Has this happened to you:
1.) Put several rounds into an enemy before a beat down, yet die from their mirror attack?
2.) Missed rounds badly yet end up getting solid hits?
3.) Nail repeated head shots to no effect?
4.) Die from phantom grenades? You can’t hear them, or see them, but they kill you.
5.) Miss point blank with the shotgun?
6.) Splatter an enemy that merely gets nudged?
7.) Get Splattered by vehicular tickles or wind sheer?
… The list goes on…
This first one happened to me again today for the millionth time since Halo 5 was released. I recall shooting about 5 pistol rounds into an enemy before my melee, to his 3 or 4 AR rounds with no melee, yet somehow I died. I vividly recall my melee animation playing as well. Extremely frustrated, I went back into the Theater to see what exactly my opponent did to kill me. To my surprise, the Theater showed that I only got off about 3 pistol rounds with no melee whatsoever, while my opponent got nearly 6 or 7 AR rounds off with a melee for the kill. I barely even scratched the guy I thought for sure I had dead to rights.
Time and Time again in this game, what I think I see just doesn’t make any damn sense. I have been playing Halo since the very beginning, dealing with terrible, un-freaking-believable bad lag. I have always been good at Halo, above average for sure, yet somehow I find myself getting absolutely schooled in Halo 5, especially when it come to one-on-one encounters. I unload into my opponent, cross-hair where it needs to be, yet I constantly die in these situations. My days of Rage quitting were long gone… until Halo 5.
The lag I’m speaking of isn’t the traditional kind of lag everybody likes to complain about: people skipping around, the frozen screen, or crazy physics. What I’m talking about is how the “jitters” gets smoothed out, making tiny lag spikes seem to vanish. For the most part, Halo 5 is incredibly smooth. It’s truly amazing how little lag there is considering all that’s going on. Yet I question the truth behind this seemingly near perfect experience. Is it really this smooth, or does the net code only make it appear this smooth to the end user, while in truth people aren’t always where they actually appear to be on your screen?
Lag has always plagued Halo. I would never want to go back to the Halo 2 lag experience, players tripping their routers for lag kills, and constant broken matches. Nobody wants to shoot at a target that jitters around the screen unpredictably, but at the same time, who wants to aim at a target that appears to be in one place while it’s actually someplace else? I’m not sure which frustrates me more.
One thing is for sure, Halo 5 Multi-player upsets me way more than it should. Sometimes I make dumb mistakes and get killed. It will happen, and I can own that. I truly respect a good Halo player who can pull off some amazing shots. I’m just extremely frustrated with how often my actions simply don’t seem to add up like they should, while opponents are able to kill be much quicker and easier than I can possibly wrap my head around.
Feel free to share any of your Disguised Lag experiences. Any Net Coders out there are welcome to support or destroy this topic. I just want to know what the hell is going on.