el_vper posted a video where his bullets would
repeatedly miss the target if he quick-switched
just after firing. This made Valve break its
vow of silence and Brianlev, an employee of
the company, released a statement on Reddit,
explaining the situation with the hitboxes.
Long story short, they haven't changed how
hitreg has worked in a while, so either it's
something else or it was from an older update
and we just hadn't noticed it until now.
What's more important about this, however,
is that Valve values people who find solutions.
As they stated, 'Providing clear reproducible
steps is the best way to track down elusive
bugs'. In other words, if you can consistently
miss a shot that SHOULD hit and share how
you did it, then Valve can do something about
it.
I don't have the answers. But I have made
a nice little cfg file that sets up a server
in perfect conditions to try and find problems.
Perhaps you, like el_vper or myself in that
recent charity game, can find a way of consistently
missing every shot you fire. If you do, upload
a video explaining how you managed it and
perhaps Valve will respond to YOU as well!
Onto my testing method.
Load up an empty, offline deathmatch game
on a map of your choice, I recommend Baggage,
join terrorists and type the following commands
into the console:
...or alternatively just put the CFG file
in the description of this video into CSGO's
CFG folder and type this instead.
You can now run about in slow motion, shooting
at bots who won't shoot back. When your shots
connect the hitboxes will show up for a couple
of seconds. Blue is server-side, red is client-side.
Ideally these should be the same! Problems
arise when it shows up one colour and not
the other, since it means that part of the
game disagrees with another about whether
you hit them or not.
It's worth mentioning that my cfg contains
a command to remove inaccuracy from the weapons.
I can understand if you find this confusing.
Every gun has an amount of inaccuracy, even
when you're stood still, and this inaccuracy
is calculated separately on both your computer
and the server's. This means that it's possible
for your computer to think a shot hit when
the server disagrees... and the other way
around. This should in theory cancel itself
out, since the randomness can't be planned
for in the first place, though I'm sure you've
had many situations where you feel it's rigged.
Valve itself stated that because of the inaccuracy,
the showimpacts console command can be misleading.
Which is why my cfg gets rid of any weapon
inaccuracy. A knock-on benefit is that 360
noscopes are a lot easier to do.
Despite all this, I still found occasions
where only the client or server side said
that I hit. Because of this, and at the risk
of sounding stupid, I'd recommend that you
DON'T judge shots on the hitboxes that show
up. We're not computers. We're not meant to
compensate for lag or anything like that.
That's the game's job. We're people with guns,
shooting at other people. We make sure that
our crosshairs are trained on the targets
and we pull the trigger. If it misses when
it should have hit, there's a problem. Until
we get a console command that shows the enemies
as hitboxes that we're supposed to aim at,
this is the best we can hope to do.
So why include the showhitboxes console command
in my cfg? Well, look at it this way. If we
shoot at somebody and his hitboxes pop up
in another location then there's a problem!
If this happens every time then we've hit
the jackpot and have irrefutable evidence
to show Valve that there's a problem!
Sadly, I couldn't find a way of consistently
missing shots.. apart from when jumping, where
the client-side is consistently ahead of the
server. And Valve is already aware of problems
like this, and is working towards fixing them!
This limits us even more. We have to try and
find a way of CONSISTENTLY missing shots that
SHOULD have hit against enemies who are either
stood still, or running about. These bullets
must pass straight through their models without
inflicting any sort of damage.
Valve mentioned already that the majority
of problems in these situations comes from
an internet connection and the delay associated
with it, but there's really no excuse for
this when you're testing it offline like this.
It's up to us to break this game!
So what's the solution? Ideally, Valve should
make it so that what people see on-screen
is the same as what the server does. Perhaps
Source 2 will solve all our problems! But
failing that, what else can be done? Remember
that CS GO is a game that requires a lot of
skill to master. There ARE a lot of things
to factor into a shot. You have to be stood
still. You have to be aiming at incredibly
small hitboxes that are often moving very
quickly. And to top it all off, you have weapon
inaccuracy and recoil compensation to consider.
All of this makes it nigh-on impossible to
prove, without a doubt, that there's something
wrong with the game's hitreg.
As dodgy as the hitboxes might be, it's obvious
that a lot of people will miss shots fair
and square and will want to jump on the bandwagon
rather than blame their lack of ability. Valve
could remove any sort of inaccuracy from the
weapons to reduce this... but then it wouldn't
be CSGO any more, would it.
They could make the hitboxes larger! At the
moment they're actually SMALLER than the models,
meaning that bullets that skim their outline
may completely miss. Making them larger will
return it to how it was in Source. I personally
quite like the idea since I'd rather hit something
that narrowly missed than miss something that
narrowly hit. My AWP stats would go through
the roof! The issue is that this is a bit
of a messy solution that avoids tackling the
underlying problem.
They could make hitreg client-side, where
if you hit on your screen then it counts as
a hit. I believe that games like Tribes and
Arma do this. I'm no expert but I'd suspect
it would make it easier to cheat, plus it
could give people with bad connections an
unfair advantage.
But like I said, I am no expert. I hope that
by providing you with a method of testing
the hitboxes yourselves that someone, somewhere
might find a way of replicating shots that
miss when they shouldn't. I can't say how
to do this. If I knew what to look for then
I'd be closer to finding the answer myself!
But we do know that Valve is watching and
will welcome any evidence of hitbox problems
with open arms.
