I had something like that the other night, but I think it's also what you get used to. I've had good experiences with 60 ping and 20 ping, so it could be placebo.

I would say its more to do with cg_truelighning and cg_forcesomethingrail settings..

It is half-placebo.

Shaft changes to a different weapon, when ping gets higher.

The problem is in both netcode and ping itself. When you shoot moving enemy, you see delayed reaction from him as the game can't produce client-side knockback. The weapon functionality becomes very close to non-knockback lightning. And from the other side when your enemy feels the damage, he tries to dodge it, but still takes damage. So we feel shaft-shooting more accurate.

The same problem we got in CPMA. But its netcode doesn't unlag instant-hit shooting over 50 ms or something like that. So you become loosing your LAN-like shooting, but your enemy doesn't get WTF-damages through walls. Its kinda balanced.

finally someone noticed it too

with 16ms i get 'you're all ping' a lot, with 30-60 it's either 'luck / cheat / hax' or something closely related.

i'd say it's half-placebo and half-variance of enemy skill. lg is probably the most affected by this and rail the least (enemy skill that is).

well let's confine on shaft only, of course i know that enemy skill always determines your hit accuracys in some way, better placement, better dodgin etc. but to clarify i recognize this even vs very easy opponents who dont dodge better than bots, im really sure, that with low ping i can not aim directly on the visual model, else i miss.

to sum up i feel ql very inconsistent when it comes to hitscan like mg and shaft. it surely isn't like lan play, even if its a lot better than old netcodes like in baseq3.

how do you aim with shaft in ql? use hitsounds or visual like shaft impact, crosshair hit style to adjust shaft till it really is on?

visual. i aim with the crosshair and the end of the lg beam, lightningimpact is off. lately i started using crosshairhitstyle 2 to be able to 'confirm' that what i'm doing is right.

since they changed the hitboxes in december the behaviour of hitscan weapons is back to normal for me. amazing with ping 5-15 and ok'ish from 30-45 and much worse with anything above that. it's not as random as it used to be and much more dependent on ping again.

you should try playing with hitstyle 2 and see if it helps or gives you a hint on what i happening. what do you mean by low ping btw? all these test are inconsistent unless we get someone on lan to confirm what going on :/

by low ping i am refering to dos ping 16, ingame ping displayed of 20-22 on german (home country) servers. thats the lowest ping i get with my connection (normal dsl with fastpath enabled). the higher pings i mentioned i only know the ingame values, didnt do a dos ping. anythin above 40 to 60 ingame seems to be direct on with the shaft if i am direct on target visually. with low pings sometimes it is, sometimes its totally of, when im direct on target.

what really annoys me is the feeling of ramdoness and inconsistency the ql netcode gives me, vs a consistent, but though harder to manage netcode like in baseq3 where higher ping needs more lead.

with all this i am only refering to shaft and mg. everything else works fine and manageable with a little ingame time with every ping. (rox, rail, sg etc

that's weird we're on the same connection. i really don't understand this though... for me playing in sweden versus playing with 16ms the lg becomes soo much harder to hit with and my percentages drop a lot. from an average of mid 40's to barely being able to hit 35. ever since the december update i largely avoid playing on anything but .de and .nl.

did you try playing with a (large) dot as a crosshair and hitstyle 2 for lg?

placebo. different feeling. try to change some config's settings, like lightning impact, crosshair etc.

my question is what does the lighningimpact cvar actually change? Does it not pushback the one targeted as much, or does it have something to do with a representation of what you're shooting at?

it's just a visual effect :). It's like the rockets explosions.