Reid, Valorant tech lead, explained
According to the developer, these issues are due to real-time mechanics being Valorant’s bedrock. Replay wasn’t initially part of the game, which is why adding it now is critical since the game is live and running. Making adjustments to the code at this time might pose a risk of causing unexpected behavior in Valorant for players, which is why this task is currently taking a significant amount of time.
Rest assured, Riot is working on ironing out the remaining kinks in the replay system and will roll it out once it’s ready for the players to use.
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