Playing right now.
Look, the new tickrate systems looks so good for me. It's like I'm playing in the cloud, in the sky, you know? Its much smoother.
The new gun sounds looks weird at the first time but when you play you find it much more satisfying to shoot with new sound than the old sound.
Graphics and etc. are improved too
but
the biggest thing for sure is the new tickrate system.
idk what people are smoking im watching the gameplay and the graphics and gameplay look a lot better,this is still the closed beta so it doesnt even have all the features the full update will,idk what people expected from the game itself,i didnt even expect they would change the core gameplay at all
vertigo wasnt a new map they edited the fuck out of it to make it a real map not hostage, kept many of the concepts of the map tho. Anubis and Ancient, sure theyre new. They arent what anyone actually wanted but I don't know much about them as a player. But the real issue is map pool doesnt rotate for shit. There are more maps than are active (naturally), but people want things to cycle at least. The cs community usually hates new, thats why Tuscan is a heavily requested map vs some new random map.
I have experience with these interpolating techniques on the server side. I actually implemented something similar in context to a physics simulation (not a video game) and I can tell you, this system is not a substitute for just going for 128-tick servers. You will have weird interactions like you killed someone on your screen, he dies, then he is not dead for some reason after a fraction of a second. Your smoke and molly lineups will not work the same only sorta better on systems with low ping and no packet drops. AFAIK, valorant has 128 tick server on default matchmaking and that will always be better than interpolation between ticks. Also not to mention this interpolation is quite expensive to compute so they are making the servers expensive to run anyways why not just add 128-tick servers?
Graphics updates were kind of non-surprising. We all knew that source 2 would introduce better graphics. They did make the graphics better. What's new? Nothing really.
The new smoke mechanics is honestly the best part of it for me. Its just better IMO. It changes the way how you play the game and strategize. Imagine shooting through smokes now. The way they implement it is also quite nice. This is hands down the biggest change yet.
Valorant servers have not been able to provide consistent 128 refresh rates (tickrate) on their server for a long time. I dislike saying this, but it's the truth: CS:GO netcode (even with servers at 64 tickrate) is actually better/more stable than Valorant's.
The last time Valorant servers did NOT have to reduce the tickrate for at least 3/10 players of the server in order to compensate (hence creating an implied disadvantage) was right after Beta in 2020.
Riot keeps advertising this 128 tickrate consistency, but it can easily be proven wrong via testing their live servers. I wish there was less time (money) spent on skin development, and instead Riot focus on addressing their netcode issues.
This person actually displays the issue very well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cRURZusYUI&t=14s&ab_channel=ChristophSmaul
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3QbVnmocJE&ab_channel=ChristophSmaul
The cope is just insane.
I wrote an entire essay to prove how this guy has no idea what he is talking about but decided to not post it here.
Infact I measured valorant's tick rate using the same method as https://www.reddit.com/r/Rainbow6/comments/3upath/wireshark_the_tick_rate_debate/
and I measured a good 123Hz Ticks for incremental update packets.
Imagine confusing RTT with Tick rate lmao. Also imagine throwing words like "netcode" around without knowing what it means.
I haven't written the code for it, neither have I played CS 2.
I have however written similar programs where physics simulation happens and some networking is involved and you use interpolation to fill in the information between ticks and I can tell you that it only works on extremely low ping networks well. Anything above 50ms and you might as well wish the servers did not have this feature.
CS2 feels so much smoother than CSGO. CSGO was already smoother than valorant. Valorant punishes anything beyond 50ms to an unplayable extent. There's also other mechanism you have to take into account, like the anti wallhack system making models magically teleport into your screen because it's refusing to register them clientside before.
The only reason this isn't a big deal is because Riot are refusing to add replay systems. So all you get are these videos recorded client side without knowing the full picture. They even removed slow-motion replays from VCT because it made the game look horrible, as it is. And that's the issue, server side you hit the headshot but in your screen you were nowhere near and vice versa. And this is happening constantly. People who should be in your screen aren't and vice versa. It's so poorly optimised and if you had replays like in CSGO you'd be able to hold them to higher standards.
The fact alone that two people constantly see completely different things, (etc when two streamers play) from the reality of the server is just bonkers. It isn't the tickrate, it's probably something much worse than that.
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