LoL pros voice concerns over artificial 35ms ping at MSI

The artificial 35ms ping implementation at the League of Legends Mid-Season Invitational has sparked significant criticism from competing professional players who claim the technical execution falls short of expectations.

Riot Games introduced this network latency measure due to scheduling conflicts with the Asian Games and China’s strict COVID-19 quarantine protocols, preventing LPL representatives Royal Never Give Up from attending in person. To maintain competitive equity across regions, developers mandated uniform 35ms ping for all MSI matches, including local area network games between non-Chinese teams.

Within the tournament’s opening days, multiple professional competitors voiced concerns that the actual in-game experience significantly exceeds the promised latency. Several players independently reported stage conditions feeling closer to 60-80ms range.

While casual players might dismiss the difference as negligible, professional gamers recognize that even 25ms variations dramatically impact mechanical execution at elite levels. This technical issue has already influenced competitive strategy, with T1’s legendary mid laner Faker anticipating meta adaptations to accommodate the suboptimal conditions.

Impact, Oner and Doublelift Voice Technical Concerns

Following the initial competition days, players across multiple teams have provided detailed technical feedback about the network conditions, revealing consistent patterns of performance degradation.

Evil Geniuses top laner Jeong “Impact” Eon-young articulated his technical objections during a Korizon interview, emphasizing how the artificial delay fundamentally alters gameplay mechanics. He compared the experience to elite football athletes competing with “sandbags attached to their feet” – a vivid analogy highlighting how added latency disrupts muscle memory and reaction timing. The professional veteran noted that standard solo queue sessions in Busan, the tournament host city, typically deliver approximately 15ms ping for comparison.

T1 jungler Moon “Oner” Hyeon-joon provided crucial technical insights to MGG, explaining how tournament organizers assured competitors that practice facility and stage network conditions would maintain identical latency profiles. This guarantee enabled teams to prepare through scrims under simulated tournament conditions. However, Oner reported noticeable performance differences, stating stage matches feel “significantly more laggy with substantially slower reaction speeds.” The Korean jungler emphasized these technical inconsistencies make professional competition “extremely frustrating and technically compromised.”

Though retired from professional play, renowned ADC Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng leveraged his platform to amplify technical concerns from active competitors. His communication with TSM bot laner Edward “Tactical” Ra revealed deeper technical issues beyond simple latency measurements.

Doublelift relayed technical analysis from Tactical indicating the MSI network environment “performs more like 60ms with consistent packet loss” and demonstrates “unreliable consistency that creates persistently laggy gameplay… it absolutely doesn’t match the promised 35ms experience, feeling substantially higher.”

The discrepancy between measured ping and perceived performance represents a complex technical challenge in competitive gaming. While network tools might report 35ms latency, factors like packet loss, jitter, and server synchronization can dramatically alter the actual player experience. Professional competitors develop muscle memory and reaction patterns based on consistent network behavior, making unpredictable latency particularly disruptive to professional performance.

For Korean players accustomed to single-digit ping in domestic competitions, adjusting to even the promised 35ms requires significant adaptation. However, when the actual experience fluctuates between 60-80ms with packet loss, the competitive environment becomes fundamentally compromised. This situation mirrors challenges in other competitive titles where network optimization is crucial – similar to the server performance considerations in our BF6 Weapons Unlock Guide that emphasizes stable connections for optimal performance.

The practice environment consistency issue highlighted by Oner reveals a critical tournament integrity concern. If players cannot trust that their preparation conditions match competition environments, the fundamental fairness of international events comes into question. This technical reliability issue affects competitive preparation similarly to how server stability impacts gameplay in titles like Battlefield 6, where unpredictable performance can undermine skilled play.

Riot’s Technical and Competitive Dilemma

The original decision to standardize at 35ms already generated controversy within the competitive community. Multiple factors create inherent unfairness for all participating teams. RNG competing from their familiar training facility potentially provides environmental advantages, while Korean professionals face latency levels three to four times higher than their typical competitive experience.

However, the emerging technical discrepancy presents Riot with an even more challenging predicament. If technical measurements confirm the ping is correctly set to 35ms through their implementation efforts, creating fairness for on-site competitors might require further reducing the artificial delay until it subjectively feels like 35ms to players. This solution would create the opposite problem – Chinese competitors would then technically play on higher latency than opponents, undermining the original solution’s purpose.

This technical challenge resembles optimization problems in other competitive games, where balancing performance across different environments requires careful technical consideration, much like the strategic planning discussed in our Battlefield 6 Complete Guide for maintaining competitive integrity.

Tournament organizers have not yet announced specific technical solutions, though they undoubtedly work urgently to resolve the issues given competitor dissatisfaction during one of only two annual international League of Legends events. The situation underscores why professional players value consistent technical environments, similar to how NATO operations in BF6 require reliable communication systems for coordinated success.

The developers face a nearly impossible technical balancing act. Any adjustment favoring one group disadvantages another, and the fundamental network infrastructure limitations may prevent any truly equitable solution. This highlights the importance of technical reliability in esports, comparable to the environmental consistency needed for mastering Conquest modes in various competitive titles.

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