this is the match that made me start rating games on lag. blade ball, ranked, and im actually decent for a mobile player, the whole game is one tap to parry the ball and i can time it fine. it comes down to a 1v1, ball bouncing between us getting faster every pass, and im reading it, im locked in, i KNOW when to tap. ball comes at me, i tap on the exact frame, and nothing happens. a quarter second later my screen catches up and im already dead. it wasnt me. my phone stuttered, or my ping spiked, or the touch input ate a frame, doesnt matter which, the point is i did everything right and the hardware said no. meanwhile the guy who won is probably on pc with 120 frames and a wired connection reacting to stuff i physically cannot see in time. thats the part that gets me every time. its not a skill gap its a device gap and the ranked ladder doesnt know the difference, we get the same rank punishment for our phones being phones. i still play because i love the concept, but every loss i have to ask, was that me, or was that my thumb covering the screen and a frame that never rendered. mobile players are playing a harder version of the same game and almost nobody designs around it
this is the exact thing i rate every game on. you didnt lose the read, you lost the milliseconds between your tap and the parry registering. input latency decides more matches than skill does and almost nobody measures it. respect for naming it.
