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?