<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><?xml-stylesheet href="http://www.blogger.com/styles/atom.css" type="text/css"?><feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom' xmlns:openSearch='http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearchrss/1.0/' xmlns:blogger='http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008' xmlns:georss='http://www.georss.org/georss' xmlns:gd="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005" xmlns:thr='http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0'><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059847171951264814</id><updated>2024-09-02T01:44:43.613-07:00</updated><category term="code"/><category term="gaming"/><title type='text'>mk</title><subtitle type='html'></subtitle><link rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#feed' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.martinkuna.net/feeds/posts/default'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/9059847171951264814/posts/default'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://www.martinkuna.net/'/><link rel='hub' href='http://pubsubhubbub.appspot.com/'/><author><name>Martin Kuna</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/01002103645468312367</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='16' height='16' src='https://img1.blogblog.com/img/b16-rounded.gif'/></author><generator version='7.00' uri='http://www.blogger.com'>Blogger</generator><openSearch:totalResults>1</openSearch:totalResults><openSearch:startIndex>1</openSearch:startIndex><openSearch:itemsPerPage>25</openSearch:itemsPerPage><entry><id>tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059847171951264814.post-8815723472494902477</id><published>2020-08-20T07:30:00.313-07:00</published><updated>2020-08-20T21:14:19.806-07:00</updated><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="code"/><category scheme="http://www.blogger.com/atom/ns#" term="gaming"/><title type='text'>Appearing offline in Valorant</title><content type='html'><p>Anyone who knows me is likely aware that I've been a long time fan of Counter-Strike. Everything from the gun-play, movement mechanics, and teamwork required to play at a high level, in my opinion, make it the clear champion of competitive first person shooters. The game has been largely unchanged for ~20 years for good reason, it works, and even 20 years later the meta/tactics used are still evolving. Needless to say, no matter what game I play, I always come back to Counter-Strike.</p><p>Then news of a "Counter-Strike Killer" called Project A surfaced, which was said to combine the best of Counter-Strike with a fresh take on what a competitive FPS game could be. Project A became Valorant, and suddenly everyone seemed to be playing it. Of course being extremely biased towards Counter-Strike, I thought there was no way that I would want to play a copycat of Counter-Strike with hero abilities. After a little convincing from friends, I tried it, and at this point I've likely spent ~100 hours in Valorant. I can confidently say it's the only game that has had my attention. I'm impressed that the devs are very outspoken about their intentions and motivation behind game changes.<br /><br />That being said, one thing has bugged me a lot more than I thought it would: there is no way to go invisible and just solo queue without interruptions. It seems silly not to allow users to appear offline or go hidden/invisible to users on their friends list. A little searching online for a solution, or at the very least, an answer to when this feature may come to Valorant, brought me to a few threads/articles suggesting a program called Deceive (<a href="https://github.com/molenzwiebel/Deceive">https://github.com/molenzwiebel/Deceive</a>). While Deceive seems well implemented, I'm not interested in running software to modify my network traffic to trick the game/servers.</p><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJtjuAwRrq6aMDBbX6HN1NwqqtsMB1dfANBTtLANNIyyjR9geMv3b0uGzO-GPA9pWqJuB22ldJn2uL_wIdfs5sL_NSQNU8TAjs_TtTTPptBStXP5sHAY8bYA1_pBxSgBrvN-GVztmErFM/s640/riot-games-deceive-no-ban%255B1%255D.png"><img border="0" data-original-height="274" data-original-width="640" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJtjuAwRrq6aMDBbX6HN1NwqqtsMB1dfANBTtLANNIyyjR9geMv3b0uGzO-GPA9pWqJuB22ldJn2uL_wIdfs5sL_NSQNU8TAjs_TtTTPptBStXP5sHAY8bYA1_pBxSgBrvN-GVztmErFM/w640-h274/riot-games-deceive-no-ban%255B1%255D.png" width="630" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>The RIOT game developers claim you will not be banned for using Deceive, but I do not trust that not changing in the future. I personally rather block the connection with a simple Windows Firewall Rule, and one day get a connection error than mess with packets that RIOT could potentially flag. The downside to my method is that it breaks chat/friends list completely, while Deceive still allows you to invite friends to your party and send messages. Either way, RIOT could change their policy and/or block people from playing that are not connected to chat or spoofing their online status. I take no responsibility for what you do with this information or the script below, though I think it's a slightly safer method to appear offline&nbsp;than using Deceive.</p><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><i>TL;DR:</i></b></h3>Creating a firewall rule to block TCP outgoing traffic on port 5223 is all that is required to disconnect the chat/friends system. This can be done in the Windows Firewall GUI or command prompt and removed when you want to appear online (or better yet, disable the rule).<p></p><p><script src="https://gist.github.com/martinkuna/d2dee969e66f9db214811c5987e0725b.js"></script></p><p>To make this easier, I decided to make a simple batch script to toggle adding/removing the firewall rule. To use it, create a new text file, paste the contents below in it, and save as <b>riot_invisible.bat</b>&nbsp;and double clicking will run it, prompting to add or remove the firewall rule.<br /></p><script src="https://gist.github.com/martinkuna/f9ccfd56e83c76cb680e0371aa2e58b2.js"></script></content><link rel='replies' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.martinkuna.net/feeds/8815723472494902477/comments/default' title='Post Comments'/><link rel='replies' type='text/html' href='https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=9059847171951264814&postID=8815723472494902477' title='5 Comments'/><link rel='edit' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/9059847171951264814/posts/default/8815723472494902477'/><link rel='self' type='application/atom+xml' href='https://www.blogger.com/feeds/9059847171951264814/posts/default/8815723472494902477'/><link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://www.martinkuna.net/2020/08/appearing-offline-in-valorant.html' title='Appearing offline in Valorant'/><author><name>Martin Kuna</name><uri>http://www.blogger.com/profile/01002103645468312367</uri><email>noreply@blogger.com</email><gd:image rel='http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#thumbnail' width='16' height='16' src='https://img1.blogblog.com/img/b16-rounded.gif'/></author><media:thumbnail xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" url="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJtjuAwRrq6aMDBbX6HN1NwqqtsMB1dfANBTtLANNIyyjR9geMv3b0uGzO-GPA9pWqJuB22ldJn2uL_wIdfs5sL_NSQNU8TAjs_TtTTPptBStXP5sHAY8bYA1_pBxSgBrvN-GVztmErFM/s72-w640-h274-c/riot-games-deceive-no-ban%255B1%255D.png" height="72" width="72"/><thr:total>5</thr:total></entry></feed>