"Ping me the spike!" is a line Valorant players use in post-plant situations when throwing a smoke cloud to cover a plant from a safer position. If the defender has to pre-fire you, the smoke cloud significantly reduces the chances of being killed.
At the same time, your teammates can ping the spike on the map which gives you a clear idea of where the defender could be when the defusing sound cue plays. This is seen often in every Valorant game.
Well, this feature is about to change. Starting with Patch 9.11, Valorant's map pings won't show in the world.
In a video released by the popular Valorant leaker @ValorLeaks, the Valorant Game Designer June Cuervo goes through the upcoming changes. As she described, the team is "scaling back the ping system to be used as a communication tool, which is what it was originally intended to be, rather than a tool for creating gameplay advantages."
Plain and simple, Valorant's update to the ping system is to make it a fairer tool when it comes to specific in-game situations, with post-plant being mentioned in the video. With pings not showing in the world, the advantage that attackers have in post-plant situations is completely gone.
If that wasn't enough, the update will also prevent agents from pinging something that's inside a smoke cloud as they will act like walls. Any ping will be blocked outside the smoke cloud and won't pass through it.
Although these changes will be introduced to Valorant in Patch 9.11, players will be able to deactivate these new features in custom games.
Valorant's Patch 9.11 will be released to the game between December 10 and December 11 and is one that the fans are looking forward to mainly because Neon will be heavily nerfed. Additionally, Riot Games will also release the Araxys Bundle 2.0, which was leaked a week ago.
If you want to stay up-to-date with all the news about Valorant, don't forget to bookmark the site and follow us through our social media pages.