Peeker's Advantage in CS2

Is Peeker's Advantage worse in CS2 than CS:GO? I did an experiment to show what peekers advantage looks like in Counter-Strike 2 compared to csgo 64tick and csgo 128 tick servers.

[nativetribe]

Thanks for never shilling out to the gambling websites

[tmf]

As a game developer, I think it's definitely a visual feedback thing, there have already been a lot of issues with the game's models not accurately representing the game state which seem mostly fixed now. Most people who could tell 64 tick apart from 128 tick did so either by the movement or the feedback from animations playing. Not saying there isn't a difference but I feel servers temporarily throttling for with the high player counts is a likely cause.

[offcial_.]

Very nice test, although maybe people saying CS2 'feels wrong' is more of an accumulation of the tracers being off and different movement updates and not just the shooting intervals

[CosmicDeejay]

Only WarOwl could put this amount of effort into a 7 min video with no sponsor. Good stuff

[goaty]

Most of the times when people complain about getting shot behind walls is when they are running behind the wall while the other person is peeking (so both players are in opposite motion) Does that mean that it's effectively double the peekers advantage/delay in those situations?

[beau]

I think this perfectly describes what is going on. I don’t see peekers advantage as being outrageous, but it does feel inconsistent. If it is true that every interaction is as slow or fast as your enemy, then every interaction is going to feel different. I would strongly argue that that’s a very, very bad thing.

[jsachs]

Another test I'd recommend is to simulate packet loss. What happens if you are interacting with some player with 1% to 5% of packet loss and vice versa, this is where goofy things happens. Btw, having at least 1% packet loss is usually a common occurence, could happen due to bad internet connection on either player, server connectivity issues (bad peering, degraded performance due to attacks, whatever)

[TopNotcha]

I genuinely can't believe you don't have a rotating roster of permanent sponsors already - deserve it so much more than so many sub-par creators. Anyway, here's a comment, like and share to boost your algorithm

[txz]

The thing that I observed, but have yet to test, is that the accuracy of the visuals changes depending on the server much more drastically than in csgo, even with consistent ping from both parties. This could be because the game isn't optimized fully yet, like how csgo was. But that "laggy" and delayed movement still persists in some situations.

[danielbum]

Fantastic testing. I feel like interp/desync has been tackled quite a bit in the November patches, so it would be interesting to know which exact patch these tests are performed on. Maybe it's even possible to compare CS2 from September with a current build and see if there are any tangible differences.

[ememm]

honestly for me a CS veteran - playing all the iterations from the 1, 2 and 1, 3 times - cs2 feels like there is a lot happening behind the scenes - it is almost as if some admin is sitting behind the wall and decides who gets shot every time - sometimes this person needs to go to the loo and then you hit nothing... This is the biggest grief I have - lack of consistency. Mind you I play in Europe and my ping is never higher than 50-60. Removing cheaters for a moment - I get the same sensation while playing with bots sometimes I hit crazy heads while next I shoot a bot 10 times with no register... So wtf is going on there is beyond me. I just know it never happened in previous games. Thanks for confirming this to me :)

[Skrillfreak]

Cool vid, I've been waiting to play cs2 till the community is more aware of what the new gameplay is like, I appreciate the investigations you do

[Gwilo]

I just want to congratulate you for creating that thumbnail and title, thing POPPED in when I booted up youtube

[jbc]

Great video, the whole 'interacting with high ping players, makes it seem like you also have high ping' would definitely explain a lot of the things I experience. I wonder how that works when you have a group of players close together with variable ping, I'd guess they'd all just get the de-sync from the player with the highest ping.

I also think you're onto something with server quality, one way you could test that is by limiting the cpu and memory capacity of you ec2 instances to try to artificially simulate a server under high load. I think it would also be telling to see the ec2 metrics(memory/cpu usage) over the course of a regular death match, or competitive match. Something with ~10 different players(not bots) running around shooting, and using grenades. Even if the players don't see issues, the metrics could show usage spikes that correlate to specific situations(like lots of grenades going off in a short amount of time).

[snusson]

been waiting for someone to put this effort in. ty

[ThmaZzzleep]

Ya know it's a good day when warowl uploads

[rn-]

I was waiting for someone to do 1:50. I would've done it myself if I had PCs.

Fantastic video, as always.

[harkeyGrant]

Love this, thank you WarOwl! Every new video from you is such a special experience, even if it's just a technical video, such as this. Happy holidays, wishing you the very best.

[houseking]

4:46
That shot made me so happy, I can't begin to express how much better that looks than any shot in cs2.
This is probably why pros said faceit felt a lot better than mm, the valve servers just aren't good enough for the game or for subtick. I'm sure you've also experienced a random mm game where the server makes everyone feel like they have 500-800 ping. Subtick basically just puts more work on the server and takes the way the game feels and makes it feel worst case scenario every time. It just doesn't make sense to use at all.

[caiobomani]

Thank you. Finally some actually data based comparison to show the differences. Speculations serves no one.