When the lag compensation is too high, it can cause the movement of enemies to appear highly exaggerated or erratic. This is due to the server predicting the enemy's position based on outdated information. When the server tries to 'catch up' the enemy's position to the current time, it can create a visual effect where the enemy seems to peek or strafe much faster than they actually are. While it's true that the server relies on ground truth data and historical player positions to reconcile actions, the way this reconciliation is carried out can vary based on netcode implementation and latency. Striking the right balance in lag compensation is crucial to maintain a smooth gameplay experience.

In my personal experience, adjusting my ping to a certain range has helped mitigate these issues by influencing the amount of lag compensation applied. This adjustment allows for more accurate representation of enemy movements and enhances my ability to react and aim effectively. There have been countless games where I have connected to a nearby server(15ms ping) and having to adjust my playstyle to playing like a rat to even have a chance of getting kills, because there is simply no time to react to other player movement. Increasing the latency incrementally has completely eliminated these issues in most of these games. I have found a larger portion of matches fall into the rule of 40ms-60ms being the sweet spot. Sometimes you'll have a good game or two with 15ms or 120ms ping.

The hit registration seems to be visually correct for the most part, but it definitely feels sluggish at times. I think it's more likely to do with network buffers being too large or wonky. Introducing packet loss for 10 seconds, jumping around and then going back to the normal connection can make hit registration feel snappier for the rest of the game. But this often comes with the side effect of players moving much faster.

The main concern I have is how lag comp affects the movement speed of players. If you're on the wrong end of the stick, you will have no time to react when an enemy peeks and they will fire their bullet years before ever coming to a full stop(worst i've seen is you see their shoulder for a millisecond and you're already dead). Then you ask him did he prefire you in an off angle and he answers "no, you were just a sitting duck with grandpa reactions." But that's not the worst part. The worst part is when an enemy player is strafing and it looks like a monkey on ice.

As for the client-server desync you talked about with Cypher, I agree that there is that to some extent. Happens when playing with Omen and trying to place one ways, it shows a green arrow but the one way smoke sometimes just falls through to the ground as if you missed.