Player hosts are annoying, unfair and unreliable, I said it. You’ve all noticed it. You’re playing a game, you watch a replay, and what you saw doesn’t match up with whats being shown to you through the enemy’s eyes. This, and the fits of rage that often ensue are due to minute amounts of latency that exist in sending signals to and from the host of the game. The player that is the host of the game doesn’t have to deal with this latency and often has the advantage over his opponents. It is because of this that things that can only be perceived as false come into play.
Latency is something that we all have to deal with. There will always be issues with it in online games. LAN and split screen games don’t have to deal with this issue because there are no signals to be sent, just hard wires. Dedicated servers on the other hand, such as those found in Battlefield 3 or League of Legends puts everyone on a level playing field, making players deal with the same amount of latency. Usually, when dedicated servers are employed, latency isn’t really an issue at all. The problem is, and always has been, player hosts. When one player in the game is serving as the conduit for every other player in the game, they don’t have to wait a fraction of a second for a signal to make it back to them. They are, in essence, playing the game in real-time, just as if it were a single-player game. Except, there are other people in the game, and they’re a tad bit behind you in witnessing the action unfold on screen.
