Brainlag, I'm not sure if you read my post. Or the post you quoted. Anyway, no need to demolish your poor desk.
I am fully aware that you were referring to Source engine games. Their netcode differs, obviously, but it certainly is not "unforgiving".
The post you quote is not about BF2, but a method that
might work in BFBC2 to alter the way lag compensation works. I'm not even sure BF2 does employ a really sophisticated lag compensation, but irregardless my point about ping importance is still valid. Lag compensation can only try to interpolate between player position reports and extrapolate a "look-ahead" from your ping average of the last 1-2sec. The higher your ping, the worse this prediction will be: If the player is just rendered in advance of his actual position, it might be that he already has changed course or stopped while he actually still is running for you. This would lead either to warping players or positional "morphing" of them. Such a lag compensation would also suffer severely for players experiencing fluctuating pings. I'm still not sure on if and which method is used in BF2, but it's not really of important. It is as it is, and pings influence the firefight prowess in BF2 just the same as in every other shooter game.
I'll leave the discussion here, because I think it's gotten off topic and I don't really see the point in arguing network architecture logic here. The basic concepts are not really rocket science and are easy to read up on.
EDIT: Just by chance I found a forum discussion some years later that refer to the quote you made: They state that while the variables are there, they are proven to do nothing in BFBC2. They are just a bunch of dead variables, just like there's dozens of them in every BF game.
A nice read on game networking and lag compensation can be found here:
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wik ... Networking
Applies for Source, but the principles are the same for most games.