Back in my day I walked up hill to AND from school and lag compensation didn’t exit. And I hate that it does exist now.

My background is in Unreal Tournament 1999, the original one. I was the number one rated sniper. My team never lost a game, match, or tournament in 15 years. We played from all over the country together and outside of it, too. Back then you had to learn to lead your shots depending on your ping. It took skill and a lot of experience to be able to play on servers across the world.

That changed over time, with fancy algorithms that attempted to make games more fair, regardless of pings. But even the best implementations ruin games for people with lower pings.

I won’t go into the technical details, those are easy to find, but look at COD. It takes almost a full second to get a hit confirmation, it’s beyond awful. Those garbage recycled games aside, I care mostly about Counter-Strike, specifically CS:GO.

I recently started playing again, after being away for years. I was in the top .01% of players. Not the best in the world, but pretty damn good, but I find myself in silver hell. What I noticed is: without fail, if I play with a 30ish ping I usually get 35-40 kills, but if I play with a ping that is 5-10ms, I get destroyed. Whaaattt?! Really. It happens every. single. time.

Normally I can peek a corner and tap someone, but not with a 5 ping! The algorithms are broken in that regard. I can’t really explain that, but the opposite is easier to. If I am holding a corner, someone can easily peek me with an 80 ping and I have zero chance. Here’s what happens:

They look, have 80ms to click on me and even if I am no longer visible in real time I am hit. Realistically, it’s probably something like they take 180-200ms to shoot, if they are mechanically inclined, and I have 100-120ms to respond, which isn’t within the realm of possibility for a human to react. Even if I did, they shot first. I lose. It’s the same reason if you see someone shooting at you and you run behind a corner and still die. It’s bullshit.

In seeking equality, equity was reached, but not really. It gave an advantage for those with bad internet connections. It’s plain old not fair. It sucks. It has completely flipped the script. Without lag compensation if someone was holding a position and someone with a lower ping peeks them, the person with the lower ping has the advantage… because that makes sense. It’s like 2 people drag racing: normally the person with the faster car will win, but in this world the person with the slower car gets a head start.

This is just me complaining, I guess, but it ruins games for me. As someone who is hyper-competitive and has a super high level of skill, it sucks. Well it sucks to play with a 5 ping. I guess the best course of action is to make sure I don’t.

It’s just another example of people wanting equality, but really meaning equity, while getting ahead. Games suck now.