Valorant is a game of momentum. Getting a kill is great for morale in the FPS game, but taking someone’s head off is a high you’ll be chasing for the rest of your career. But, in a recent update, Riot removed the text denoting when a headshot’s secured from the game’s kill banners, and players want it back.
As noted by ‘GizzyLOL’ on Reddit, Valorant patch notes 6.05 saw the end of the headshot text – though this was never featured in the notes themselves. This led a number of players to stipulate that there was some sort of visual bug in their Valorant ranked games, though this is not the case.
Responding to the thread, cosmetic content lead Preeti ‘Preeti’ Khanolkar says that the text was removed after a clarity pass highlighted it as “clutter in a space where visual clarity is key”. The dev then draws attention to the myriad ways to identify that a headshot had been hit such as “the hit visual FX, the unique headshot dink sound, the red ‘X’ on the kill banner itself, and of course the kill feed.”
However, Preeti’s reply did not land well with the majority of responders, most of whom have called for the feature to be returned to the game – be it permanently or as a toggleable option in the settings. Riot has yet to give an update on the issue at the time of writing.
For now, at least, players will have to get used to glancing either at the kill feed, or at the headshot marker on the updated banner to ensure they completely bodied their opponent.