It's literally a thing when someone says, "It's all the rage with lag" or something similar to that. Why? Well, because it's one of the many, as well as one of the main struggles gamers face when they're trying not to die. It's one thing to carry your teammates, it's another to carry and lag. The lag gets so bad that there comes a point where you "can't even," and you want to table flip the f**k out of everything, just to get the frustration out. Then again, you have to stop and think, "No. Wait. I can't ... I'm sorry, computer. I won't do it again," because the prices for the gaming laptop cost an arm, a leg and even a piece of your soul. For those of you that ask, "What soul?" — whatever remaining pieces you have left; I don't judge.
The reason why I bring up the concept of lag in games is because of the amount of frustration I've experienced thus far with "Left 4 Dead 2 Versus" maps. The Versus concept in the game is basically self-explanatory: you and your friends decide who are going to be the Survivors and who are going to be the Special Infected. In my case, it ended up being 2 versus 1. As much as I found it unfair, it might not have been so bad had it not been for the constant frame lag. It's hard to play defense when you don't know what's coming after you, especially not knowing where it's coming from. Now, you have to rely on your instincts and skills to keep you (and your teammates) alive. Exhibit A (best skip to 3:00.00 mins in):
Now, you might ask, "How in the hell do you deal with that?" Truth is, you don't. You temporarily put up with it while contemplating technology murder. Doesn't it mean the same thing? Not at all. Dealing with it would just mean you don't do anything to fix the problem; putting up with it means finding the tiny loopholes in the lag to make it work for you. Another example, is the game called "Vindictus"; the Korean version is called "Mabinogi Heroes." "Vindictus" is just the U.S. version of things.
Before "Vindictus" got a huge a** upgrade, the servers were so unstable that you actually needed a legit gaming computer: the right RAM, graphics card, CPU and even memory. Yes, this is in reference to a past experience and because my laptop sucked at the time, there's no way to really show how bad it was for me. Anyway, long story short, it's hard to fight off monsters when you're stuck in one spot and you're just watching your HP slowly die down. Same concept applies here.
It's more of, how can you give your friends the challenge or be ready to face on the challenge when there's no visual stability? Gaming can be stressfully fun. There, I said it.