The life of a game is a constant cycle of discovering bugs, patching and then discovering more bugs and then patching them, and then finding out that your bug fixes have created mores bug - seemingly at random - and then you patch them and so on and on... until either you have a completely bug free game(ha...) or people stop caring to even ask for them to be fixed.
And it looks like for Valorant we are into the bug fixes creating more bugs phase, just three weeks after it's release and two patches later, one player has found out that firing certain guns completely masks the sounds of footsteps - a vital audio cue for figuring out where your team and opponents are.
- Read more: Valorant v0.49 Patch Notes: Ranked play, Omen tweaks, Map updates and Observer mode changes
"What!?! The Vandal masks the sound completely," Danish Twitch streamer dafran, who has over 500,000 followers, can be heard saying as he successfully replicates the bug.
He then tries it again but this time will a full squad running at him and an Odin LMG machine gun firing in the background.
"WTF!?" he says as four previously unheard enemies appear in his view, "Jesus christ dude... this is crazy! Now they have to fix their sound!"
"It's OP!"
In the Reddit thread that brought this bug to light, there was a debate about whether this was a bug or a feature with some feeling that a gun firing should mask the audio of footsteps.
While others say they have been experiencing issues with gunfire masking the sound of Spike plants and defusals.
Riot have previously commented on updating the sound effects in the game, with some being placeholders during the closed beta, as confirmed when Ryan "Morello" Scott, lead character designer, discussed changes to the Raze agent.
It is not yet clear if this bug came in the recent update, but Riot have already said they were releasing a hotfix due out today in North America and on the 1st May for Europe.
Tomorrow we're deploying a hotfix patch to address some exploits, fix two bugs, and revert the headshot sound.
— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) April 30, 2020
NA's patch hits April 30 @ 4:30AM PT, back up @ 10AM PT.
EU's patch hits April 31 @ 3:30AM CEST, back up at 9:30AM CEST.
If all goes well after this... maybe ranked.
Player's will be hoping the patch goes out with not a hitch because Riot have stated they won't be enabling the much-anticipated ranked mode before they are happy of the state of the game.