Hunt: Showdown's janky hit registration is getting better, says Crytek

Crytek says its fixes for Hunt: Showdown's janky hit registrations have been "a big improvement."

The underrated battle royale has long suffered from frustrating hit registration, particularly in close-quarters combat. Numerous Reddit and Steam posts over the years have pointed out how shots aren't recognised, even when blood splatter animations are played to indicate a hit.

Crytek originally addressed the game's issues with hit registration back in February 2019 with a lengthy, fairly technical blog post. It detailed how the hit registrations work—essentially by the server predicting the shot with favour leaning towards the shooter. It hasn't necessarily been working that way, however, thanks to issues like de-synchronisation and latency. Crytek said it was starting to collect data to pinpoint the issues, as well as looking at ways to improve the hit validation system "so that it is lenient enough about desync that it doesn't invalidate legitimate shots, but strict enough that it doesn't open the game up to exploitation."

Not much was said after that, but early 2021 saw an influx of players report issues with hit registration. Crytek said it's taken notice of the "spike in hit registration issues," in a blog post offering its first major update on the problem in over two years. Apparently, the crux of the issue stems from the game thinking whoever fired the shot was dead.

"We found that many invalidations happen because the server perceived the player whose shots were invalidated as already dead," the post read. "Based on this, we were able to isolate this particular issue and improve this situation significantly." Crytek says that last month's update, which introduced some fixes, has seen "a big improvement in hit registration issues" as well as an increase in kill trades thanks to "fewer fair shots being invalidated and a more fair and accurate exchange of hits." Crytek said it's continuing to find and fix hit registration issues elsewhere, asking players to "bear with us."

A few players have noted how they've noticed an uptick in kill trades since the patch, with user Jenn_FTW saying "I've definitely noticed the increase in trades recently. Glad to have an explanation, I'm honestly a fan of this change." Another reddit user said they've had more kill trades since the patch than they've had since first playing the game. 

Of course, not everyone is convinced. A reddit post from a few days ago talks about an uptick in kill trades, but with the caveat that hits still aren't registering like they're supposed to. Some have even said the issue has been worse since the patch, though Crytek's data seems to disagree.

Despite mixed reception, Crytek's data is showing an improvement. It's good news for a game that relies so heavily on precise aim, and where headshots take you out instantly. It's also come at a good time for Hunt: Showdown—the new map is due to land any time this month, the first one to be added since the game launch in 2018.