Mr. P, what you're talking about with Halo 2 is peer to peer hosting, which is entirely different from Loka, which is a dedicated server
Also I ask, is it fair they get benefits just because they're close?
I'm not saying it's fair, but that's just life. That's how ping works. Unless we all live in the same place, someone will have better ping, and someone will have worse ping.
Now this post was made for the assumption that ping is a factor in PvP, and I'm forced to now believe since your biggest part of your argument is that ping is not a factor, that you did not actually read the original thread.
I have read the original thread. I understand what you are saying. My counter-argument is that the effect of ping is being largely overstated, and I firmly stand by that. For the majority of players (who are in the US), ping differences are fairly negligible. For the international folks, and others with high ping, yes, it does become a factor at a certain point, but I argue that there is not a reasonable level to which you can raise someone's ping to make a more level playing field, without making the game worse for that person. I agree that it's not fair for people to have to play on crappy ping that makes it harder, but unfortunately life is not fair in that regard, and we can't control that. It is also unfair, however, to raise someone's ping to a level where it starts to effect their experience, something which is completely within our control. Otherwise, the point at which the difference between, say 15 and 50 ping becomes significant is in a situation where players are basically perfectly matched otherwise, so I see very little value in investing time into developing such a measure. I see very little merit in trying to minorly (or majorly) disadvantage others because some people are disadvantaged due to unavoidable circumstances.
I can personally testify to ping being a definite factor in PvP, in any game in fact. League of Legends for example as soon as I get better ping I ranked up, Loka DESPITE the 300 less fps I'm doing well in most conquest fights because of the ping I'm getting (39 from 46, thats a 7 ms difference).
This I cannot take to be anything other than a completely bold-faced lie, or a delusion on your part. The absolute lowest limits of human reaction time are not even 150ms, and that quick a reaction time is superhumanly fast. To claim that you can notice 7ms difference is not something that I can even begin to take seriously, unless you yourself are in fact, a computer.
I agree with Malt here, at the highest level of play seconds do matter. That's why all NA LoL teams bootcamp in Korea before big events. When they are there they have less than 10 ping and they consistently talk about how much nicer it is and what a difference it makes. Much of the time they are going from 30-50 ping to like 7 and at their level of play they see a massive difference.
What you're talking about here is bootcamping/playing on LAN, which is a 0 ping environment for all players, a significantly different phenomenon than online gaming.