Valve Addresses Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Hitbox Issues

[KDR_11k]

The .gif showed a discrepancy between the hitboxes and this one particular animation. The animation probably moved, but the hitboxes didn't move with it. This isn't evidence of a huge fundamental problem with the game.

Yeah, hard to tell with that gif but I assume it's just the server's hit detection not realizing that the player is in that animation.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Is that three models illustrating the problem in the top right picture?

 

[BoogieManFL]

The first Youtube link on page you go to after clinking the gif link illustrates the problem much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snZqkGJQ3qM

 

[QuadFish]

snip

We're talkin about a very basic problem here. Hitboxes are a core part of any game. To have them be broken, even if its not a widespread break, and to have them broken for years and no one ever cared to fix it? That's a damn problem.

Its like someone said above, if this had been EA and Battlefield or Activision and CoD there'd have been riots in the streets.

Is it a huge problem? Nope. Should it absolutely have been fixed in the 3 years the game has been out? Absolutely. Especially considerin the problem isn't some obscure bit of code that somehow causes a bug with a completely unrelated bit of code. Its a hitbox attached to your player model. That should not take 3 years to fix.

The hitboxes are not broken though. The only reason this is news now is because we finally got an example where it noticeably affected a pro game, hence all the attention on Reddit and requests to Valve to look into it. Aside from the tiny minority of games where this bug showed up, the hitboxes do what they are designed to do. I guarantee Battlefield and CoD have similar 1%-of-the-time bugs that are not currently causing street riots.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree with some of what you're saying (i.e. easy enough that it should have been fixed), but your tone, and the tone of most of the commenters in the thread, makes me think people are still overestimating the scale of the issue. Seems a lot of people are blaming inexperience with the game on hitboxes/mechanics, like this guy:

I bought CS:GO at launch, played a few rounds, snuck up behind an enemy and emptied a clip of my FAMAS (I think) at 2 meters into the guys back, he turns and drops me with his pistol...

... hit reg results : I hit 2 times leg and arm , he put 2 shots into my head.

Yes I was aiming, I had the reticle full on his back, the ping was decent (about 50 - 60 ms), the target was moving very slowly.

I uninstalled the game and never looked at it since.

Counter Strike takes hundreds of hours or more to master the shooting mechanics. It's designed to be hard to punish carelessness and spraying and reward careful, precise shooting. I hate being that "you're just not very good yet" guy, but I don't think blaming your own inexperience on the game itself after less than an hour playing is a valid criticism. Just go through this thread and you can count the number of people who either haven't played GO or only barely played, who are either expressing their frustration at a tough game or commenting based on no personal experience.

tl;dr The game is not broken. It's a rare hitbox issue being fixed right now, and people in this thread are using the news as an excuse to vent about a game they don't know well enough to validly criticise.

 

[idon'tknowaboutthat]

I hate being that "you're just not very good yet" guy, but I don't think blaming your own inexperience on the game itself after less than an hour playing is a valid criticism. Just go through this thread and you can count the number of people who either haven't played GO or only barely played, who are either expressing their frustration at a tough game or commenting based on no personal experience.

tl;dr The game is not broken. It's a rare hitbox issue being fixed right now, and people in this thread are using the news as an excuse to vent about a game they don't know well enough to validly criticise.

Yeah, have to agree with you here, it's kinda funny how people are coming out saying the whole game is broken or something. Last time I checked most people were playing just fine.

Snip snip

Yeah dude, sorry to hear about your experience with CS, but that shit happens. It's not CoD where you just click on people and they die, aim is a skill in CS. I'm still pretty bad myself by the way, I miss sprays all the time.

 

[ASnogarD]

Well I have played CS since 1.4 pre Steam when it was on the old WON system, I played CS:S quiet a lot too so I am fairly well versed in the aim and spread of CS weapons.
Thing is when I play BF or CoD titles, I aim and fire my weapon and bullets hurt things, in CS:GO I carefully aim and fire my weapon and it sprays like a hosepipe with a stick jamming the end... ie everywhere bar where I am aiming.

Note where I said I was like 2 meters from the target, aiming and firing at the broadest area of the target and the target was unaware and moving slowly... yet a clip of controlled bursts resulted in 2 hits , leg and arm and nowhere near the back that I had in my sights.

 

[Seraj33]

Well I have played CS since 1.4 pre Steam when it was on the old WON system, I played CS:S quiet a lot too so I am fairly well versed in the aim and spread of CS weapons.
Thing is when I play BF or CoD titles, I aim and fire my weapon and bullets hurt things, in CS:GO I carefully aim and fire my weapon and it sprays like a hosepipe with a stick jamming the end... ie everywhere bar where I am aiming.

Note where I said I was like 2 meters from the target, aiming and firing at the broadest area of the target and the target was unaware and moving slowly... yet a clip of controlled bursts resulted in 2 hits , leg and arm and nowhere near the back that I had in my sights.

You have to think about recoil compensation and aim time. That is what makes CS unique, shooting guns is hard.

 

[Seraj33]

tl;dr The game is not broken. It's a rare hitbox issue being fixed right now, and people in this thread are using the news as an excuse to vent about a game they don't know well enough to validly criticise.

The hitboxes are broken though, well maybe not broken, but definately not polished enough. In a game where skill in both knowledge and weapon handling are a huge deal, small things like that are a problem. And this article only brings up one part of the issue. There is the case of the head hitbox getting placed in the models abdomen while jumping. That is an incredible problem that is easily exploitable. Say, playing as CT on Mirage. You can without risking getting hurt check apps on B site by jumping by van.

 

[JET1971]

Why are they even using hitboxes? They can do the detection in the character models themselves just like rigging it to a skeleton. Far more accurate than a "box" that covers the body. Then it's just a matter of the code that runs the detection which is probably Valves issue here is they adjusted the code so the projectile has to hit closer to the center of the hitbox or it wont register and that will lead to undetected obvious hits.

 

[QuadFish]

snip

The hitboxes are broken though, well maybe not broken, but definately not polished enough. In a game where skill in both knowledge and weapon handling are a huge deal, small things like that are a problem. And this article only brings up one part of the issue. There is the case of the head hitbox getting placed in the models abdomen while jumping. That is an incredible problem that is easily exploitable. Say, playing as CT on Mirage. You can without risking getting hurt check apps on B site by jumping by van.

I appreciate that you're looking at it from real experience. The hitboxes aren't perfect, but there's a big difference between not perfect and broken. The jumping and planting bugs aren't excusable (though jumping punishes the jumper more than their shooter), but the hitboxes are pretty accurate at all other times so I would call that working but unpolished. It's a bit subjective, but I'd draw the line at "broken" if there was a consistent, systematic hitreg error, which there isn't. The recent change of inaccuracy calculation to server-side to prevent nospread cheats isn't helping the perception though unfortunately.

Why are they even using hitboxes? They can do the detection in the character models themselves just like rigging it to a skeleton. Far more accurate than a "box" that covers the body. Then it's just a matter of the code that runs the detection which is probably Valves issue here is they adjusted the code so the projectile has to hit closer to the center of the hitbox or it wont register and that will lead to undetected obvious hits.

Afaik all major modern shooters use some form of hit mask (Source uses boxes, Battlefield uses 'pills' etc). The exact method is different for each game, but usually each polygon in the object you want to test has to be calculated for. For a modern character model of 10-30000 polygons that's 10-30000 checks per shot which is unnecessary when a close-fitting hitbox of 100-1000 faces can be accurate enough. If Valve had that much server power to spare they'd probably upgrade to 128-tick servers over the current 64-tick like the community's been asking for for years. It'd be a waste to put it into something so unnecessary.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

Just to be clear, the hitboxes is general are fine. This .gif is related to a very specific issue where the bomb planting animation moves a lot but uses the standard crouching hitboxes, so the model leans forward a lot more than its hitboxes and seemingly dead-on shots miss.

Thank you. I was looking at that and thinking it might be a lag issue or something, because generally if that many shots fail to register at all then that's the reason. But your explanation makes perfect sense. Let's hope the people at Valve picked up on it.

I was in the beta for this game -- signed up on a lark and got randomly picked -- and I remember keeping up with the conversation on the forums. People were making all kinds of nitpicks, but even as someone who had no experience with the series up to that point, they mostly seemed perfectly reasonable to me. And they were almost all ignored despite the game still being in active development. Like the guy who said you should be able to see your own character's shadow because it can give away your position. That was a very smart idea, and I don't think they ever implemented it. I myself recommended that they take advantage of their cinematic physics system and have the time bombs' explosions actually affect the environment, like they do in Team Fortress 2. Game came out, explosions still just create an ineffectual puff of smoke.