By now I’ve played a huge amount of Halo 4, and I have come to the conclusion that there is frequently at least a 1 shot advantage given to certain players based on host or quality of connection compared to other players in the game. In short: if you have the best relative connection you effectively get around a 1 shot head start in any given gun fight. You can call this lag, host advantage, or whatever, but I have come to see it as a real thing, and because of it I doubt the outcome both when I do well and when I do poorly.
What’s the evidence? First, as playlist numbers have dropped, particularly in IS (or what is now TS) since DLC has been required, I’ve had a lot of inconsistent games, even w/ relatively similarly skilled players (if you believe in CSR anyway). Low players counts mean less options for ideal connections - lots of yellow bar games. With that, it seems like I frequently can’t kill people - shoot and shoot and shoot and nothing happens. Or, the opposite happens: I shoot someone, the shot registers, but I see that they don’t react at all until another shot later - I win the gunfight every time. If that happens, I’m going to go like 15-20 K’s and 5-10 D’s in that game. If I’m in “can’t shoot someone mode” I’m going to have opposite stats. I’ve started just camping and playing super defensively in games like that, which isn’t that fun.
Second, strangely lopsided games in which one team completely destroys another team even though they have similar CSR’s and similar stats. Third, I’ve seen games where much higher CSR players get destroyed by lower CSR players.
Anyway, I could be convinced that what I think I am seeing is really randomness, since the human mind tries to find order everywhere, even where there is none, but I am curious as to other people’s experience. I would like to see network testing to see if there is a correlation between relative latency on a per game basis and player performance - the so-called “online warrior” phenomenon. I would like to know what, in fact, is the actual advantage based on relative connection quality.