Mutual destruction in console shooters.

I grew up a PC gamer, played a ton of games like Doom, Quake and Counterstrike in my teens, so when I decided to jump into console shooters back in 2009 there was one thing that happens quite regularly that really stood out to me as peculiar, two people killing each other. This doesn't happen in PC shooters (unless we're talking about projectile weapons ofc), but for some reason in pretty much every console shooter I've played this is pretty common. Why is that ?

I could understand it back when games were hosted on the console themselves and things like host advantage etc was a thing, but these days all the games are touting dedicated servers. Why are these games programmed to allow this to happen ? I've been playing Destiny recently (obviously) and there have been several occasions where I've shot someone after I was already dead. Hell, just moments ago I supposedly meleed someone to death 3-4 seconds after I died.

Do people not mind this ? Or do people just not realize that there's something wonky going on ? And also, isn't this also the same reason why it often feels like someone kills you less than a second after you see them ? Why are console shooters programmed to allow this very noticable disconnect between what's happening on your screen and what's happening in the game ?

I don't think it's necessarily a console-specific issue, and it's something that multiplayer Bungie games have suffered since at least Halo 3. Just making wild assumptions here, but it's probably just a decision on their part to "count" both players' inputs. E.g. on your screen, you see me and shoot me. On my screen, the same thing. You might've shot first, but I shot back before my game had any idea that you'd already killed me because of network latency, and Bungie says "oh whatever, they both count."

Games like counter-strike, I'm sure, run into that same scenario, but Valve decided only make one of them count. This can be bad too -- maybe you shoot me first, but I have a faster connection and the server gets notified I fired first, so I might get the kill just because I'm down the block from my ISP (if that's how Valve does it, I'm sure there's much more going on we don't know about).

I guess what I don't like about Bungie's way of doing it is that it exposes the network latency problem. If they let only one person get the kill, at least the problem would be hidden and you could be blissfully ignorant of someone having a slower connection.

It's far from just Bungie games though. Can't really think of too many examples right now, but I definitely remember it being an issue in Uncharted and seem to remember it happening in Gears quite a bit too.

I feel like there are more moments in console shooters where two people run at each other, shooting until one of them dies, but they wind up killing each other.

As far as Counter Strike goes, when I play CS GO, I almost never see someone with a high ping. I don't know what it is about that game, or if I'm just lucky, or if I'm just remembering things the wrong way, but those games don't have many lag issues for me.

Fast-paced multiplayer games like shooters use game state interpolation to compensate for the inherent delays and hiccups in internet traffic.This means the game approximates things like the positions and actions of other players in your game based on information from moments earlier while your game is still waiting to get up to date information. Without this kind of interpolation, the game would only update other players' states when your game received an update from the server. Because there are gaps of time between these updates, without interpolation, other players would appear to freeze momentarily between each update, making their motion and actions appear very jittery, ruining the smooth feel that is necessary for a fast action game to be fun.

The downside to using interpolation is that when you interact with other players, you're not actually interacting with them in their true current state. Interpolation generally will show you the state of other players in the recent past while you get to act in the present, so you're ahead of them in the server's 'timeline'. The same is true for each of them as they see you and everyone else in the recent past relative to themselves. This means you can have situations where you see an enemy player (in the past), so you attack them and your game shows that you killed them. Meanwhile, they see you (in the past) and attack you and their game shows that they killed you. After a few moments, you each receive more current updates from the server indicating that you each recorded a kill on the other one, resulting in a cross-kill.

As for why this is occurrence might be more common on consoles than on PC, I would guess it's because console games transmit updates less frequently than PC games do, so the effects of interpolation are more pronounced. The reason for less frequent updates probably has to do with trying to achieve a uniform gameplay experience regardless of internet connection quality by equalizing everyone at a low update rate. On PC, variation in connection quality and hardware quality have long been accepted, so interpolation can be scaled more as circumstances dictate. In some games, including Valve's games, you can even set your update rate and other interpolation settings manually with console commands.

If you're doing comp match making then there's a ping limit to those who you'll me matched against. I think unless you choose your server specifically it'll always put you with nearby dudes. If I ever play a non comp mode I seem to get matched with dudes who lives like 30 miles away.

I think it's kind of funny

@savage: Now I wish I had ticked the "question" box :P The update frequency angle makes a lot of sense.

It absolutely, 100% happens on PC, both because of interpolation quirks and because you actually killed each other at the same time. Your PC experience here will be dictated by your hardware, internet connection and the game in question.

Wouldn't be surprised it if it happens way more on console but it's certainly not exclusive to them based on my experience. Maybe it's just my playstyle though, who knows.

It's been a major problem in the Battlefield series for a while.

Hmm... You sort of have it, but I actually prefer Bungie's way. They try to avoid situations where your machine showed you winning, but you end up losing anyway. It's not "oh whatever." They are avoiding a very unpleasant situation: You feeling you deserved a kill but not getting it.

Also, I actually find it oddly satisfying when I'm a part of it.

I also think part of why Bungie games get it happening is that they don't, generally, use hitscan weapons. But they don't have the travel time/drop of something like a Battlefield, it's much less pronounced. And in Halo, fights tend to be really close a lot. So add rounds that have travel time into that and you get a lot of complexity to solving who really won.

Bungie has stated the last thing they want is to have someone cheated out of a kill just because there was a difference between their client and another client. It's a philosophy I agree with, personally. And it has to be real close to end up in a situation where you both die. Unless there's a major connection issue. The highest pings I usually see are a fraction of a second. I'd rather give the benefit of the doubt for both sides when the margin of error is less than half a second. Usually, it's less than a fifth of a second. With that kind of time, I'm okay with an often hilarious or awesome moment happening every once in a while instead of just getting yet another one sided victory.