CS2 has been in a state of closed beta for a few months now, constantly twisting and changing. Naturally, Valve’s process of leading the game toward its global release has led to intense discussions within the community. While most of what the developers are doing has been largely approved, some changes don’t go down as well. One particular CS2 feature received esteemed CS:GO pro ropz’ heavy criticism.
The reception to what CS2 is shaping out to be has been mostly positive throughout, with universal acclaim for the game’s improved visuals and visibility, as well as some quality-of-life improvements that retain the high skill ceiling while slightly bringing down the floor for the more casual players. Despite all this, the highest level of players, the CS:GO pros, have found crucial faults with how the game feels.
CS2 movement has been the target of many prominent CS:GO figures’ criticism, and lately, the attention has been turning toward CS2 tick rate. Pandora’s box opened when data miners discovered Valve had hard-coded CS2 to 64 tick rate, which means no one will be able to play the game at a higher tick rate—not in FACEIT, not in private servers, it’s 64 tick for everyone.
CS:GO Major winner ropz is far from being this decision’s first critic, but he has definitely become among the most vocal ones after a lengthy rant on X, formerly known as Twitter. The tweet outright calls the feedback at 64 tick rate “trash” and goes on to explain why 128 tick rate is needed for high-level CS2.
Ropz’s argument against 64-tick and for 128-tick in CS2 goes like this:
“It’s easy to notice you are playing 64-tick when you are strafing, shooting, bunny hopping, throwing grenades, getting bad hit registration. Stuff like that simply doesn’t happen as much in 128-tick, it’s more consistent and fits the gameplay better. That’s what makes 128-tick as good as it is, because the delay is small enough and so consistent, that getting bad hit registration would be very rare. The game doesn’t feel off, strafing and shooting feels better because that delay is small enough for a person, even a skilled one, to have no effect.”
Ropz actually plays one half for both sides as he also voiced his opinion there’s no need for tick rate higher than 128 in that very same tweet: “The argument, oh well why stop at 128-tick, let’s go for 256-tick is just a bad take. Of course it would be an improvement, but an unnecessary one. I believe 128-tick is already at such low latency, that it’s extremely rare to have an impact on gameplay events,” he said.
Ropz’s overall conclusion strives for reaching an objective middle ground where realistic needs defeat hollow demands: “This is definitely about finding the balance and seeing how far it is necessary to push the limit. I think by now we have enough data that 64-tick is bad and 128-tick is good enough.”
While still divided in two camps, the community tends to lean toward ropz’s corner on this one, agreeing that CS2 being limited to 64 tick rate across the board is at best a weird and at worst a game-breaking move by Valve. There are still those who believe 99 percent of casual players won’t notice the difference between 64-tick and 128-tick, and for the time being, Valve appears to agree. Whether the developer reacts to the predominant community opinion on CS2 tick rate remains to be seen.
