Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#71

Post by tmathmeyer » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:05 PM UTC

shit_game wrote: post #67

deathanatos wrote: post #7

128 ticks per second servers. (And lo, suddenly the article's thesis is inherently clear.) A "tick", or an update, is a single step forward in the game's state. UPS (as I'll call it from here) or tick rate is the frequency of those. So, 128 ticks/s == 128 updates per sec. That's a high number. For comparison, Factorio is 60 UPS, and Minecraft is 20 UPS. At first I imagined an FPS's state would be considerably smaller…

Also for comparison, the Runescapes (both RS3 and Oldschool Runescape) have a 0.6 tick/second system (100 ticks/minute). It works rather well for these games, which I guess highlights that some games either a) can get away with high latencies depending on their gameplay mechanics, or b) will evolve gameplay mechanics based on the inherent limitations of their engines/these latencies. RS3 initially leaned into the 0.6…

100ticks/minute is 1.666... ticks per second, not 0.6.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#72

Post by the_plus_one » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:07 PM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #61

Liquix wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...what? the game is full of highly technical and demanding challenges which require "tick-perfect" inputs 2-5x per 0.6s game tick.

OSRS is a rhythm game. Fight me.

I don't think anyone would fight you on that. Inferno cheat plugins looked like 100 bpm Guitar Hero back in the day.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#73

Post by uyzstvqs » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was also able to handle 128 TPS just fine. They just chose to never implement it in official matchmaking (64 TPS). It did work very smoothly on community servers.

Counter-Strike 2 implements a controversial "sub tick" system on top of 64 TPS. It is not comparable to actual 128 TPS, and often worse than standard 64 TPS in practice.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#74

Post by bob1029 » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:12 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #66

You can mess with the code all day long, but you're not getting away from raw latency. The modern matchmaking approach groups people by skill not latency, so you get a pretty wild mix of latency. It feels nothing like the old regional servers. Sure the skill mix was varied, but at least you got your ass handed to you in crisp <10ms by actual skill. Now it's all getting knife noscoped around a corner by a guy that rub…

I miss playing on consistent The Houston/Dallas/Austin/San Antonio region was like a mini universe of highly competitive FPS action. My 2mbps roadrunner cable modem could achieve single digit ping from Houston to Dallas. Back in those days we plugged the modem directly into the gaming PC.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#75

Post by ThatPlayer » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:16 PM UTC

Hikikomori wrote: post #10

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is from 2020. Valve wanted to be smart and invented a new "subtick" system in 2023 which isn't as good as 128 tick. To make things worse, CS is a paid game, not free like Valorant, and makes probably much more money. They seemingly just don't care enough about the problem to solve it correctly. That or there is more work to be done on subtick to make it work better than 128.

CSGO could do 128 tick, Valve just doesn't want to pay for it, but you can easily find private hosted servers with 128 tick. Riot did put in a lot of work to get it down so much though.

With the CS2 update, CS can no longer do 128 tick, even on private hosted servers.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#76

Post by senkora » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:17 PM UTC

bakugo wrote: post #69

Thaxll wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite has to handle 100 players on the same process, very different from 128hz @10players max.

Nowadays it's more like 20 players and 80 bots, so a lot less networking stuff going on, and the bot AI is so basic that I doubt it has a significant impact on server performance unless it's very badly implemented.

As long as some games (e.g. tournaments, ranked unreal) need to be mostly human, the software still needs to be able to handle it.

But it wouldn’t surprise me too much if those use a higher tier of hardware.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#77

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:18 PM UTC

tmathmeyer wrote: post #71

shit_game wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also for comparison, the Runescapes (both RS3 and Oldschool Runescape) have a 0.6 tick/second system (100 ticks/minute). It works rather well for these games, which I guess highlights that some games either a) can get away with high latencies depending on their gameplay mechanics, or b) will evolve gameplay mechanics based on the inherent limitations of their engines/these latencies. RS3 initially leaned into the 0.6…

100ticks/minute is 1.666... ticks per second, not 0.6.

They're right, when they said 0.6s tick they mean there's a tick every 0.6 seconds.

It's important to some players because you can get some odd behaviour out of the game by starting multiple actions on the same tick or on the tick after you started a different action. It's ridiculous click intensive but you can get weird benefits like cutting the time to take an action short or get xp in 2 skills at once.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#78

Post by aftbit » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:20 PM UTC

I vaguely remember Counter-Strike Source servers running at 33, 66, or 100 tick. My high school gaming clan was called "10tik", poking fun at the ancient Pentium box that I ran the CSS server on.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#79

Post by Thaxll » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:27 PM UTC

bakugo wrote: post #69

Thaxll wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortnite has to handle 100 players on the same process, very different from 128hz @10players max.

Nowadays it's more like 20 players and 80 bots, so a lot less networking stuff going on, and the bot AI is so basic that I doubt it has a significant impact on server performance unless it's very badly implemented.

AI is more expensive than a regular player.

Re: Valorant's 128-Tick Servers (2020)

#80

Post by ROBLOX_MOMENTS » Mon, Oct 06, 2025, 11:30 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #66

You can mess with the code all day long, but you're not getting away from raw latency. The modern matchmaking approach groups people by skill not latency, so you get a pretty wild mix of latency. It feels nothing like the old regional servers. Sure the skill mix was varied, but at least you got your ass handed to you in crisp <10ms by actual skill. Now it's all getting knife noscoped around a corner by a guy that rub…

> The modern matchmaking approach groups people by skill not latency

I work at a game studio and something I have seen is that nobody is on wired anymore. You are poweruser if you are on wired. Significantly the 99% of users will be on mobile or wifi and be 10ms to first hop or two hop.