The idea that a high ping can grant you an advantage in PUBG has been recently debunked in a thoughtful research video. This concept is not something brand new for shooters since the issue of latency, and its consequences have been troubling online players for decades.
In general, the point of high-ping advantage in online shooters is that a peeker with network lag can spot and shoot enemies before they can see him. This belief is firm, and it’s also a thing for the PUBG community. Many players are confident that playing at a high ping will give an advantage, and as an example, they often bring up the old story of receiving damage behind cover. It can be frustrating and annoying, but the truth is that it doesn’t favor high-ping players. At least in PUBG.
According to the latest video by Battle(non)sense on YouTube, PUBG has nothing to do with giving players advantage for their high ping. It’s actually the opposite because high ping favors the enemies, not the players with latency issues. The interesting part is the research, made by Battle(non)sense, applies to PUBG only due to its specific online features and infrastructure. To make the demonstration of players with high and low pings as clear as possible, the author emulated network lag and compared the experience directly to non-affected gameplay. The results turned out to be very simple yet convincing. The high-ping peeker’s advantage in PUBG is wholly made up.
While a player with high ping can indeed see his enemy first, and open fire even before the opponent recognizes he’s being attacked, in reality, the second player kills the high-ping peeker first only because his combat data travels to the server faster. The way it works in PUBG is that the game’s server does not take into account who shot first. The only information it relies on is the time it took the shot data to reach the server. In other words, when a high-ping peeker starts firing first, his shots have to travel much longer to the server. It leaves the attacked player with an opportunity to shoot back immediately, and due to the lower latency, PUBG is registering these shots first.
The situation gets even worse when a defending player has high ping, not the attacking peeker. In this case, the defender with high latency won’t even witness the enemy until he sees the death screen. High ping doesn’t give players any advantage whatsoever in PUBG. And as Battle(non)sense stresses out, network issues also prevent players from picking loot from the ground in time, which in response gives their low-ping enemies a considerable advantage to get a gun faster.
