Levi Porphyrogenitus, on 24 May 2014 - 01:32 PM, said:
Low ping makes you easier to hit and enemies harder to hit. With Host State Rewind, so long as your ping isn't over 500 a higher ping lets you make shots that a lower ping will not allow, since you will tend to see people doing things like running in straight lines (when they are juking from their perspective).
Having a low ping and getting shot at by someone with high ping is what causes those phantom hits through cover, since they didn't see you dodge around that hill and fired at where they thought you were, and HSR gave them the benefit of the doubt (and the free damage to your mech).
It's actually the opposite of this. A low ping will always get the hit that a high ping won't. By the time a high ping player takes a shot, the low ping player had checked in with the server multiple times.
Lets say my 200 ping comes up against a 50 ping player. My client asks the server what the enemy is doing, his client asks for updates on what I'm doing.
As I was traveling forward at the time, his client gets told at the 50ms mark that I'm moving forward. Again at 100ms, I'm still moving forward. At 150ms, I'm still moving forward. At 200ms I only just get to see the enemy who is already lining a shot up on me. I start twisting, but the enemy has already taken a shot, hitting what to him looked like a stationary CT. This is what happens most of the time, no matter how much I dodge, twist or weave to the enemy I'll often look like I'm just running in a straight line.
There is only 1 instance where a high ping player has the advantage, which is when they get the drop on an enemy. The very first shot you fire will take effect as you saw them first. After that though, they immediately have the advantage as nothing you do from then on will matter, as you will be be reacting to things that have already occurred.
Low ping players really just don't have a clue how good they have it in these sorts of games. All HSR does is give us a small chance to have the server register a hit. However it actually is detrimental in many cases. For example, you can't accurately lag lead someone, as the server will often think you deliberately missed when you were in fact trying to lag lead.
However, if you shoot right at someone, the HSR on the server will count it as a miss, because as far as the server is concerned for the last 200ms that player has been somewhere completely different.
The worst part is the average reflex time in gamers is probably just under 200ms. Most studies have shown the average person operates around 200ms. This is unfortunately almost exactly the time required for the gamer on the high ping to get off their shot, which I have no opportunity to dodge, react to or anything else.
Most high ping players have played the same games on local low ping servers. For example something like Unreal Tournament would have local servers, operating at anywhere under 100 ping depending on the host. You would then in a quiet time go to an American server and play at 200 ping. The difference was like night and day. Without doing this often, the low ping players really just have zero idea or conception of just how much of an advantage that ping gives you.
For every one time you might get hit going back behind cover and think that gave the high ping player an advantage, the high ping player deals with that EVERY single shot after the first.
It annoys me when low ping people complain about the advantages. When seriously, there is simply no comparison to how much easier it is to be on the low ping side.
This isn't even going into the difficulties of rounding errors, mean (averaging) algorithms and heuristics programming that will always give the advantage to the client with more data. My lasers have to calculate a 'tick' for the time they are on target. The server often doesn't have a clue how long I was on target so it has to guess. Even if my entire beam was on target for the whole time, the server has far more data to work with from the low ping player. It therefore estimates that due to the changes in movement the low ping player made during that time, perhaps only 50% of my laser was on target.
Finally, lights are almost impossible to deal damage to. A light traveling at 150kph covers 41m per second. At my ping, that means at any time there is around an 8m difference in the lights position from where I'm shooting to where it might actually be. 8m is often more than the entire size of the lights hit box!!! Can you process just how much a difference that would make, when as far as the server is concerned I am by default ALWAYS missing. Every time it does a calculation it has to estimate or 'tween' the difference between my client and the opponent. Again, the opponent simply has more data points for the server to work with, meaning often at least 50% of the damage goes wasted through zero fault of the pilot.
This is the reality of the situation. Low ping players = Advantage. High ping players = disadvantage. There is simply Zero other reality.
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