Valorant: Riot Games developer reveals why patch v1.11 was infested with bugs

Valorant Episode 1 - Act III Patch v1.11 did not go according to plan for Riot Games.

Not only was the update rolled out during an ongoing Valorant First Strike Tournament, but it also included several Agent changes that affected the meta. However, the highlight of patch v1.11 is undoubtedly all the bugs that it brought to the game.

Let's talk about this bug. It should have never reached players, but it does have an interesting root cause and game dev lesson. The defect was live for several hours on Tuesday morning in NA, LATAM, and BR after we patched 1.11. We rolled back to 1.10 to mitigate. (1/21) https://t.co/khEOcpk7T4

— Riot Nu (@RiotNu) November 2, 2020

While this new patch v1.11 introduced Skye in Valorant, it also brought along several changes for Agents like Cypher, Killjoy and Breach. Along with this, Riot Games gave the fans a new economic ruleset to follow as well.

Real talk: 1.11 has been a technical nightmare. In 30 minutes, we'll be rolling back the patch for North America, Brazil, and LATAM (one at a time). We're also delaying all other regions until we get a fix. We know we've said this every patch, but thanks for sticking by. [1/2]

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) October 27, 2020

Riot Nu, Principal Software Engineer at Riot Games, recently took to Twitter, explaining the obstacles that were faced by the Valorant development team with Patch v1.11. Players like Steel, from 100 Thieves, posted clips of in-game glitches that occurred if players were caught in a flash or entered a cloud of smoke.

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Riot Games Principal Software Engineer speaks about Valorant patch v1.11 bugs

We'll redeploy later in the week once we can figure out a less disruptive time for the VALORANT First Strike Qualifiers (and have a solution, obviously). If you started the Skye character contract, you won't be able to progress until we patch again. [2/2]

— VALORANT (@PlayVALORANT) October 27, 2020

These glitches were mostly occurring with Omen's smokes and Paranoia. While the clip posted by Steel showed a 3D schematic of Sage, others reported complete blackouts on their screen.

Kim-Jong Un Stole My Gun...>???? WTF@PlayVALORANT pic.twitter.com/vxYJsuLA36

— 100T steel (@JoshNissan) October 28, 2020

That was just the beginning, as patch v1.11 brought several new bugs that affected the Agents, as well as the UI. For instance, Valorant players reported that clicking on the Career or Collection Tabs froze the game.

There was also a hilarious micro-stutter in the game that forced players to miss their kill shots in Valorant. Usually, the bullet did not register, causing a desync that players were complaining about.

Although patch 1.11 was rolled back shortly after it was released, it showed Riot Games what they needed to do in order to fix things in Valorant. The inclusion of a new Agent is always fascinating, but this comes with the cost of having new bugs in the game.

After the release of Icebox, players started noticing a glitch that allowed Omen to teleport between structures. @RiotNu was quite concerned about the bugs which reached the players.

He mentions, "Shortly after the 1.11 patch went out, we started receiving reports of issues with smokes and nearsight effects. Big thanks to @EthanBenard, @JoshNissan, and @Hiko for sharing video immediately. We're tremendously appreciative for help tracking down issues we miss."

Now that we have all the pieces involved, we can talk about what actually happened. We turned on fast respawn in bomb game mode in 1.11, and we missed the critical interaction between fast respawn and the Singularity finisher. (13/21)

— Riot Nu (@RiotNu) November 2, 2020

Furthermore, Riot Nu said, "Creating a new character from scratch is slow -- potentially tens of milliseconds. To put that in perspective, at 200 FPS each frame is only 5 ms. Building a new character is potentially multiple frames of work by itself...Now that we have all the pieces involved, we can talk about what actually happened. We turned on fast respawn in bomb game mode in 1.11, and we missed the critical interaction between fast respawn and the Singularity finisher."

We missed the interaction between nearsight abilities, finishers, and fast respawn. Complexity between game features is combinatorial; every permutation of interactions between features is an opportunity for something to go wrong. (19/21)

— Riot Nu (@RiotNu) November 2, 2020

According to the developers' team, the Singularity Finisher was one of the elements causing the bugs in Valorant. Riot Nu goes on to mention,

"In the updated 1.11 build we've turned respawn off in bomb game mode to mitigate this issue. In 1.12 we're adjusting the implementation of the Singularity finisher and fast respawn will reset nearsight meshes. This will fix Spike Rush."

... and when you're hit with a nearsight effect like Omen's Paranoia, tunable parameters that control the look are set and these meshes become visible. This applies the nearsight effect to the debuffed player's perspective. (6/21) pic.twitter.com/40KxZXtS0f

— Riot Nu (@RiotNu) November 2, 2020

Thus, players experiencing these glitches in Valorant can be assured that Riot Games will implement a fix. Simultaneously, game developers addressing these issues on social media is a relief for the Valorant community. This shows how much Valorant developers care about community interactions and feedback.