I'm aware of the game performing differently on different accounts. I honestly think I was the first to notice this (Been trying to find the cause for 7 years and could never find anyone else online talking about it.....I chose never to mention it at the time because people, friends etc were already saying the problem was in my head and I was trying to find excuses for being bad.InputLagger wrote: ↑02 Nov 2022, 00:55If you're are talking about csgo desync, maybe the account somehow affected, because new account (im never tried it, only play casual, but on my main account the game became smooth and sharp only once, when csgo looses some connection or have bug, and suddenly I m only have all default knifes, gloves, guns at this moment) and the game feels butrery smooth and sharp. You can also try Non-steam csgo version with bots, for comparison.
These same guys also must have had selective memories though as they seemed to have forgotten I was historically 30+ bombing, top fagging, clutching way above them, carrying them and destroying every single one of them in 1v1s even if they had the host advantage.
I had already devised a theory that it must be down to some account setting/collection of community content/inventory. Over the years I have periodically jumped onto my other account just to see how it feels. Some time it would feel amazing for a while from hours to days/couple of weeks max.
I only really play competitive at weekends now but I jump into official DM almost daily just to gage game feel and try to coincide when it feels right with something else - Which is extremely rare and usually just pops up randomly and I'm like "WTF? This feels like a whole new game" and then really look forward to playing again when the weekend comes hoping it will stay like this at least until then.
I have found that the only thing that seems to consistently make my alt account feel good is to just not play on it for a long period of time. When I return to it the game mechanics feels like I'm playing a different game.
On my main account the game just has its seemingly random and rare moments of working properly and within its own mechanical rules. I don't take anywhere as near as long breaks on this account as I do on my alt.
When people with this problem think they have found a "fix", they get told it's just placebo and the problem will return, they know themselves deep down that it is going to return and they start to question themselves whether it was placebo or not.........
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I know this sounds stupid because it is just a game, but it can actually really affect someone on a psychological level. Not because they take gaming too seriously or there is something mentally wrong with them, but because they are actually observing something they know for a fact to be true but are being told by so many people they are imagining it and therefore start to question themselves.
I have have never been an angry gamer and I have always been someone who wants to improve at whatever it is I do. I have never been one to make excuses for losing/being bad/making mistakes and I am perfectly capable of knowing when I have done something wrong and when the other player beat me because he was better.
I'm the kind of guy to say "GG well played!" to the enemy even if I lost abysmally or "Wow NS!" when someone gets a good shot on me, but, I no longer do this in CS:GO. I will not say "GG" or "NS" anymore simply because win or loss so much crazy, unfair and mechanically impossible stuff happens it makes the game unplayable and even legitimately nice shots looks like pure running head shot luck in just about 99% of encounters.
Even as a kid, dying to that one boss over and over and over would sure get frustrating but I knew it was just down to me not doing it right/needing more practice and would carry on and on until I either gave up in defeat (rare) or had mastered it but here is an example which is completely out of character for me.
I recently had a meltdown in a match that I solo queued for. The whole match, enemies were performing impossible movement's and killing me before I could even react to anything. Running pre-fire head shots, unrealistic reaction times. It was plain for me to see it was impossible to react to anything these guys were doing and any normal person would accuse them of cheating but the score board of my team mates and spectating their encounters showed a whole different dimension of play.
My team mates weren't experiencing this. Their encounters looked like friend and foe looking at each other for 2 seconds then the team mate completely screwing up their spray, swinging side to side and still getting the kill whist the same enemies are consistently running, gunning and instantly preferring me in every round and every single encounter. regardless of which enemy it was, even their bottom fragger. I was going something like 0-17 and my team mates start shouting at me, telling me "Youre so f**kin slow", "You must be on drugs", "you have brain lag" and persisted with this throughout the match. At one point I had had enough of trying to explain to them that "I am seeing something different to them and I must be lagging", that I was instantly dying in encounters they said I apparently had brain lag in. I went off and started shouting and swearing at them which is not something I do. I got really mad, but it wasn't anger at me losing or really anger at these guys for pointing out what they were obviously seeing on their end......is was more like a "OMG IM GOING TO GO F**CKIN CRAZY" release of anger because It was like the very thing I am observing, the thing happening right in front of my eyes right now is being contradicted by 4 other parties.
Throughout that match in between rounds I jumped on human benchmark and did the reaction time test, getting around 150ms every time. I knew what I was seeing on my screen, and I knew I was reacting within my normal abilities but I just had to confirm to myself that my reaction times were normal, prove to myself that I did not have brain lag.
This isn't even just about the game anymore for me. Sure I would love to be able play CS as it's meant to be played again, but I really, realllly have to find the cause of this problem and prove it once and for all to the people that really don't understand it and deny that it happens. Even if I was to quit CS:GO altogether I would still be actively searching for a fix to this.
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........but, I'ts not placebo. What is happening is the people suffering these problems are fully aware of it and are constantly changing settings and making tweaks so often that when the game does rarely get that brief moment of proper functionality they assume a recent tweak must have fixed the problem. The problem then returns after a short period which is when they start questioning their own mentality "was it placebo"?
This isn't how placebo works. If someone is sensitive to the effects of placebo to the point that even when they know the results could be down to the placebo effect then it should occur with every tweak and fix they do, but it doesn't. The game being "fixed" is simply just a random occurrence.....sure something has changed but not something the user did, they just think so. Also, when someone knows placebo is a possibility then placebo effects are unlikely to occur. The people who have been actively trying to fix this issue are fully aware of the placebo effect.
"Maybe everyone has this problem but not many people notice it."
This thought has popped into my head many a time but I instantly dismiss it. Anyone who does have this problem can't possibly not notice it. If the game was this inconsistent and unplayable to everyone then no one would actually play it besides newcomers who would just think it is how the game is, but they wouldn't last very long either due to frustration. It wouldn't even be possible to see the game as a viable e-sports candidate. It would mean everyone you play against also has the same problem but the fact that you are the one on the sh***y end of the stick the vast majority of the time is statistically impossible or for some reason you have the problem to a higher degree than everyone else? This theory is also incompatible with the game feeling "fixed" periodically. If it was a problem everyone has then why would it fix itself at different times for different people?
I mentioned in my previous post my theory of the choke problem being masked/compensated for rather than the packet loss itself actually being fixed but I have a couple of other theories too. Firstly though, this packet loss would have to occur only within Valves own network. It's impossible to test this as the only way to connect to Valve servers is through Steam or a Valve game client that hides everything after the relay since SDR was introduced. You can test packet loss up to Valves relays but after that you're blind. So if you're from say, England and connect to an EU west server you will most likely be routed via Valves London relay which for you is the end point but your traffic is then routed through Valves own network all the way to the game server, wherever that may be. If you find that through all the tests you can possibly do that there is nothing wrong with your connection then the only place connection problems could occur in game is between the Valve relay and the endpoint chosen by that relay.
Since the game obviously has it's random moments of "running properly" I find it very unlikely that this is a general networking or local hardware problem. When the game is running as it should I have been unable to detect any difference locally with my network or hardware. It also persists over multiple ISPs (even different technologies, DSL, FTTC, FTTP), hardware and locations so people are tying it to an account problem.
Tin foil hat time....
A: As mentioned above internal packet loss/choke between the relay and the game server that is compensated for on the server side delaying data to the client so it has enough data to interpolate over. We need to collect info on many people suffering this problem and see if there is a pattern in location and what relays they're most likely to go through. Alternatively Valve could give us an in game raw UDP throughput and quality test that we can run manually. On another note, I'm in the UK so I should be getting servers in Amsterdam but the system keeps insisting on putting me on Warsaw, Stockholm and Madrid servers. I ping 12 to Amsterdam through the London relay server (5MS Front, 7MS back) while the servers it keeps putting me on are much further away and at least triple the ping. If i force my ping to something low it will take longer to find a match but it will put me on an Amsterdam server with 15 ping. After 5 minutes or so in the match my ping will jump up a lot higher and in Wireshark I will see the server IP has changed. So, even if I force a low ping and it finds a low ping server for me it will still dynamically reroute my connection some other way during the match via a route with a much higher ping. This to me suggests that my connection to Amsterdam, the location I should always be connecting to has some stability problems which is why even if I force a low max ping it will still reroute me mid game.
B: Lag compensation is legitimately broken. There's a server side algorithm generating lag compensation parameters on a per player basis determined by connection quality over time......but it's doing something wrong and some players are getting stuck in an incorrect parameter set.
C: Valve is artificially manipulating delays/mechanics on a per player basis regardless of connection quality. Both EA and Activision are known to do this, they have registered patents that confirm such systems. What would make you think Valve wouldn't employ such systems? I personally don't think they would do it in a manipulative way like Activision does to increase player retention in order to sell more skins but I do believe that it is something they would implement as part of the Trust Factor system. Look at it this way, people with this problem all have one thing in common. A repetitive long term experience loop. Game runs perfectly for a while > Destroy everyone with ease during this time and get accused of cheating over and over > Game goes back to absolute hot garbage for ages without even ranking up so you can't even say it's down to an increase in enemy skill level > Rinse and repeat.
Theoretical Loop....
Trust Factor goes up and game play feels great for a short period of time > Play extremely well with normal mechanics and get reported a lot > Trust Factor goes down and game play feels crap/you feel handicapped for a long period of time, your'e not getting reported anymore, trust factor goes back up slowly > Repeat
Take for example....ranking up is harder for some people than it is others. Friends of the same rank can play together, one can consistently outperform the other yet maybe rank up once while his lower performing friend ranks up multiple times.
from what I've seen, this "hard stuck" experience often goes hand in hand with the delay/desync problem.
There is one thing that contradicts all of the above though.......The problem appears to occur on community/Faceit servers too :S