The Terrible Lag Compensation Issue That No One Is Talking About

[Schrodinger]

Hello everyone, I've come to talk about a serious problem in CS:GO that affect most of the players and they just don't know.

Here is the video I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXeEb1jXXi4&feature=youtu.be

I know how hard it is to get Valve to fix these sort of things, but the first step is making sure people know about the issue. We gotta try, right?

We all know CS:GO is about those milliseconds and precision, and if there is an issue REALLY affecting this, its for sure a problem.

It would be great if someone like 3kliksphilip made a video about this as he would get much more attention from Valve. I want no credits or attention for this, just really wishing to fix the game.



The issue:

CS:GO's Lag compensation algorithm is great, no doubt. But this one issue is affecting players without them even noticing. This problem affects (for sure) players with a ping higher than 40ms.

This video was made connected to a server with 125ms ping (0% loss, 0% choke, seriously). The ping is a bit exaggerated in order to make the issue clear.

That happens because whenever you're moving and get shot, the game will try to fix your character (client) position to match the moment you got the slowdown from the shot, because of the network latency, it will take a while to happen.

This is a major problem, because it directly affects your aim. Dying when already covered or rarely not registering shots properly are completely fine, as those are already dealt with the best way possible. But constantly teleporting sideways while in combat when there are other solutions is a major issue. Players with high ping already has to deal with all the disadvantages that come with the latency, all that together with this makes it unplayable.



People seem to NOT notice it:

I decided to talk to a lot of people over the last 2 years about this, casually ask around in pugs or friends if they had any trouble with it, then I noticed that the huge problem with this issue is the fact that almost EVERYONE I asked if they ever realised it, told me they NEVER really did (the few ones complaining about this were Lv 19-20 on GamersClub), and after showing the issue they started noticing it really frequently. For those with more than 40ms ping, this issue will happen CONSTANTLY. And its not something you can get used to. I've been practicing this game for five years now, I learned how to deal with everything, and its just fine, its how it works and its fine, but this messes with the aim in a very unpredictive and inconsistent way. Players with lower ping that simply shoots you in the body have a massive advantage.

Simply screwing with the muscular memory you devoted years to develop is not a good thing.

The better you are in the game an the finest are the movements, the more you'll notice this, and as the more you need the precision, the more you will be punished by this.



So:

Ok so its easy to point a problem without giving the solution..But first we need to know that this happens in order to better sync your client with what is really happening. If this doesnt happens at all, your character (in your client) would be on a very different position than from where you are in your enemy's perspective if you were getting shot at.

An example of what would happen if you did not teleport back: You're in a cover about to peek, the enemy shoots you through the wall and slow you down (not seeing you), but because of the latency, it takes a while to your client receive the shot. On his game, you are already slow down (because he has low latency) but on yours, you had already peeked and shot him when you got slow down. It will look like you killed him really quickly on a pre-fire.

A great solution is to compensate the latency by making the character go even slower until the server side information of your character catch up on the lag compensator. Trust me, it's way better than doing unintended moves. At least, getting really slow, you're still able to move your crosshair accordingly to what you see. Its fine to get slower for a few milliseconds, but moving your aim to a nonsense place for sure is bad.



Servers:

We all know creating new servers is not a great solution for Volvo, but just for you guys to know:I don't know about other countries, but here on Brazil, there's only one server for CS:GO located at São Paulo. Players like me on the Northeast and North regions of brazil has to deal with a ping around 50ms to 105ms (we even make jokes inside of the game, trying to guess the states the guy lives in by the ping). I've been playing with 80ms lately, but I had the opportunity for a few months to play on valve servers with 15ms, its a much responsive experience, sure, but not teleporting back in the duels made that the BEST experience I've ever had for CS:GO (besides LAN of course). Also, this issue CANNOT be seen on GOTV, you gotta record the gameplay on a recording software in order to see that you're not so bad at counter-strike, you're just teleporting sideways and thinking your game is lagging. (GOTV is recorded server side) On those examples I knew where the enemy was, took a few miliseconds to shoot on purpose, to simulate a legit and common reaction time. In game its even worst, when you are not sure where the enemy is, you move your aim and by the time you stop your aim at his head to shoot, you got teleported sideways and have to READJUST your aim while already getting hit, when you clearly should have won the duel. Getting slown down is a thing, teleporting back is a completely different one. Why focus on being a really aware and concentrated player to try to gain advantage over the enemy when the game will screw you anyway?... Add a few miliseconds to your brain react and understand that your aim moved by itself to try to fix and you're dead.





I want to know what are your thoughts on it? Have you ever noticed how this affects your game? There are different solutions for this, do you guys have any sugestions to fix this? Lets make Volvo notice.

[Boomer Lite]

Probably won't help but have you tried using Lima or Santiago servers?

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by t!red (USA):

Probably won't help but have you tried using Lima or Santiago servers?

I am from Brazil

[Boomer Lite]

Originally posted by Nebrets:

Originally posted by t!red (USA):

Probably won't help but have you tried using Lima or Santiago servers?

I am from Brazil

You can still use those servers if it helps. Language might be an issue of course.

[ZiG ZaG]

Talking about lagg: when I had a potato pc, laggy guys were just laggy guys and I could react and deal with them without a problem usually, people with good aim 144hz screens and high fps were the problem.
Now I have 240hz screen etc, so its a fair competition against everyone, except people with around 100+ ping.
They are literally teleporting every half second, but on their screen the game is normal.

Like imagine you are guarding D2 doors on A Long as CT. And then literally a guy teleports 3 times out of the door and gives you a headshot. You will see him moving into your crosshair then half a second later he is already past the door and then you see him moved forward again, while falling down dead from headshot.

How are you even supposed to deal with this ? :D

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by t!red (USA):

Originally posted by Nebrets:

I am from Brazil

You can still use those servers if it helps. Language might be an issue of course.

The problem is that those servers are physically too far away from here. It means that the ping would be higher. Around 160ms.

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by ZiG ZaG:

Talking about lagg: when I had a potato pc, laggy guys were just laggy guys and I could react and deal with them without a problem usually, people with good aim 144hz screens and high fps were the problem.
Now I have 240hz screen etc, so its a fair competition against everyone, except people with around 100+ ping.
They are literally teleporting every half second, but on their screen the game is normal.

Like imagine you are guarding D2 doors on A Long as CT. And then literally a guy teleports 3 times out of the door and gives you a headshot. You will see him moving into your crosshair then half a second later he is already past the door and then you see him moved forward again, while falling down dead from headshot.

How are you even supposed to deal with this ? :D

Yeahh, thats for sure. I have a 144hz as wall, its another game. But this is not about lag actually, lag compensation is not lag itself, this post is really about a mechanic that happens in the coding of the game that can be changed and fixed, but only if valve sees this...

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by ❮ Leo Sasaki ❯:

i thought i was the only one with this problem.

i NEVER played with ping below 65, with an average ping of ~80, so its quite normal for me to experience this.


the lag compensation system IS broken, no matter what people say, nowadays cheats exploits lag compensation for backtracking; thank you for sharing this as it needs to get valve's attention

Yeah, sure lag compensation has its downsides, but it has its good side as well, its well implemented. However, Its a bit old for now, we really need something new and better.

Im sorry to hear you suffer with this as well, but know that valve could fix it if they wanted (or at least knew about) they might even not know how this part of the code is affecting the players in general.

[Svyat]

I absolutely agree! Even 1.6 feels better in real-world scenarious...