Run the test above for at least 60 seconds. Here is what each
number means for this game specifically.
Red lines (packet loss)
Loss is what turns a clean kill into a trade. Your shot packet arrives late or not at all, the server processes your opponent's first, and both of you die. This is the metric to watch if trades feel far too common.
Jitter (stability)
Hunt's long sight lines mean you are often tracking a slow, distant target. Jitter makes that target step rather than move, and at range a single step is a whole body width.
Ping (latency)
Below 50 ms is comfortable. Very high ping is not just a disadvantage here - the server is strict about what it accepts, and shots fired from a badly out-of-date position are simply not counted.
What you see in game, and which number on this page explains it.
Every extraction shooter has an argument about trades, but Hunt's is unusually diagnostic, because Crytek has published how the system actually works. The server, not your client, decides whether a shot connected. When two players fire at almost the same moment, the server is arbitrating between two clients that each believe they shot first, and it has to pick an outcome from the information it received.
Latency and packet loss both widen the window in which both shots look valid. That is the trade. It is not a design decision to make fights feel unfair - it is the unavoidable result of two descriptions of the same moment arriving out of order. Which means a player complaining about constant trades has a testable hypothesis available to them, and this chart is the test.
The same validation cuts the other way for high-ping players. Because the server discards what it cannot verify against the positions it holds, a badly connected attacker does not gain the free hits that a purely client-authoritative game would grant them. They lose hits instead. That is the right design, and it means improving your own stability is worth more here than in games where a bad connection is quietly rewarded.
Hunt also raises the stakes of a single bad moment more than most shooters. A bounty run cannot be repeated and the loadout goes with it, so a connection that drops one short burst every few minutes is not a minor annoyance - it is a recurring, unrecoverable cost. That is the argument for a cable rather than a config change.
If the chart above shows packet loss or high jitter, work through
these in order.
Why do I trade so often in Hunt: Showdown?
Because the server arbitrates between two clients that both believe they fired first. Latency and packet loss widen the window in which both shots look valid, and both are counted.
Does Hunt reject shots from high-ping players?
Server-side hit validation discards shots it cannot verify against the positions it has. In practice that means very high ping costs you hits rather than granting you an advantage.
What tick rate does Hunt: Showdown run at?
Crytek has not published one, and community measurements disagree sharply. This test sends 60 packets per second and marks that as an estimate rather than a verified figure.
Is packet loss or ping worse for hit registration?
Loss. A steady ping is something the server can compensate for; a missing packet contains a shot that, as far as the server is concerned, was never fired.