Not quite sure what any of that has to do with you implying that people are using aimbots, but I'll bite.

We all have different connectivity methods, and latency is only part of this. The UDP packet delivery is inherently unreliable and dependent on many factors. The quality of netcode is crucial in reconstructing gameplay from chaotic stream of incoming information.

When I have a connection with similar ping to yours, but more packets arrive corrupt, delayed, duplicated, out of order than they do for you, or my network adapter or router or power-ethernet adapter clumps more packets together than does your equipment, or my QoS sorts them inaccurately, or there are checksum offload errors, a solid netcode can compensate for this far better than shitty netcode. It can adapt packet sizes being sent, it can interpolate what happened better, it is simply more robust in reconstructing the overall picture of what's happening.

It narrows the gap between us, making two people of the same ping actually feel like the same ping.

I'm obviously not arguing that ping doesn't have an effect on players. Maybe try staying away from blatantly obvious strawman arguments?

Source: actually having understanding of TCP and UDP protocols, and writing both peer-to-peer and client-server network models.

Hilarious. I hope you realize that throwing a bunch of technical terms at me and hoping you're gonna sound smart doesn't strengthen your weak arguments one bit. Trying to browbeat people with needless technical terms just means you know that your core argument is completely hallow.

Source: I've had discussions with people who act like you before.

I am a Quake Wars veteran, and I have never had the same sense of ambiguity about any of the kills in that game, as I do with Tribes:Ascend, which I too, have been playing since beta.

This also applies to Unreal Tournament 2004, and original Tribes games. They too, had better netcode than this one. In Tribes:Ascend, the experience of your bullets, discs and mortars literally flying through someone at point-blank range, has become so standard, people have stopped noticing it. When nothing is actually where it's supposed to be, when discs fly out of your side, yes, people adapt, but it's like living in a world of carnival mirrors. It skews everything, and yes, it raises questions sometimes - "how exactly did this happen?"

To me this reads like you were good at some other games a long time ago and now aren't able to live up to your own standards of excellence in T:A. Now, instead of admitting your lack of skill, you're trying really hard to find other reasons for why you aren't able to compete with people who are really good at this game. Blame the netcode, accuse people of aimbotting, whatever it takes, as long as you don't have to own up to your own shortcomings.

That's how shitty netcode works.

But it's shitty for everyone, not just you, and more importantly, that doesn't make people who are better at the game than you aimbotters.