I play on a very good network, my Ping is in average 5. Almost in every single game I play people are shocked at my ping that sometimes can go as low as 3. This is perceived to be a major advantage and technically speaking it should be.

The more I play the game the less I understand its mechanics. I can top frag in one game and nearly bottom frag almost the next game with similar or inferior competition. I can top frag in a DM and almost bottom frag instantly after. Not middle frag.. bottom frag.

I began realizing an interesting patterns as I recorded gameplay. In the middle of this chaotic inconsistency of Val, I realised there was one consistent thing, I would do worse in 1v1s with players with high ping. The higher the ping the worse the outcome would be, irrespective of the skill level of the opposing player. Things like peaking, wide peaks, etc.. it was neatly impossible for me to counter, even if my reaction time was at a much higher level.

So I decided to try something else, I changed servers and went to another location where my ping was above 40 and lo and behold it was night and day.. my performance was consistency and significantly better. There were less "magic" matrix style swings, when I got killed it kind of made more sense. The game felt a bit less snappy but it felt logical.

I suppose my question is - is Ping compensation a real thing? Is it applied on an individual basis as in player X vs player Y with the compensation applied at that level?

If the compensation is real, how does it actually work? does it try to predict the movement of a lower ping user, does it introduce visual latency or the opposite?

Any other low ping users experienced this?