Counter-Strike 2 Console Commands to Reduce Lag and Delay in CS2

Counter-Strike 2 has opened its door to many more players following the recent change in Valve's guidelines regarding invitation eligibility for the game's Limited Test version. This has resulted in the discovery of new challenges that the developers need to fix before the game's final release.

One of the major issues faced by a large segment of the community is the uneven and choppy gameplay experience, which has resulted in a large number of players dying behind a wall or solid object, due to a certain lag or delay.

Here is everything you need to know to understand what this problem might be and how to possibly reduce the overall gameplay stutter, which would require players to tinker around with their settings using Counter-Strike 2 console commands.

Counter-Strike 2 Console Commands: How to Reduce Lag and Delay in CS2?

All thanks to a genius member of the community, who goes by the username 'UsFcs' on Reddit, CS2 might be able to run smoother than before for most players.

However, it would require players to make certain changes to their game settings and even deploy a custom configuration file that auto executes every time the game runs.

What Causes Lag and Delay in Counter-Strike 2?

There is no definite answer to this question, but in our particular case, it could be due to something called interpolation time, which is nothing but delay that is applied by the client to every player on the server.

This is done to maintain a smooth gameplay experience for all the players, as packets of information from the enemy are received either 64 or 120 times per second. On the flipside, such a delay tends to cause certain problems for players like experiencing everything that occurs but just a tiny bit later.

UsFcs explains how interpolation time works in the game using some Counter-Strike 2 Console Commands that can be tweaked to improve the gameplay experience, but before that, it needs to be understood what they do and how they work.

• The default cl_interp value for CS2 is set as 0.1 or 100ms. This is an accepted value as it is bound to the low side, similar to CS:GO.

• The default cl_updaterate and cl_interp_ratio values for CS2 are set to 20 and 2 respectively, which again creates an interp value of 0.1 or 100ms.

The game usually takes the highest value between these two and adds the interpolation time to the individual ping of the player. This is done to compensate for the delay a player sees on their screen.

Even if we remove the ping, a player will effectively see everything delayed by 100ms on their screen, which is not ideal and results in the 'run and gun' effect of enemy players witnessed by many in CS2.

However, the main problem is that as every player on the server has these default values, everyone is seeing a delayed version of each other which brings the total effective delay to 200ms.

This is what results in many players dying behind walls and solid objects, because while they might consider themselves to be behind cover, other players will still see them out in the open.

How to Fix Lag and Delay in Counter-Strike 2?

Now that we know what interpolation time is and how it works, let us take a look at how Counter-Strike 2 console commands cl_interp, cl_updaterate, and cl_interp_ratio, can be modified to reduce choppiness and make gameplay smoother.

According to UsFcs, the following interpolation values need to be changed for reducing lag and delay.

• The value of cl_interp can be changed to 0.015625 (15ms)or 0.03125 (31ms), which is equivalent to one and two ticks respectively on 64 tick servers, and two and four ticks respectively on 128 tick servers.

• The value of cl_updaterate should also be changed to 128, if the above is being implemented to avoid overwriting and maintaining the cl_interp_ratio values.

You can try this during one session of Counter-Strike 2 and if it results in smoother gameplay, only then proceed ahead to create an autoexec.cfg, which is nothing but a file that will automatically execute the above changes every time the game launches.

This is required because the values changed above will always return to default when the game is closed.

How to Create Autoexec.cfg in Counter-Strike 2 to Reduce Lag and Delay?

It is not a diificult task to create such a file, just follow the steps mentioned below and it should be done within minutes.

1. First, you need to locate the CS2 Config Folder.

2. This can be done by following this path, 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\csgo\cfg'.

3. Once you reach this file destination, simply add these commands to it:

   • cl_updaterate 128

   • cl_interp_ratio 1

   • cl_interp "0.015625" or cl_interp "0.03125"

4. This is it, now whenever you launch Counter-Strike 2 these settings will be applied to the game automatically.

_{Note: It is recommended by UsFcs that if someone's internet connection is not stable enough, they should opt for cl_interp value of 0.03125.}

Many veteran players in the community who have been playing the game since Counter-Strike 1.6 agreed that this could indeed solve the issue because something similar used to be applied by them back in the day.

However, there are always two sides to an opinion and there were a few who raised concerns over this solution, like advising players not to change the cl_interp values as it could conflict with Valve's understanding of the situation and problems being faced by the players during this test phase.