Hello people of Earth(?),

We've had a couple of questions recently regarding the "Buy Line," how/why we use it to retime, and what we define as crossing over it.

Why do we use the "Buy Line" and not something else? The Buy Line is used instead of something like the Buy Phase sign because while they are are both supposed to disappear after you cross the line, the sign doesn't always disappear right away. This obviously can cause inconsistencies with retiming as people can get farther through the map before their timers start which gives them an unfair advantage over other runners.

What do we mean when we say "crossed the line?" This is the most frequent question we get about the Buy Line. What we ask ourselves when retiming is: "If they look straight down does their crosshair cross over the Buy Line?" If the answer is yes, you've crossed the line. If the answer is no, you haven't crossed the line, however, this is subjective to the mod doing the retiming. The crosshair is used instead of the player model because you cannot see your body when you look down but you can see your crosshair.

What if you can't see the "Buy Line" in my run? In cases where the runner is not looking down or partially down and we cannot see the exact instance in which you cross the line, we use chipped tiles in the floor and the wall to estimate your crossing. For example, the Spike Defusing map has a large chunk of tiles missing right after the buy line on the left-hand side. When the edge of your screen touches the missing tiles, you've crossed the line.

Can we have an example? MrPotatobread has kindly allowed us to use his runs as examples for the forum post. In his runs, you can see him look straight down and edge his way over to the line to determine if he has crossed it. Example Link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=72_0wodWczA&t

As stated previously, the crossing of the line is subjective to the mod doing the retiming. If you think there is an error in the retiming or you think it was done unfairly, please submit a support ticket in the Valorant Speedrun Discord with the link to your run and your concern. If you have a more general question that doesn't require an answer from a Mod, you are also more than welcome to submit questions in the general chat of the aforementioned discord.

Thanks, Fm