All this fancy architecture doesn't change the fact that....I CALLED TOP FIRST!
We'll never know for sure. There have been many times where I'll type in chat: "top", my message will appear, and then somebody else will say "top" immediately after. But, a asking a third person reveals that the second player's message actually arrived first, even though my client shows my message first.
The chat architecture is terrible.
I and many people I know don't agree with this. Instant feedback is nice, but not required. Moreover, if we need to choose between (instant feedback) and (knowledge of server receipt of a message and knowledge of message ordering), we'll choose the latter every time. (I'm glaring at you, Google Hangouts.)
Having the chat server lie to you about the state of the world always feels far worse than a delay between the time you submit your message and the time it appears.
Even if the server corrected the order messages were received it'd feel shitty to not get your lane because someone has a faster roundtrip to the chat server.
2) The case where the server displays one message ordering to one player and another message ordering to another player is strictly worse than the case where the server takes 250ms longer to display the same message ordering to all players. The first case creates confusion and arguments, as well as feelings of distrust directed towards the chat software. The second case might cause a vague sense of displeasure at the quarter-second delay.
> Maybe the best way to claim top lane shouldn't be the first person to type "top" and hit enter.
Agreed. Perhaps people could be civil when they play their games. :)
[0] In this case, RTT doesn't matter. Only the time required to get a packet from you to the server matters. I think that we can reasonably assume that the worst case RTT from anyone who's playing a vaguely-latency-sensitive online video game to anywhere else on the Internet is 500ms.
[1] Honestly, it might take half of this time for the pixel issued by a draw command to your graphics card to appear on screen. [2]
[2] http://superuser.com/questions/419070/transatlantic-ping-fas...
Basically, it triggers an annoying O(N) operation whenever it happens :)
Although that matchmaking change where you get to say where you want to go and it matches you with a team helped too.