Modern computers are so fast that there's no particularly good reason to just rely on bounding box collisions alone. Instead, that should be used as a maybe/no cheap detection and if the result is "no", move on, but if it is "maybe", then do a more in depth test either at the pixel level or with smaller bounding boxes. No need to make close calls favour neither the player nor the AI, just do proper collision detection where it is actually a real hit or it is a complete miss. Of course if a developer is purposefully going for that "retro" style and intentionally resorting to poor collision detection as per a particular era, then that is an intentional artistic choice but personally I'd find such a choice to be more annoying than to value the artistic value of it.

Funny enough though, 20+ years into 3D games and nobody has yet to make a 3D engine that totally gives believable collision detection across the board. Some are quite good at giving a reasonable illusion of it, but every game has noticeable CD flaws if you look for them. It's bad enough that in some games you can break the game engine and walk through walls and stuff due to bad collision detection. *cough* Skyrim *cough* :)

haha I think you know what I mean.

I think it would clarify greatly the conversations if we were pointing out specfic examples of collision detection as I see some mixmash of concepts here (not pinning you down personnally).

In the case of bullet hells, it's not "retro" at all as the old way shmup worked was to make a polygonal or even pixel-perfect collision mask based on the player's ship sprite. The way bullet hells changed that was by simply put a square collision mask on the cockpit of the ship so let's stop with the "poor detection" fallacy as it works perfectly. It's like blaming boss fights because only one boss specific component takes damages :o)

Use a bigger weapon :o)

Just to anger some people:

Morrowind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLpDDjGI8bM

:)
Heh, kids these days...

Weren't the CS GO hitboxes recently changed?

The unofficial 1.6 patch for Far Cry which fixes the bug where the AI viewed through tents also modified the hit detection. At least from top down, enemies need more than one hit with it. But the developers write:

TES Arena and Daggerfall, I'd guess. Or rather, the problem is more like trying to figure out how to swing your weapon in the first place, but even if it does swing, it is unclear if you really are in a position that you should be able to hit the enemy.

This actually seemed to get worse from Arena => Daggerfall. Oh how many times I've been shooting my mouse from side to side yelling at the screen "Why won't the sword swing? Why won't the sword swing?".

What you said reminds me of one of my favorite bullet-hell shooters, [url=http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/rr_e.html]rRootage[/url]. In that game, enemy bullets seemingly pass right through your sprite at random (though it could be argued that your actual ship's hitbox is actually constrained to the small square at the centre of your ship's sprite). Also, there's actually a mode which gives you bonus points if you move your ship in such a way that the enemy bullets narrowly graze past you. (i.e. just barely touch your ship.)

Anyway, that is an interesting point for game design: deliberately make the game rules unfair in a manner that benefits the player, in such a way as to make the game appear fair to the player. It's an interesting reversal from what seems to happen in so many games, where the game is made artificially hard/"challenging" through the use of unfair hit detection -- that also reminds me of Shattered Steel, which I feel has to be one of the games with the most bullshit hit detection that I've ever seen.
How so?

On both old and new game engines, the hitboxes were either out of place or were warped in certain circumstances

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1dLuzOVAws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xNe7LuQ4OI

They were which is why I've said for most of CS. Only time will tell if they've been properly fixed.

The hitboxes were literal boxes, they were recently changed to conform better to the characters.

I can actually think of another example: Some RPGs (Wizardry 1-5 (except 4) and SaGa 2) actually favor the party in initiative checks. (One observation: These games feature large enemy groups and spells that can sometimes wipe out those groups.) This reduces the annoyance factor of having to wait too long for your turn. (One thing to note, however: In the original (Game Boy) version of SaGa 2, this mechanic can cause or trigger initiative overflow, which means your robot with 103+ AGI will sometimes act last, and prevents you from consistently outspeeding certain late game enemies and bosses; this was fixed in the DS version.)

Very true. Then again, that may be a bit unfair, as you don't really have hit detection in Morrowind so much as you attack enemies with one giant RNG sword.

I'd like to add Jurassic Park Trespasser. You'd think that hitting giant dinosaurs with an AK-47 or a jeep mounted .50 MG would be easier. Bit tough to do, what with being a floating, one armed hit box with boobs.

(About TF2)

Actually, you need to be careful with this, particularly if you are developing a competitive multiplayer game. If some characters are larger than others, it can give players of smaller characters an unfair advantage, unless that fact is taken into account when balancing characters.

I could use SaGa 2 DS as an example again, even though it is a very different type of game. In SaGa 2 DS, a battle starts when an enemy (which moves in real time outside of battle) collides with the lead character (who is the only one displayed outside of combat). It turns out that female characters (both human and esper) are smaller than male characters and robots, and as a result, by putting a female character in the lead, you can avoid encounters more easily. While it doesn't ruin this particular game (actual combat is turn-based and doesn't have collision checks), it would be an issue in a competitive multiplayer action game.

(Of note, when playing SaGa 2 DS, I like to put a robot in the lead; robots can get their AGI so high that enemies can't hit them, and enemies strongly prefer to attack the lead character. Also, it's worth noting that the original SaGa 2 handles encounters differently (you get into an encounter after walking a pseudo-random number of steps) so the above discussion doesn't apply at all.)