RDR2 input lag - intentional or accidental?

[tjakal]

Coming back to RDR2 after playing other shooters I can't help but be amazed at just how inconsistent and irresponsive the firing of weapons in RDR2 is.

 

There seem to be a, seemingly random, delay from the buttonpress til the game decides to fire your weapon. Also there is clearly a weird input buffer where spamming clicks inside the cyclic of racking the bolt, pump or fanning the hammer

cues a buttonpress to play long after you've stopped clicking. This often causes an additional round to be fired where you only intended to have it ready to go.

 

All these behaviors somewhat adds a feeling of these being mechanically wonky old guns that don't have crisp triggers which sorta adds to the setting.
You have to slow down and be methodical and aware of each click to remain accurate and effective. But what worries me is how these things are implemented.
For it seems to me they behave in a way that points more to programming incompetence than any sort of intentional design?

 

Developing games inside Unity you will run into very similar issues in control behavior if you make the mistake to call your control inputs from within the physics update (Which is running on a low fixed hertz rate).

If I intentionally wanted to illustrate an unreliable trigger within a videogame I would personally not write it to behave anything as depicted here in RDR.

 

Googling around what worries me even more is that almost nobody seem to be bitching about this? Not even them flickerstrafing PCP tryhards.
Which means if it is unintentional behavior allowed to go unchecked we can except this to eventually creep up inside GTA6 as well when that rolls around, which to me would be very sad.

 

I'm curious to hear how others experience what's described above and if someone perhaps can provide insight to what's going on.
Is it a game feature? Inherent problem with the RAGE engine? My R*tarded imagination? Gremlins, Sasquatch and Ayylmaos? Share your thoughts.

[DrDetroit]

No offense but I've not notice this at all, with 1100 hrs on the X1X version and 250ish on PC so far.  I pull the trigger, the round fires as expected, no lag, no hitching.  The firearms never keep firing after release of trigger either, which sounds like a lag issue, not hitching, on your system.

 

Although I never spam the trigger either, I pull once to cock the hammer, press again to fire.  I've never found the need to spam the trigger during the firing process, which may cause the issues you report.  THis would be counter productive to be sure.  

Edited March 28, 2020 by DrDetroit

[tjakal]

After doing some experimentation I've come to believe it's caused by the fact rockstar have tied the trigger to the animation loop of the gun instead of
scripting it so you can drop the hammer whenever the cyclic is done even if the recoil animation isn't complete.

 

So what keep happening to me is I see/hear the cycle is done and know I should be able to fire so I click, but nothing happens because the animation still plays.
I feel nothing happens so I click again, but as I re-click my buffered previous click now plays and I have a gun that fires out of order feeling very disconnected from my inputs.
It was very jarring coming back from the division 2 where you can fire anywhere during the recoil and always rhythmically keep lining up headshots on them bulletsponges that infest that universe.  

 

Testing in GTA V with the slow fire pistols reveals it has teh same system as RDR2 where you can cause your weapons to fire long after you pressed the trigger if you click while the reload animation plays.
It's just not as apparent there since you tend to use the automatics and even the semis have a lot faster animations than the weapons in red dead.

 

It's a very poor system and a overly simplistic way to model it, but at least it's not gotten any worse than it was.
It's just that more apparent in a game like RDR2 where the animation loops are that much longer.

 

If you wanna test this for yourself go into first person mode in either GTAV or RDR2, fire a round and hit reload.
As the animation plays spam click but stop before it ends, the result will be your character automatically fires a round as soon as the reload animation ends.

 

I hope this system is abandoned in favor of something more responsive and enjoyable going forward, but even as it exist I don't see why you would wanna allow players to cue buffered inputs while an animation plays?

It'd be more responsive if that was disallowed, had I programed it this way I would consider it an unintentional glitch.

[BootyWarrior]

This is my biggest complaint with RDR2. I was playing RDR1 recently and when you fire a gun it's INSTANT and much more satisfying.

[hobopata]

On 3/28/2020 at 10:21 PM, tjakal said:

Coming back to RDR2 after playing other shooters I can't help but be amazed at just how inconsistent and irresponsive the firing of weapons in RDR2 is.

 

There seem to be a, seemingly random, delay from the buttonpress til the game decides to fire your weapon. Also there is clearly a weird input buffer where spamming clicks inside the cyclic of racking the bolt, pump or fanning the hammer

cues a buttonpress to play long after you've stopped clicking. This often causes an additional round to be fired where you only intended to have it ready to go.

 

All these behaviors somewhat adds a feeling of these being mechanically wonky old guns that don't have crisp triggers which sorta adds to the setting.
You have to slow down and be methodical and aware of each click to remain accurate and effective. But what worries me is how these things are implemented.
For it seems to me they behave in a way that points more to programming incompetence than any sort of intentional design?

 

Developing games inside Unity you will run into very similar issues in control behavior if you make the mistake to call your control inputs from within the physics update (Which is running on a low fixed hertz rate).

If I intentionally wanted to illustrate an unreliable trigger within a videogame I would personally not write it to behave anything as depicted here in RDR.

 

Googling around what worries me even more is that almost nobody seem to be bitching about this? Not even them flickerstrafing PCP tryhards.
Which means if it is unintentional behavior allowed to go unchecked we can except this to eventually creep up inside GTA6 as well when that rolls around, which to me would be very sad.

 

I'm curious to hear how others experience what's described above and if someone perhaps can provide insight to what's going on.
Is it a game feature? Inherent problem with the RAGE engine? My R*tarded imagination? Gremlins, Sasquatch and Ayylmaos? Share your thoughts.

is there any mod to fix that crap? really having a bad experience

[cp1dell]

I don’t think input lag is the right word, but there’s defiantly something done between the camera movement and animations so you feel the “weight” of everything.

 

What would be nice is if through modding you could force the first person control scheme, with the third person camera. That would without a doubt make the game/gunplay feel like Max Payne 3.

[ivarblaauw]

Weapons in this game behave much more like real 19th century weapons, which means spamming the trigger won't mean a hail of fire. 

What happens is:
1. you cock your weapon

2. you shoot 

3. your weapon is uncontrollable for a moment / recoil

4. you have control back over your weapon and can start again. 

 

They actually sped up the process, since in the alpha and beta versions, the animations where longer, up to a few seconds longer.

They didn't change the animations though, which is why when reloading a revolver it looks like a cartoon character is filling the 6 shooter due to the immense speed. 

But once I have cocked a gun and it is ready to fire, it literally shoots the moment I pull the trigger. So no, if that isn't the case for you, that is a problem on your end unfortunately and it is input lag. 
That said, I honestly like this system. 

Edited June 29, 2021 by ivarblaauw

[Mexicola9302]

I also never noticed any input lag, i play it on pc with RTX 3080 and R9 5950x etc. in 2160p HDR 120 HZ with G-Sync and V-Sync with mostly 80+ FPS with X-Box X settings, there is like a 14 ms input lag i get of my LG B9 TV that is very low, but i play with a wireless X-Box One Controller, that probably adds some input lag. But i never noticed any input lag, im just annoyed that we have to pull the trigger so often, there should be an option that our char automaticly pulls the lever of the lever action rifle etc. it's annoying af, to pull the trigger so often. I would like to have that option, i want to actually fire the weapon if i pull the trigger, not chamber another round to shoot then.

 

But i guess some ppl like it the way it is, yeah sure i can understand why, but i don't like it the way it is.