For MeinMMO author Mark Sellner, Hunt: Showdown is the best shooter on Steam, and he would have preferred not to play anything else. However, a serious error in the game made him take a break from Hunt for the last six months. Now the fix for the game’s most serious problem is coming, and new excursions into the bayou are finally no longer frustrating.
It should be no secret to readers of my articles that I’ve developed a bit of a love for Hunt: Showdown. Last year, I spent over 700 hours in the shooter and encouraged you to do the same.
However, shortly after this article during the Christmas season of 2021, I haven’t touched my favorite shooter anymore.
The reason for that, however, was not the new map DeSalle or the much fewer night maps, which I still miss very much. No, the new ammunition types and nerfs to various weapons didn’t bother me. I could live with the common bugs in the game, especially since they were usually fixed pretty quickly.
But one thing drove me completely mad in almost every round of Hunt: ping abuse. Unfortunately, I don’t mean teammates who use the ping function a bit too often to mark a location. It’s more about the deliberate abuse of a poor internet connection.
This trailer provides a first insight into the game:
Because in Hunt: Showdown, a bad ping is your ally. It annoyed me so much that I uninstalled the game, which I previously played daily, for months. I’d be happy to explain in detail why this frustrates me so much.
I won, but I’m still dead
If you have a high ping in Hunt, meaning a bad connection to the server, it’s good for you. Because even if you’re technically no longer in the game, you can still cause damage.
This led to bad pings being abused, with players from Asia or America intentionally playing on European servers to have a worse ping in the match.
If you then play against someone with a ridiculously high ping, it often happens that you get killed by your enemies even though you’ve already won.
Just imagine an opponent coming around the corner while you’re waiting for him with a shotgun drawn. You’re playing alone against a team of two players, but your chances are good.
Then the enemy finally rushes in, you neatly shoot him with a load of shotgun shells. He goes down, you’re happy, want to keep running, and then you die too. The enemy who killed you was the one you just took out of the match.
Why does this work? He has a higher ping. His shot is sent to the server later and arrives even though the user can’t shoot anymore on the server.
Shotguns are an extreme example because a single shot is enough to kill in close combat. But also with high rate of fire weapons, not just in Hunt, bad pings lead to unwanted advantages:
The ghost shot colleague is then comfortably picked up by his teammate and continues with his match while you are out and have lost everything you had due to the permadeath mechanic.
These so-called ping abusers became so frequent for me in early January that I ended up closing the game more often with the exit combo Alt+F4 than in a normal way. To make this clear, you can watch the following video, which shows a mild form of ping abuse.
Developers address the problem… somewhat
Now, over half a year after I left Hunt in frustration, Crytek announces that they will fix ping abuse with the upcoming update 1.9. I happily downloaded the game again and have even spent a few hours back in the bayou in recent days. However, I died again against ping abusers, which further drives my anticipation to finally return.
But how exactly the studio wants to solve the problem, they have remained silent so far. They want to assure players not to be punished for poor internet and that they should still be able to play with friends from all around the world. A commonly requested solution idea by players was simply to prohibit players from playing in other regions. Currently, they can choose and switch regions at will.
However, how they plan to stop ping abuse specifically remains uncertain if none of these functions should be restricted.
Nevertheless, not only I am relieved, but so is the community. Of course, there are other problems and bugs in the game beyond exploiting ping that are massively disruptive. For instance, weapons are unintentionally strong, buildings are unexpectedly transparent, and some players are seemingly banned unjustly.
But I have hope. Hope that I can spend time in my favorite shooter again with the new update. And even have fun. Because I would really like to recommend to you again, to definitely try out Hunt: Showdown.
What do you think of the changes? Do you think Crytek can effectively eliminate ping abuse? Have you played against such abusers yourself and then angrily quit the game? Are there other bugs that are currently disturbing as well? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO. See you soon in the bayou!
6 weapons and loadouts for starting in Hunt: Showdown – How to win your first rounds
