I got that once in Unreal Tournament, but only because someone on the server didn't understand what relics were (items that gave you buffs of some kind). Still felt good, though.

I totally killed it on a particular server for Counterstrike (the oooold versions). It was the only server that had a map I really liked but my ping sorta sucked. But the netcode made it so that I could circle around people with an MP5 meaning I was very accurate and they had almost no chance to hit me.

Guess what happened.

I mean, in some sense you did have an unfair advantage over the other players and maybe they were justified in banning you?

If having a high ping is an issue that should simply be a kick. Most modern games generally have a way to prevent people with a high ping from playing. Lag compensation techniques also reduce the problem to some extent. I imagine OP is talking about CS in goldsrc which absolutely had bad netcode for high ping, still fun as hell though.

High ping / jitter could be used as an intentional cheating mechanism in the days of the lag switch through.

See my reply to your parent. You are spot on. This was CS way before the "I hate CS 1.6 and will forever stay on 1.5" days.

The kids these days don't know what normal pings looked like back in the day.

Wrong guess :)

Nobody banned me. But yes players accused me of cheating of course. Back then I also didn't know what "netcode" is. Now in hindsight I know that the game gave an unfair advantage to players with high ping. Probably in order to make the game playable with internet connections common at the time. Blame Valve ;)

No cheating involved. Best ping I ever had at those times was 120-150ms IIRC. On that particular server it was more past 300.

Boy those were the times.

I mostly played on an unstable terrible dial up (under 300ms was a fantastic day). When I played on a t1 line my K/D was always higher than at home. Maybe packet loss was my ultimate foil?

Back in the day I used to play America's Army (dating myself here). I had figured out where to point and shoot a grenade at the beginning of a round and take out most of the enemy team. I don't know if others knew about this. I just figured it could be done and didn't take long to figure out where to shoot.

Well, if gamers gain that much satisfaction from other people's frustration, it's no mystery why they cheat too. I don't think that feeling is especially dependent on having achieved it "legitimately".

What? No, the satisfaction was from having done something so well someone literally didn't believe it was possible.

Not sure how you think you could get that from actually cheating.

Who says they didn't believe it was possible? They just didn't think it was possible for you, i.e. that you did it honestly.

We all know cheating is a problem in online games, so it wasn't an unreasonable belief. It's certainly possible to play chess at Magnus Carlsen's level, but if I play against someone random online and they play at that level, then of course my default assumption is going to be that they're cheating, not that they're Magnus Carlsen.