[kahmeal]

As a long time gamer, I can anecdotally corroborate your theory with my early experiences playing FPS games using a dial-up connection. Average ping was about 200ms which allowed for an enjoyable and accurate experience after some adjustment. >250ms was unpleasant and had a significant impact to ability.

It was for this reason that I, and many others, for a short period, got objectively "worse" at the game when we switched to ISDN/Cable and suddenly found ourselves with 20-30ms pings; Our brains were still including the compensating latency when firing.

[arghwhat]

This seems more like compensation for projectile velocity, no?

I am assuming that the latency is in enemy location due to the game running hitscan (instantaneous weapons without trajectory simulation) on the server. In this case, your aim is as when you clicked the trigger, but hit is only computed <latency> time later when the server processes the incoming shot request, at which point the enemy position has changed.

This makes the latency behave similar to projectile velocity, where you need to aim not where a target is but where a target will be. Changing to a setup with a lower latency would then be like using a much faster weapon which requires new training to use.

(Input latency would mean that if you move your aim and click the trigger, your aim would continue to change for <latency> time before the bullet fires towards whatever your aim ends up being. This is much worse.)