What is sub-tick in Counter-Strike 2? 64 vs 128 tick rate in CS2

Valve claims to have done away with traditional ‘tick rates’ in Counter-Strike 2 by introducing a sub-tick system. But, what is sub tick, and how does it work in CS2?

After months of beta, Counter-Strike 2 is finally playable for all, as a free upgrade to CS:GO. Of course, this change has brought with it countless changes from the previous game.

One such change revolves around Counter-Strike’s tick rate system. Older versions of Counter-Strike evaluated a player’s movement and shooting in “discrete time intervals” otherwise known as ticks, either at 64 ticks per second or 128.

The time between each tick was nonexistent. But while the game still played responsively, the milliseconds that separated a mouse click and tick could often be the difference between a shot landing or missing the target entirely. Valve moved to improve upon this system for Counter-Strike 2, by using sub tick.

What is sub-tick in CS2?

When announcing the new Counter-Strike, Valve uploaded a video detailing how the team is “Moving Beyond Tick Rate” with sub-tick updates.

With this change, tick rates between moving and shooting no longer matter since the server can calculate each player’s “precise actions between ticks.”

Simply put, the server now knows the “exact moment you fired your shot, jumped your jump, or peeked your peek.” This is intended to ensure the action in Counter-Strike feels more seamless and responsive than ever before.

Is CS2 64 tick?

However, despite these lofty aims, players have so far not been totally impressed with the sub tick system and all it promised.

Instead, players have complained of being shot around corners frequently, indicating that what they see is, in fact, not what they get.

This could be caused by a number of factors, and is likely a combination of many, such as the ticks, ping, packet loss and interpolation. Basically, online game is online.

But, players have also complained that other elements of CS2, such as movement, animations and ‘spraying’ is all being processed by the server at 64 ticks still, not 128 tick (as is preferred) or sub tick.

Faceit, the popular 3rd party matchmaking service, actually launched 128 tick servers for CS2, but Valve later put a stop to this, locking the game at 64 tick no matter what, angering some in the community.

For casual or even experienced players, the difference between 64 and 128 tick will be almost imperceptible. But, as proven by FaZe player Robin ‘ropz’ Kool, pro players can very much tell the difference.

In a blind test, ropz correctly identified the tick rate of a CS:GO server through moving and shooting bots only.

Counter-Strike 2 is still only in its early phase of release, with lots of updates expected to improve the experience, so perhaps sub tick is still to be optimized too.