[enragedcacti]

Spot on: "We have cast shadows only on objects in first person, like your own hands and weapon. This is to avoid cast shadows being a competitive factor in both effect (knowing where your cast shadow is) and performance (low-spec machines can’t reasonably run well with cast shadows)."

https://technology.riotgames.com/news/valorant-shaders-and-g...

[scudsworth]

interesting decision - makes sense for performance but shadows giving away a player's position in a competitive fps adds depth (and fun!) imo. satisfying to read a bad approach and also to play around if you notice your shadow's about to give you away.

[enragedcacti]

I agree it lessens the depth though I think it generally aligns with Valorant flattening out some of the complexity of CS to free up overhead for hero abilities and ultimates. Each round has as many as 40 abilities to think about across 10 players and many maps add unique mechanics on top of that (e.g. teleporters). Also in CS because of a fixed sun position the parts of the map where shadows are relevant never change and become mostly rote memorization which is another thing I think Riot tried to minimize somewhat (e.g. Brimstone and Omen smokes not requiring memorizing dozens of lineups across the map pool).

[scudsworth]

for sure, its a totally valid design decision either way. also, good point about the fixed sun in cs. i've had a lot of fun with the shadows in r6 siege - since a lot of the combat takes place indoors where you can really reshape the level on the fly it doesn't feel as static

[sitzkrieg]

its so people using cheats do not even receive the data

[enragedcacti]

But its not, as we see in the posts above. CS has shadows and a fog-of-war anticheat implementation, Riot could have managed it if they really wanted shadows.