Players report hit detection issues in Black Ops Cold War
A number of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War players are reporting issues with hit detection in the game, claiming their bullets aren’t connecting with enemies correctly.
Hit detection in any video game is a crucial part of the core player experience. In Call of Duty, often a single shot is what decides the difference between life and death, resulting in tense combat scenarios throughout the multiplayer experience.
When everything goes perfectly with player connection, server stability, and hitboxes, Call of Duty feels like a steady flowing, responsive first-person-shooter. Unfortunately, in the latest installment, Black Ops Cold War, players have been reporting issues with hit registration in multiplayer, most commonly in the large 40 player Fireteam mode.
You can see such examples below, starting with a post by user ProBoocester on Reddit.
As you can see from the clip, the player is shooting at his prone target and missing shots. This is in the Fireteam game mode, so it very well could be de-sync, where the server thinks he is firing somewhere else, or the enemy player model is positioned differently to the server.
It appears instances of the issue are specific to the Fireteam game mode, which runs at a lower tick rate than normal multiplayer matches.
Tick rate is not necessarily equal to frame rate, however, it is a good rule of thumb that servers refresh at 60Hz. Bigger modes can get away with 30Hz.
In the video below you can see another instance where Reddit user wyld3knfr runs into a similar experience on an AFK player.
Similar to the first clip, this player engages the AFK enemy and no shots connect, giving the other player an opportunity to react to him. The clip cuts short before the end of the engagement, but considering his lack of ammo, it may be safe to say he died afterwards.
While Fireteam seems to be the worst mode for hit detection issues, multiplayer is not entirely exempt. Here’s some examples from Reddit user moon403.
With multiplayer specifically, sometimes players clearly miss shots and there are other factors to include like bullet velocity, however for some of these clips moon is shooting players without any feedback.
Hopefully these issues will be remedied soon. Peak player counts for video games are always within the first month of launch, so the most connectivity issues will naturally arise during the initial peak.