I spent about an hour the other day playing around with that setting. there was no difference that I could tell between ultra and low. The distant models were like frozen ice skaters even on ultra. The one leg slide appearance.
Maybe the setting is currently borked.
The problem is, we can only speculate what happens until some dev actually clarifies.
Ideally footstep sounds are COMPLETELY unaffected of this setting but we don't know if it is the case.
A worst case is that a lower quality reduces the amount of footsteps you hear, so for example instead of hearing ALL nearby/relevant enemy footsteps you only hear let's say 1 to 5 depending on quality. This would make this setting super relevant for competitive players.
So an official answer from a dev would be NICE DICE! 😎
