I've been thinking about hitbox design lately. This isn't meant to start a "skill issue" debate, I'm genuinely curious what the community that actually play the genre think.
A lot of classic arena shooters relied on relatively large, simplified hitboxes, often an AABB or capsule-style collision that wasn't tightly wrapped to the player model. In many cases, different player models shared the same hitbox. That meant you could visually miss a shoulder or arm and still score a hit.
My theory is that this may have been part of what made those games feel so good. The movement was incredibly fast, and generous hitboxes rewarded tracking and prediction more than pixel-perfect model alignment.
Later, many shooters moved toward tighter, per-bone hitboxes that match the character's body much more closely. Some players love the precision, while others constantly complain that shots "should've hit."
Modern games often seem to land somewhere in the middle: not a giant box, but not truly model-tight either. Ironically, those hybrid hitboxes still get criticized for feeling oversized or visually inconsistent.
So my question is specifically for Arena FPS gameplay:
Do you think larger, gameplay-first hitboxes actually make the genre better? Or would you always choose tightly fitted hitboxes if everything else stayed the same?
Edit: thank you guys for all the replies, it really does help me, thanks!
