Headhot Representation PIC, your thoughts?

The spamming pot shots and getting headshots is the reason why weapons like the Battle Riffle and Semi-Scout/Sniper rifles are underpreforming. Not that they are bad weapons but just automatics still have a very good chance to deal damage at range simply because their CoF while aiming at the chest will eventually hit the head hit box.

Currently on all my characters i have a 20-25% HSR, i always go for high percentage shots so its usually upper chest i aim for. A lot of the time it ends with a head shot either because i rode the recoil up for the head or a bullet just hits there because of bloom. Now looking at stats from proir games i palyed like BF3, my HSR was not that high maybe about 15% max. Id like to think i got better as a player, probobly have some what, but seeing how the head hit box is only slightly smaller than the actual chest (remove arms adn shoulders) its kind of easy to think... maybe thats the reason.


And just to comment on latency. No in this style of clientside hit detection if you see a player model and shoot at it, it will register as a hit. There is no difference between the player model you visually see and the hitbox. There is motion prediction to make player movements flow and become more fluid if that player is lagging but again, what you see and shoot are the same. Which is why sometimes youll see a floating body in the air, shot it and get the kill when really that player is 100m away in a building. Its a rare thing to happen, but does happen. Geting killed behind cover isnt your hitbox lagging behind you. Its your perceived body still being there since it takes X ms to send new data to the guy who is shooting you on your current position.

I simply have to agree, I generally put my aim just below the head, neck area to ensure most shots hit and the recoil gives me "natural" headshots as it pulls up.

If headshots were being recorded that far down on the chest my HS % would be through the roof. If it was that wide from the head why have I had several near misses with the Ghost(CQC bolt rifle) just above and to the left/right of the neck?

I used to even have some videos of this happening but since I need the space my number of recorded videos are low and are frequently deleted. Sure the hitbox is larger than the model but I find it very hard to belive its that large. Aside from the CQC bolt rifle I have used the normal sniper rifles too, if the head was as wide as the body..... yeah, not possible, there have been way too many near hits for that to be true.

Could it be that you are simply too close to him? The head is a box so isnt it possible you are hitting the edges of the box and it just looks like its far away from the head since the angle needed to miss is larger closer up compared to far away?

I am going to try this "soon" tm.

Don't forget that the bullets you're firing are not 1 pixel in size either they have their own 'hitbox', so the hitbox in the picture is actually the area of overlap between the two. You can see the bullet 'hitbox' by trying to shoot closely past obstacles, and hitting them despite your sights being to one side (and those annoying times when you're right up against cover and you fire and hit the cover, even though you know your gun is protruding beyond the cover).

Cant edit my last post so here:



To me it seems the hitboxes are actually larger the closer you are???
Kinda close up the hitbox seems really large but when I shoot at targets far away I can pretty much shave them with the shots. Could it be a wonky trait of the client side hit detection? since the shots look larger close up they have a larger hitbox and when they are far away they look much smaller for you wich then means the shot actually has a smaller hitbox and can get much closer to the model?

I dont know, seems kinda strange but you can clearly see that several shots on targets a bit farther away are closer to the target but still miss than the ones at short range that do hit.

As someone who went through SASRs and is close to auraxium on semi-auto scout, I am of the same opinion about the semi-auto weapons. They make it so easy to lose to bullethoses despite having the initiative on your side it's not funny.

Bolt actions need one well made shot to mop up and you got 'pro' techniques like drag-sniping. Once you master them you become a monster.
This pro moves in case of semi-autos are out of question. These weapons require you to repeatedly point and click (so no dragging), dealing with oversized recoil and erratically moving target that spams you with a hail of bullets.
There is also a suppression effect that makes shootouts with a semi-auto against bullethoses a losing proposition. Forget flinch, even bullets passing by cause weapon jerking (rifle bumps to the side, 'pulled' by the near-missing bullet as if it was a magnet). Obviously it happens often when you are being spammed with 10 bullets/sec and is more detrimental to your efficiency when every single bullet has to count like in case of semi-autos. Bullethose user doesn't even notice the effect but you see it all the time as a semi-auto user and it's a pain when you waste a precious bullet, because the weapon jerked in the exact moment you took a shot.

Compared to that semi-auto 'precision' shooting, bullethosing is like spray-painting. You get immediate feedback 10x/sec, minor inaccuracies get dwarfed by the statistics of CoF and once you get it right you just follow the rabbit with the crosshair ftw.

Try using a 12x scope for further targets, using a 4x you may think you are closer to the head than you are.

I think it's utterly ridiculous that the hitboxes don't closely match the rendered character.

Completely disagree.

If it doesn't pass through the character model, it shouldn't be a hit.

It's not about what everyone else does. It's not about realism. It's about making the vaguest bit of sense.

The game greatly over emphasizes headshots and for nearly all weapons, not the few you mention. Always trying for headshots, even to the point of landing fewer hits total, is extremely counter-intuitive, extremely implausible, and partially because of the giant hitboxes, not really any more conducive to skill.

I understand how it doesn't seem to make sense and how large PS2's hitboxes should be is certainly arguable, but there are reasons why in most games' hit boxes (for heads especially) are usually a little bigger than the model. Primarily it helps compensate for internet latency.

I'm doubtful of this reasoning.

How does it compensate for latency, beyond a simple "lag makes things harder so if we make things easier it's about the same"? Why not just leave it harder for everyone, which would also balance out?

Also, Planetside 2 has ridiculous levels of latency compensation already. One's ping has very little net effect on how one well does. It's not like older games where you need to lead a target based on cumulative ping. If you see yourself shoot them, they are hit, even if they have been afk in a sheilded spawnroom for five minutes on their end.

So would I. It would make snipers a little too easy to use but the crying would be so so good.

Bring me the tears!

The crying about snipers are coming. NC are getting a no bullet drop super high velocity bolt action sniper rifle. It will be the most broken weapon in the game.

Yeah I saw that. To be honest sniping in this game should always be like that. It's realistic (or more realistic) and it makes sniping at long ranges like that actually possible. I'm going to have fun with the Shade though.

Logically, as it was said, making the hit box the exact size of the head would be ideal. The only reason i can say they made it larger would be because of issues where you see the shot hitting, but the enemy sees it missing. It allows the server a little wiggle room otherwise people would be griping about how their 20 headshots they just did didn't count.

It's client side. if you hit their head on your screen regardless of where they are or what they are doing its a hit on their end.

naw, that happens all the time anyways, i see a missle fly by when it actually hit me, thats fine. its because of client side hit detection, what they do on their screen is what happens. for your example if those 20 bullets hit the enemies head on their screen, it would be 20 head shots on the other guy.


Headshots should be for skilled people to aim at if they wish to take that gamble of missing extra bullets, as it is now - everyone's getting those 2x damage headshots and taking no gambles.

I'm not complaining about hit registration, or body hit box's. i only think the huge head hit box that does 2x damage, needs to be smaller. that's all.

You sure bullets do not? Just because something is a projectile and cannot be affected (aka shot down), doesn't mean it doesn't have a box. Doesn't have a hit box persay, but rather a collision box. And if you don't agree with that fact, I'd love to see the evidence supporting your argument on it.

this makes more sense, yes the bullets are larger than 1 pixel. regardless if that far out counts as a hit, thats the problem which needs to be made smaller.

I think the main thing is that if the hitbox were the size of the actual model a lot of headshots would "feel" like they should have hit but didn't. You know what I mean?
Personally I have not ever felt like the hitbox was too large while playing. If you feel like the hitbox is too big only now, after seeing the image posted by the OP, then it's not really an issue. Maybe a lot of you have felt like it is too large during gameplay though, I don't know. Just not me personally.

And you guys are right about the lag. I think the main thing is our perceptual latency.

The only thing that really bothers me with headshots is the stupid sound.This dang "zing" distracts me every time.

I'm understanding where your coming from, but again its client side hit detection, the body's hitbox's are bigger, but the headshot one does not need to be. the headshots are quite easy to get because they are so low on the models and spread out so wide.

Do me a favor and pay attention to how many times someone gets a headshot on you especially when fighting the NC. its way to much and i guarantee you the great majority don't aim for the head.