my brain just decomposed

A few weeks ago I had been accused of having my boyfriend play for me in Astral. To be entirely honest, the night everything went down I was in utter disbelief. Bits and pieces of my clip had been broken down and compared to gameplay of me from 5 months ago. Gameplay of me before I even competed. Gameplay of me before I had even hit immortal.

I will warn that this is incredibly long. For the sake of my sanity I didn’t look into much of what was being spread around and theorized, but I’m going to try and explain the points brought to my attention in as much detail as I can, and I’ll try keeping everything titled to answer any specific questions.

Settings

I think it goes without saying that most (if not all) Valorant players chronically change their settings. I fell into that rabbit hole when I began competing- I was constantly looking for ways to improve. To address my settings changes throughout competing, I’ll explain it in a timeline.

Crosshair

I’m an initiator player, playing mostly Sova/Fade, which require lineups. I used the dot crosshair obsessively because it helped me with my pixel lineups. However, less than a month of being on the team I had swapped over to IGL and was put onto the flash role. Around that time I started watching a lot of Kay/o players and began copying crosshairs left and right. I didn’t have pixel lineups to perfect anymore so I finally broadened my horizons, and by the time I was back on Sova I was practically addicted and continued to experiment with different crosshairs for months. Dot will forever be my go-to, but if I’m performing well with a different crosshair, I’m 10000% not changing it.

Mini-map

As for my mini-map, when I was back on recon and the dedicated Fade player, I noticed I wasn’t the greatest at controlling the prowlers through narrow doorways, especially if it was smoked on the map because my mini-map was simply too small for me to make out the outline easily in the midst of a match. It wasn’t as seamless as it should’ve been. I also have my monitor completely scooted back for more mouse space. So, simple solution, I made my mini-map comically large.

Key Binds

As for my key binds, this was a change I made to help my movement/fluidity of my gameplay. My use-object key being on C felt clunky, always have, always will. I have ridiculously small hands, and it’s much easier/comfortable for me to hit F over C. When I first started this game, I had swapped my F and C bind because I figured I’d use my ability much more so it should be on the easier key. Playing this game casually/for fun it never bothered me that it was kinda awkward to jump on ropes, grab guns, etc. While I competed, however, I wanted to maximize my performance as much as I could. I’m not moving when I hit my drone key, I don’t need it on such an accessible bind. But I am always moving/using other keys when I use a rope, or jiggle peek to grab a gun. The swap made more sense.

I will admit, I was stubborn to make the swap, especially when scrimming everyday and having a tourney practically every week. I thought it would hinder my practice to get comfortable with the switch. Bringing this up with my teammates, they all agreed in the long run, it’d be better for me to switch them. It made much more sense. On my free time I figured I’d just try it, and in reality, the change was so minimal it took about 2 games to get comfortable with it. It was such a small change but made a world of a difference.

Frame Rate

My frame rate when I’m streaming vs when I’m not are obviously going to be different. Astral was not played on Nathaniel’s PC, the Riot investigation confirmed the matches were played on mine.

Teammates Clips

The lack of clips from my teammates stems from the fact that they simply don’t clip frequently. If anyone had taken the time to check anyones twitter, they would find that there’s hardly, if not zero, clips posted at all. The reasoning for this varies for everyone: Kazler doesn’t have a good pc so they’ve had shadow play disabled for months; by nature of roles and how our plays were being made, Cyn and Ketarys weren’t having a frag heavy series and didn’t hit anything they deemed clip worthy, and Wrld clips once in a blue moon. We’ve all played plenty of tourneys with no clips taken/posted, and while it may be out of the ordinary to not incessantly clip plays, it’s completely normal for this team, especially in a tournament. Most of us hardly post on twitter to begin with, and when we’re dialed in for a tournament and make a play or clutch, we cheer and dial back in for the next call, it’s not a knee jerk reaction for them to clip for twitter.

Clip Reaction

In addition to that, the “lackluster” reaction from my teammates can be summed up by the fact that their mics cut out all. the. time. It’s an on-running joke at this point. If you checked the discord overlay, their mics lit up but didn’t pick up their reactions when they scream. Ketarys, however, had the clearest voice because she wasn’t screaming/wasn’t as high energy due to it being a high pressure tourney and she wasn’t getting good sleep (she literally knocked out after the last match and missed the document drop and wasn’t responding for hours). And if you also listened, she refers to me as Mars, which makes absolutely zero sense if Nathaniel was playing.

My Voice

To explain my voice not being picked up in the clip, after connecting my oculus to my pc, my audio was being prioritized on the oculus instead of my mic. I fixed it for discord and valorant, but not geforce because to be entirely honest, I didn’t see an urgency to fix it. It wasn’t a big deal to me, I couldn’t care less if my voice was in my clips or not. Discord overlay also shows that I am comming to my teammates throughout the clip.

5 Stacking

My teammates 5 stacking with Nathaniel was a usual occurrence. We were all close friends: we played games outside of valorant frequently and watched movies every week. This all included Nathaniel and our coach. Our team chat almost always had people in it, because we all genuinely enjoyed hanging out together. So when 5 of us are on, no matter who they are, we 5 stack. It’s mostly first come first serve. It wasn’t some “hidden” practice, Nathaniel always 5 stacked with the team whether I was available or not. This had been happening way before Astral.

its too long for vlr