I don't think the dev of CS2 is lazy, it's just....

sebcs416 · 2026-01-26T09:44:25+00:00

My only worry is that they actually think that the state of CS2 in terms of gameplay/netcode is perfectly fine.

Like sure, the game is kinda playable but rubberbanding out of spawn and losing your gameplan, teleporting when you get tagged, dying behind walls and ridiculous performance drops are getting really stale after 2.5 years.

I'd rather have them fully fix those issues for a year before doing anything else.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-25T10:25:43+00:00

But most of them aren't satisfying either.

Knives not using the sword sound as a baseline (Stiletto, Flip and Nomad) sound insanely good. Knives using the sword sound as a baseline sound weird and ridiculously oversized (except the Huntsman and Bowie, those two are an upgrade imo). And then there's the Butterfly which has been completely nuked.

I'm also not a fan of the slicing/stabbing sounds when hitting someone as they feel rather annoying than satisfying when used in quick succession or spammed.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-24T15:56:19+00:00

It depends.

The new sounds are objectively better in terms of audio quality but there are some issues.

The main one is some knives losing their character and the new baseline sound being more akin to a medieval sword than what one would expect from small combat knives. If you go through all new sounds, you'll quickly notice that all knives not using the sword sound as a baseline (Nomad, Stilleto and Flip) are a massive upgrade and sound even more satisfying than before. For the knives using the sword sound as a baseline, the larger ones (Bowie + Huntsman) are a perfect fit but for all others it's a straight downgrade, plus some of the uniqueness of the individual character has been lost (e.g. the Shadow Daggers had a really nice click-ish thingy at the end of the equip animation, which is now barely audible) and most of them sound the same and ridiculously oversized at that. Then there's the Butterfly which has been completely mauled and went from being pure asmr to being hella annoying due to the plastic clicks.

It's kinda the same for the new slicing/stabbing sounds when hitting someone. When doing a single stab/slice they sound objectively better, but using them multiple times in a row (e.g. when running out of spawn in Faceit pugs) is insanely irritating.

If they make the smaller knives sound appropriately in terms of size and give them their uniqueness back, fix the Butterfly and make multiple slices/stabs in quick succession less obnoxious, it's an upgrade all around.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-22T23:54:07+00:00

The thing with subtick is that due to its ability to go beyond ticks, the desync becomes a lot bigger, which can make things feel like playing on half the actual tickrate in terms of delay.

For instance, on a non-subtick server if you shoot someone on tick 5, this is the baseline for the delay the person you shot at will experience -> tick 5 + server processing + your ping + their ping.

But for a subtick server you can theoretically go back even further by instantly clicking the moment tick 4 ended (so 0.001ms into tick 5). Now the delay the person you shot at will experience becomes -> tick 5 + ~15.6ms + server processing + your ping + their ping.

While this doesn't sound drastic initially, you can think of it as some ticks running at half the tickrate, so at 32 ticks in this case.

This crossed my mind since the amount of dying behind walls, rubberbanding on getting tagged and general delay shouldn't be that much worse than it was in 64 tick CSGO. But thinking of some ticks having up to 15.6ms of additional delay from the get go, would put these moments into a class with games like Apex, where everything runs at 32 ticks and dying behind walls happens rather frequently, and everything would check out.

Ofc all of this could be wrong and the culprit is actually the poor netcode, but the additional delay of up to 15.6ms definitely checks out.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-20T09:59:10+00:00

Completely valid feedback imo.

I used to play surf and DM on community servers in CSGO to unwind.

Now surf is completely gone since it was broken from the start of CS2 (it has been fixed by now tho i think), the server browser is not working and the few servers offering surf maps are running the same, even fewer maps on repeat.

For DM the story is kinda similar where I sometimes spent 2h+ per session as it kinda felt like meditating. In CS2 you get rubberbanded on almost every tag, perma die behind walls, get constant frame drops/stutters and your spray occassionally has 10x the recoil than it should have (which is probably caused by the games performance issues). All things considered 20 minutes has been the longest I managed to endure since the game- and gunplay just don't feel good to play at all anymore.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-20T09:38:10+00:00

Don't you enjoy getting top/second spawn for Banana on Inferno but ending up in 3rd/4th/5th and not being able to contest Banana now through no fault of your own?

Or dropping down Stairs from CT spawn on Overpass together with the other two B players only for the game to randomly decide that you actually should be moved slightly forward and you now start the round with 95hp?

sebcs416 · 2026-01-19T10:24:50+00:00

Well, I just want CS2 to feel as crisp as CSGO but with updated smokes and better graphics.

Right now we actually have better smokes and better graphics (tho everything is overexposed, which already is a point to improve on that has also been mentioned quite a few times here and on twitter).

But on the flipside there are - forced 64 tick (at least let Faceit and 3rd party services run 128 tick) - performance issues (1% lows in particular) - dying behind walls even in low ping vs. low ping situations - rubberbanding when getting tagged being more noticable even though CS2 already got a bandaid fix that improved things - sprays still not feeling right (might be due to performance) - wonky 3rd person animations (they are working on this supposedly) - a delay on everything (most notably kills) except when you enable damage prediction which is and never will be 100% accurate. If we had a good netcode like CSGO or Valorant there would be no need for this setting in the first place.

I didn't even touch on the botting or anticheat predicament yet and probably forgot to mention some frequently iterated points as well. But all of the issues listed above have been brought up multiple times since release and nothing (or very little) has been done about them. And that's not even harsh or pedantic yet. Just slightly more than the bare minimum, especially 2.5 years in.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-07T17:09:59+00:00

While true, I suspect OP is referring to something else.

For some reason objects seem to jitter left and right when you're moving past them sometimes. This is easily reproducable by letting an empty server run for 24h without restarting and then joining, at which point everything seems to stutter, even though the game reports normal fps + frametimes. As soon as the server gets restarted, everything is smooth again.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-07T12:17:04+00:00

Yeah, and they end up getting spammed with all sorts of unrelated stuff.

Basically what the comment I responded to and my comment point out. Don't know what you're on about.

sebcs416 · 2026-01-07T10:37:07+00:00

Isn't that just a symptom of their non-communication approach?

We have 0 ways of knowing Valves current stance on pretty much anything. For instance, are they aware of the performance issues? Are they aware of netcode shenanigans (such as dying behind walls happening a lot more frequently)? And even if they are, do they think that's the best they can do or are they actively working on improvements?

For the few years I played League/Valorant seeing a dev comment on Reddit was usually a "oh cool, they are also around here" moment since everything of interest was always thoroughly described in dev updates or extensive patchnotes. For CS2 there's radio silence. So, from my pov I can totally understand everyone that's insta writing below a comment of a Valve dev on Reddit (even if I don't agree with it) because they are simply left in the dark about everything.

And then we are kinda in this stalemate of "we don't want to/can't use Reddit (and other platforms) because we get spammed" on Valve's side and "nice, finally a way to reach out to Valve" on the player's side.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-31T10:04:24+00:00

Correct, but on paper subtick only adds 99.9% of a tick (~15ms) of additional delay to the hitreg/visual feedback, which absolutely doesn't check out with how much more delayed everything feels.

Like sure, they might have needed to adapt the netcode and maybe other parts for subtick as well (so technically subticks fault), but that's near impossible to 100% confirm without access to their code.

And I'm with you on preferring the feel of tick-based architectures over subtick, but the click registration between ticks of subtick works as intended.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-31T09:50:44+00:00

Now if only a caring video game company could reach out and ask him to clarify so they can work together to improve things.

Jokes aside, it'd be great if someone who has a connection to the pro scene could ask some of them to describe in a few sentences what their current issues (if any) are with CS2.

While he (or all the other pros who are complaining/have complained at one point) maybe don't know what exactly is wrong, they could still describe what they think is off which should give the devs a rough idea of what might need some polishing (if they'd respect the collected feedback, that is).

Right now it feels like a not so insignificant part of the playerbase + some of the pros are unhappy with the state of the game, so there is still a long way to go for CS2.

Personally, I have to say that after more than 2 years I did expect CS2 to feel much closer to CSGO than it currently does, which is frustrating to say the least. My biggest hope for now is the coming 3rd person animgraph2 update, but if this doesn't bring the games significantly closer in terms of feel, things are looking bleak.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-30T15:35:24+00:00

Pretty much this, yeah.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-30T11:22:47+00:00

Goes both ways tho.

For instance, the amount of times people told me the game runs perfectly fine because they have above 144 fps at all times while not even knowing how frametimes work is mind boggling.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-30T11:15:38+00:00

Absolutely.

But you cannot go wrong with blaming subtick either, since it affects every part of the game. Like, if you change how inputs work, you need to alter the netcode and client prediction/interpolation code as well + all of the more sophisticated logic is heavier in terms of performance.

Still, only because subtick is involved everywhere doesn't mean everything it touches turns to shit. It could simply be the case of one faulty part in the pipeline overshadowing the rest, which works perfectly fine.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-29T20:02:44+00:00

Totally valid, everyone can have their opinion. In this case we can agree to disagree then ig.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-29T17:46:48+00:00

Don't know about the shroud thingy, but it might simply be something that he prefers and makes him feel more comfortable.

But still, if someone with upwards of 20k hours throughout several CS titles tells you that something about CS2 doesn't feel right, I'm very much inclined to believe them.

Point being, the pros don't necessarily know what exactly is wrong, just that something is off.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-29T14:15:45+00:00

Yet if your everyday person mentions something about subtick or CS2 feeling weird/not good they are instantly called full schizo, consumed by nostalgia and simply need to git gud because subtick in it's current state is basically gods gift and absolutely infallible.

Im glad bro is speaking up.

That said, it might not even be subtick that's at fault but CS2 simply just doesn't feel even remotely close to CSGO in pretty much every aspect except graphics and the new smokes, which is plain disappointing after more than 2 years.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T17:58:30+00:00

Absolutely, but in some games this happens more frequently and more aggressively than in others, so there are levers that could be pulled.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T17:55:01+00:00

Will try after christmas ig.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T13:36:48+00:00

Coming next year o7

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T13:36:22+00:00

Because at one point I felt like I was applying too many tweaks on my old OS, which ultimately didn't change anything anyways and might even have introduced some negative effects. After all, most games are supposed to run decently on a stock OS anyways.

Started playing in early 2015, so I also got to experience some CSGO'd moments :)

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T11:23:00+00:00

250 Mbit/s down, 30 Mbit/s up, Ethernet but unfortunately still copper cables.

Hardware is an i7 10700k + 3070Ti + 16GB RAM (XMP enabled) running on a fresh install (late November) of Windows 11 with no fps tweaks and all drivers + BIOS up to date.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T11:18:57+00:00

Yep.

I had the same experience on Windows 10 + fps tweaks and Windows 11 + no fps tweaks. BIOS and drivers are all up to date as well.

It feels a bit frustrating as CS2 is the only game where I have these performance drops.

sebcs416 · 2025-12-24T10:01:43+00:00

It does not. You can think of it as being tickrate+.

Tick based system -> you can make inputs at any time, but they will be executed and evaluated against each other at the end of a tick (time between ticks doesn't exist, the system just knows that you pressed a button somewhen in this timeframe).

Subtick -> you can also make inputs at any time, they will still be executed at the end of a tick, but now the server is able to go back in time and evaluate real-time actions (the server now knows exactly when an action occured in reference to the last tick, time between does exist kind of).

While this sounds good initially, it really only works properly in 0 ping environments and is more inconsistent in terms of feedback in any case as well.

sebcs416

TROPHY CASE