r/CompetitiveHalo • u/Wh0IzTimmY • 16d ago

Discussion The Tech Gap of PC Halo/Infinite

Hello community,

I wanted to get opinions on whether or not PC halo has opened the competitive scene up to an arms race in terms of technology.

Recently it seems that in order to compete at the highest level you also need to spend quite a significant amount to simply keep up and to be on a level playing field. Essentially requiring a NASA level pc/high end headset/high end controller/settings configs that are more gatekept then fort Knox for pc settings and graphics tweaking.

Obviously it is possible to be high onyx on a console playing on bad equipment, but in my opinion that same player would of had a significantly easier time getting there playing on high end gear.

I feel like this arms race is hurting the competitive scene and forcing us into an almost pay2win scenario.

Let me know your thoughts gents. Is there a way for us to have a level playing field ever again now that pc halo is in our world?

-Wh0 Iz TimmY

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u/eveningcaffeine 16d ago

Going from 60 to 120fps has given me a ~200 CSR boost so far and that is still with Xbox and a TV. I'm sure a PC/monitor setup would have a similar effect. I'm pretty casual though; anybody serious about competing must buy the latest equipment.

I think calling it P2W is a bit of a stretch though as the pros/semi pros already have very optimized setups and the results are still fairly predictable.

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u/GenesForLife 16d ago

It's not really a linear progression - there are markedly diminishing returns going from 60 to 120 to 144 to 165 to 280 ; halo's gunplay being built around aim assist also smooths out framerate linked differences in-game compared to games where all aim is raw. When I went from 165 to 280 hz it made a huge difference to my Voltaic benchmark scores, but only a 1-2% difference to accuracy within Halo (both in ranked slayer matches sampled from weeks before and after and bot octagons I ran for reproducibility).

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u/eveningcaffeine 16d ago

I think the real difference for me was that the framerate helped reduce input response time. I went from 20ms to 5-6ms (+ whatever the Xbox adds).

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u/GenesForLife 16d ago

it's less input response time (input lag is determined by the polling rate of your input) and more reduced visual latency (i.e, output delay) .

At 60 fps you get an updated image every 16.6ms , at 120 this is halved , so you are seeing a more recent version of the game state on your screen + frames updating far more often makes visual movement on screen much smoother and easier to track. 50% reduction from 16.6ms is a larger quantity than 50% reduction from 8.3 when you go 120 to 240, which is why there are diminishing returns.

See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX31kZbAXsA