It looks a lot like there's a big influx of players coming back on patch day - and you can really feel it in the servers.

So I took a little break around the middle of Act 2 because I was getting tired of dive bombing out of diamond to gold over and over due to crazy games.

I came back about 1.5 weeks ago and the game has been feeling amazing, all the hit-reg issues and weird stuttering/frame hangs in aim duels happened so so rarely, maybe once in 10 games. I managed to push from g3 up to d1 in almost straight wins.

But then patch day hits, bringing the new battlepass and suddenly the weird freezes are back with a vengeance. Things will happen, like you go to prefire a corner - and get headshot from the spot you're peaking before you've even clicked to prefire..

Switch sides and suddenly they're playing like irons now, just standing there letting you shoot them when they push onto sites.

So I'm just going to make a casual deduction that there must be some link between stress on the servers and the quality of play that Riot are able to provide.

It lines up quite well with the thoughts that hit-reg issues got progressively worse through the Beta, correlating with the player count rising as the Beta went on.

Feel free to take a gander at how Riot 'optimised' their 128 tick netcode.

This should have been worrying from the start, the idea of a free to play platform offering so many 128 tick servers, if you want 128 tick in CSGO you have to pay the premiums that allow platforms like Faceit and ESEA to actually run the servers.

It would be nice to see Riot offer the chance for premium platforms to run their own servers if it can improve the game, especially the competitive scene where stuff like this could be a big problem for sponsors etc.

TLDR: I'm wagering that server issues like frame rate hitches during aim duels, hit reg issues and one team being reaction-time gods until halftime are caused by large numbers of players loading Riot's servers, This is especially noticeable today due to the new and returning players here for the fresh Act+Map+Battlepass.

Is anyone else experiencing this with their games on battlepass launch day/week?