Tickrate is how many times a second action
in Counter Strike is updated. You can think
of it as a video file, where each frame updates
where you’re stood, where you’re looking,
whether you’re firing a bullet… and whether
those bullets are hitting other people! All
that kind of stuff.
Matchmaking is 64 tick. That’s 64 times
a second- which is a higher ‘framerate’
than this video!
But they operate in a similar way. Every frame
you see of this fight is like a tick, updating
the positions of the players and whether a
bullet is being fired or not. Videos are 60
instead of 64- but it’s close enough to
get the idea. The jumps between the frames
you see here are roughly how far apart individual
ticks are in-game.
Some people don’t think 64 tick is enough.
Here is 128 tick… represented by a 120 FPS
video, slowed down.
Some people think 128 tick feels better to
play on and helps their shots to hit.
… but also remember it would do the same
for your enemies! So in theory it should balance
out.
But higher tickrate does other things as well.
Apparently, it makes bunny-hopping and surfing
easier, and changes where grenades go if you
throw them whilst running or jumping. I can’t
say for sure whether it does or not. I avoid
testing this kind of thing as I find it hard
to limit all of the variables- my performance
in-game being one of them!
But many people swear that higher tickrate
is better. And now they’ve had their chance
to prove it.
Master server modder, Kinsi, has been running
a test that you may have taken part in- and
the results are now in.
On a popular reddit post the other week, he
invited you to join his server and to play
up to 4 rounds.
At the end of each, you were asked to choose
whether you thought it was 128 tick or not,
and then the server would restart with a new
randomised tickrate.
But there was more to it than that! Because
while some of the servers were 128 tick, and
others 64… others were just 47 tick. Because
why not.
But could people correctly identify which
servers were 128 tick?
…No.
20% of results had to be removed since they
didn’t submit a guess- many of these were
because the server shut down because it wasn’t
populated enough to start the test. And 5%
of people cheated to try and find out the
server’s tickrate. Shame on you.
From the results that remain…
From the people playing on 128 tick servers,
53% correctly guessed they were playing on
a 128 tick- which is just a little bit better
than randomly guessing.
Unfortunately, of those on 64 tick servers,
53% of them also thought it was 128 tick!
So people can’t tell if a server is 64 or
128 tick.
It was only with the 47 tick servers that
people thought the experience was worse…
but 46% of them still thought it was 128 tick.
But what do these results mean? Well, I guess
it means that people can’t tell the difference
and that 64 tick is enough. There isn’t
evidence to suggest that 128 tick improves
the experience, and only a hint that 47 tick
makes things worse!
But you’ve got to accept what this test
was. It tested 905 players of all skill-levels
and abilities. Each result was only based
on a single round. Had it targeted the surfing
or bunny-hopping community, maybe the results
would have been different. I think this test
has been a good starting point, but it raises
more questions than answers, opening the doors
to further and perhaps more focused tick-rate
testing.
It’s sad to see that these ‘PROPER’
results comprised of just 905 players. Given
the exposure the test received on Reddit and
Youtube, this is disappointing… but you’ve
got to make do with what you’ve got!
As I’ve already mentioned, there were people
who tried to cheat, and those who simply didn’t
know. Even a test as simple as this one throws
up a lot of complications, like what to do
with players who join late, or those with
a high ping. Is one round enough to warrant
a conclusion? Should the matches have been
split based on skill-level? And so on.
But please, don’t dismiss these results
for one of these reasons. If you blame low
skilled players for ruining this test… you’d
be missing the point. These results won’t
show if high skilled players are more likely
to correctly guess the tickrate. It wasn’t
looking for that. But even if high skilled
players are better at telling, when the results
as a whole come out so close to being 50-50
chance, it kind of suggests that 64 tick matchmaking
is good enough for MOST people. Which is what
it’s for!
We’ll get back to Kinsi’s test. For now,
let’s consider what tickrate is. Even 64
will update the action every 16 ms. Think
about that! How much changes in 16 ms? Time
for some examples.
If you’re firing a rifle, that’s 5 ticks
between each shot.
THIS is how far a running player moves every
tick, on a 64 tick server. This is a worst-case
scenario: enemies, nearby, running across
the screen. It takes about 4 ticks for their
head to move a whole heads’ worth of distance,
when on a server running at 64 ticks a second.
The question is simple: is this enough?
Unfortunately, the answer is incredibly complicated.
And the more I learn, the more complicated
it becomes. Even with help from Kinsi, who
knows his stuff, I still don’t feel qualified
to give a definitive answer- and I’d be
wary of anybody who can.
In an earlier version of this video I attempted
to explain it, then got onto interpolation,
lag compensation, made something that looked
eerily like a topic I covered a while back
while trying to work out what happened to
hitreg between the ticks and by the third
page I began to question the very fabric of
reality.
So I’ll try to condense it down to this:
There’s only so much you can do with a server
where the ping can considerably exceed the
length of a tick. If I fire a shot, there’s
no way other players can see this until that
information has gone to the server and then
back out to them again. That is a problem,
when you’re talking about a game based around
twitch reflexes. There’s some degree of
time travel and buffering involved and -all
things considered- I’m honestly surprised
that matchmaking over the internet is as good
as it is.
Being a simple number, where more is ‘better’,
64 tick is easy to villainise. Especially
if you slow the action down. But as fleshy
humans playing a game with many approximations
and delays between us and the server, it seems
strange to fixate on tickrate being the be-all-end-all.
For LAN, sure. Have 128 tick, why the hell
not. But when you’re dealing with the sprawling
labyrinth that is the INTERNET… there are
other factors besides the tickrate that determine
how ‘good’ a server is. For us in England,
I honestly think having some 64 tick matchmaking
servers hosted in this country would be a
better way of improving the experience than
to be gaming on a 128 tick server somewhere
in mainland Europe. As an example.
Let’s go back in time. Back, back, back.
Counter-Strike Source didn’t have 64 tick.
It was 66! And instead of 128, the fastest
servers would run at 100. And the worst servers
would be 33 tick! I remember our clan would
buy a 66 tick server, but it would always
start at just 33 tick. I suspect the server
company did this deliberately to lighten the
load. Each of their computers would host several
Counter-Strike servers, so the fewer ticks
they had, the faster their servers would run…
or maybe they’d just run more servers on
each machine. Who knows.
If you noticed your 66 tick server was just
33 tick and let them know, it would magically
jump to 66! I was okay with this, since I
figured the fewer people who knew this, the
better the performance would be for ours!
Our 66 tick server was GREAT. It was in England,
so we all got great ping. Shots would feel
so much more responsive on this than on servers
hosted in France, or Germany, or wherever
else it was. Since CS:GO matchmaking isn’t
hosted in England I blame this for our country’s
poor performance.
Problem was, it was kind of accepted that
if a clanmatch was to be played, it would
be played on the server with the highest tickrate.
Some clans would boast of having a 100 tick
server so we’d accept that we’d have to
play on theirs.
And guess what. Most of these servers were
TERRIBLE. They were laggy. Jerky. If you wanted
to hit people you’d eventually resort to
spray and pray, then wait for a while for
the server to tell you if your shots had registered
or not, as packetloss shot through the roof
and your PC lost connection to the server
for those valuable few seconds. It was unplayable.
I suspect most of these were hosted on one
of their players’ own PCs. If you ever think
matchmaking servers are bad you really need
to play a game hosted on somebody’s laptop.
Though funnily enough, they were happy to
immediately dismiss ours just for being 66
tick! But they were allowed to, because 100
tick was accepted as being the only thing
that mattered back then.
Story over.
All things being equal, 128 tick is better
than 64. But there are other factors that
often dwarf the improvement an increased tickrate
provides. And 64 tick is enough for a good
experience if on a good server with a good
ping. I think that’s apparent from the test
results.
Another fun result from Kinsi’s test: did
people who played better guess a higher average
tickrate?
…Maybe.
I will show you the data, and you can make
your own mind up about it. This is how people
who achieved different KD ratios rated the
server. You can see that, in general, the
higher their K/D, the more likely they were
to think they were playing on a 128 tick server.
I’d have liked a larger sample size for
each category here, but like I said, we’ve
got to make do with what we’ve got.
And from what we can see, how people performed
does appear to influence what they think the
tickrate is. But maybe there’s some truth
to this! So let’s compare these predictions
to what the average server tickrate really
was!
And this is interesting. Those who played
better were more likely to be on a 128 tick
server! …but so were the people who performed
the worst. And the average server tickrate
was lowest for those who performed just below
average. What if those who performed the best
and worst were in the same matches as each
other? That sounds like it makes sense, doesn’t
it. Like if one person’s doing really well,
somebody else has to suffer. And if this is
the case… then maybe higher tickrate allows
for the better players to perform better,
and that’s why the weaker players performed
worse on these high tickrate servers!
Like I’ve said, take these possibilities
with a match-load of salt. In fact, the ONLY
conclusion that’s abundantly clear from
this is the gap between players’ guesses,
and the actual server tickrate. In total,
just over 50% of players thought they were
playing on a 128 tick server… but in reality,
only 29% of them were. Had people been able
to tell the difference between 128 and the
lower tickrates, you’d have hoped that more
players would have said they felt they were
on a lower tickrate server. But at 50%, they
might as well have been randomly guessing.
Kinsi decided to compare results in another
way. He looked at how many of the hits were
headshots, and only included entries with
5 or more kills.
And from this, he got a very nice chart, where
the higher their headshot percentage, the
more likely they thought it was 128 tick.
My chart wasn’t quite so nice since I split
the categories a different way. But the same
trend can be seen. The higher the headshot
percentage, the more likely these people were
to guess the server they were playing on was
128 tick.
And, if we include how many servers WERE 128
tick…
Wow, look at the 60% headshots and above category.
Almost everybody here thought they were playing
on a 128 tick server… and almost all of
them were correct. WOW! This could be the
proof we need that shows that 128 tick is
better for headshots!
…if it wasn’t for the sample size, which
for this category was… 7. Again, not Kinsi’s
fault. You’ve got to make do with what you
have. But this is nowhere near big enough
to make a definitive conclusion from. And
get this- 5 of these 7 players were on 128
tick… and the other 2 were on 47.
And what’s more, looking at all of the people
who scored 5 kills or above… only 24% of
them were on 128 tick servers. 33% were 64
tick… and a massive 44% of these high achievers
were on 47 tick
lol
What a rollercoaster ride this has been.
Whatever your opinion on tickrate is, it’s
safe to say that Kinsi has hosted a fascinating
experiment here that has given you a chance
to test it for yourself. I urge you to check
out the results in this video’s description.
He’ll go into more depth than I have.
And if you want to try the test yourself,
you’re in luck! The experiment has been
extended- though these results will be kept
separately from those already recorded. And
if you’ve already done the test, you can
see if you got your guesses right! Links are
in the description.
