Do server ticks actually do anything?

[cat stang]

I've got like 1000 hours and I have no clue if it does anything meaningful, i have only seen one guy bring it up and he was a level 67 ploomer.

[Nanoha]

Yes, it's essentially server FPS. Higher the tick rate means everything is processed at a finer intervals which means less weirdness. It's hard to paint a picture in words with a good example but imagine an arrow flying at 1 meter/second, with a tick rate of 1 then the physics calculation is going to do that whole meter sweep in one go. If the tick rate is 2 then it'll do that meter sweep in 2 goes (move 50 cm, move 50 cm).

This has huge implications when other things are also moving, a hit at one tick rate might not be a hit at another tick rate. Faster something is moving the more important it is to have higher tick rates. Higher is more accurate and generally meets player expectations than lower tick rates. I don't know what rates the servers typically run at but they usually don't have to be crazily high (like people with 240+ fps high).