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Decline Have your vidya game skills declined over the years?

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Apr 5, 2013
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I was wondering why I cannot get as much fun as before with platformers and, most importantly, first persons shooters... Actually, I realized how much my skills declined over the years it's not even funny. I've got fragged in Quake Champions in most embarassing way many times and I feel like I'm too old to enjoy it anymore.

Mouse and keyboard control setup ruins the fun, I almost exclusively switched to gamepad and once I have found an ideal one (Xbox One Elite controller), it's really hard to go back to K&M. Now I'm enjoying mostly games that can be efficiently played that way - blobbers , jrpg, console ports of PC games (e.g. PSX Final Doom) but immediately bouncing back off games that throw difficulty issue in terms of dexterity.

Shit sucks but it's propably the natural order of things... or not?

Anyone stays fit, still? Maybe some of you improved?
 

octavius

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I've found that my skill and interest in FPS games have decreased; I used to play on second hardest difficulty, now I usually play on Normal dificulty.
But at the same time I've become better at TBS games, and always play at highest difficulty.

Statswise, I think my Willpower, Endurance and Wisdom have improved, while Intelligence and Dexterity have decreased.
 

Daemongar

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My skills have declined - when I was playing TF1 and Quake I think I was mentally moving 10x faster than I am now. But... the games have changed also. My aim had to be a little more precise back then. Lately I feel games hitboxes are more "in the general vicinity" than right on target. Games didn't have shitty bullet-time, auto-health regen, and all this stuff. I can afford to be a LOT more sloppy than I was in the past.

Example: playing Doom 2016 yesterday. I'm playing on medium difficulty. There seems to be health everywhere. You can even kill enemies and they drop health. There is slowdowns where you beat on an enemy and while doing so, you don't get blown to bits by other enemies.

So I am not aging. Its the games that have declined.
 

markec

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I dont believe my skills declined, in last few years I finished few games many people consider difficult without breaking a sweat and Im consistently good in multiplayer games.

I did believe that my interest in games is declining as Im getting older and I can no longer get excited about new games as I did for the old ones.

Then recently I started replaying Thief series, after some 15 years, and I again felt that same excitement for a game I had long time ago.

So the conclusion I came to is that new games just cant compare to old ones.
 

Metronome

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Apparently there are some real geezers on this site, so I can't speak for everyone but...

Nope, just the opposite actually. I'm doing things today that I would have found impossible before. When it comes to video games I've improved across the board. In other aspects of life, not so much...
 

cretin

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you need to consider confounding factors - the prevalence of NEETs who have literally NOTHING to do all day except play videogames has dramatically increased in the past decade. You're far from the only person to feel that MP gaming is harder than ever to be competitive in, ive heard that sentiment from zoomers too.
 

Grauken

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you need to consider confounding factors - the prevalence of NEETs who have literally NOTHING to do all day except play videogames has dramatically increased in the past decade. You're far from the only person to feel that MP gaming is harder than ever to be competitive in, ive heard that sentiment from zoomers too.

Good point, maybe its not that some people's skill has gone down, but the skill level overall has been raised in competitive play
 
Last edited:
Joined
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Absolutely, but only because I stopped playing twitchy games.

Mouse and keyboard control setup ruins the fun, I almost exclusively switched to gamepad and once I have found an ideal one (Xbox One Elite controller), it's really hard to go back to K&M. Now I'm enjoying mostly games that can be efficiently played that way - blobbers , jrpg, console ports of PC games (e.g. PSX Final Doom) but immediately bouncing back off games that throw difficulty issue in terms of dexterity.
Best "gamepad" is your keyboard. I barely ever use my mouse for anything.
 

commie

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My skills declined in adventure gaming...I used to be able to pass those Sierra and Intercom text adventures...but now I get stumped at the first puzzles and just can't be arsed.

Also my patience has declined markedly(tied to the first point). I've become much more casual across the board and don't have the determination to replay sections of game or learn mechanics. I just want to unwind after work and make steady progress.

The exception being as markec puts, if I play an old game that I really loved. Then I'll play it at max difficulty, and love it to death. Also the few games far between these days that are like 'stealth' genre or tactics, I will put in the effort as it's stuff that really gels(old AD&D stat table RPG's too if there are any around).

But since most stuff is mediocre at best these days, I find no shame in just wanting to power through it as escapism.
 

DalekFlay

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FPS games I feel like I'm just as good as I always was, but I do demand quick save or very good checkpoints, and have little patience for repeating content. Control (third-person but whatever) annoyed the shit out of me recently by using save stations and making you repeat some long treks and fights when you died (which was surprisingly easy to do). I definitely have a "fuck this shit" attitude about that kind of thing now that I'm older.

Point and click adventures I just don't have much patience for in general anymore. I mostly just replay ones I know all the solutions for. I rarely play these anymore anyway.

RPGs, stealth, tactics... I don't think I've diminished at all, really.
 

Falksi

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Mine have. I was a fucking whizz kid back in the day, could smash most folk on anything if I'd had a decent amount of time with it. I'd breeze through "hard" games in single player, and multiplayer ones would always see me rank topside, even against so called experts.

That said I was always shit in FPS games. I just didn't really like them, so never really took the time to come to grips with them. But beat-em-ups, platformers, shoot-em ups, etc. I'd nail most folk. I wasn't even particularly fond of driving games, but they seemed to be one of my best genres to kick ass on.

Not awful now, but nowhere near as sharp as I once was. Put it down to lack of practice and developing MS. I'd say I'm average at best now, on an off day a bit wank.
 

Curratum

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Anyone who says their skills haven't declined over time is a big fat liar. I used to be the fucking king of CoD lobbies back in 2007-2009 and now I'm getting curb-stomped more than half the time in CSGO / Tarkov / Battalion 1945.

I am still competent enough in retro shooters but that's more because I've grown so much into the playstyle, encounters, mechanics and overall design, I can adapt very quickly, and not so much because I have good reaction / skill.
 

moleman

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I played Last Ninja on C64 recently. The jumping sections are still hard as fuck. But they are not harder for me than they were back in the day.

So, no. Or maybe I should have mastered them by now. Then yes.
 

SausageInYourFace

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Everything that requires a brain (like tactical games) I have become better, everything that requires twitchy reflexes I have become worse. I notice this primarily when I try to play retro platformers but if I am being honest with myself I was never all that good at those to begin with.

It might also have something to do with changing gaming habits. One used to play certain games over and over and slowly got better at them, whereas today, due to the large amount of alternatives or maybe due to decreased patience and increased ADHD, one is more inclined to just give up and try something else.
 

BrotherFrank

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I’m going to be a special snowflake and say mine have increased.
Thing is I never had particularly good reflexes and my aim in fps was always shoddy so never topped the leaderboards of anything, it was easy to tilt or troll me and finally I tended to want to win in certain ways that limited how I played, ex: Trying to minimize casualties in rts games or researching everything in the tech tree asap instead of building an army. Or heck refusing to strike a downed enemy in fighting games.

Now that I'm older, whatever drop off in reflexes or aim is minimal and compensated by experience and better understanding of game mechanics , I have grown a thicker skin (still room for improvement and never enjoyed the thrash talking aspect of gaming culture some embrace but it doesn't get to me like it used to) and have become a lot more open minded in how I approach situations so yeah, I'd definitely kick younger me's arse at every thing except maybe autistic patience for tedious repetitive bs.
 

Grauken

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Yeah, a lot of stuff I would just brute force as a teenager cluelessly whereupon these days I'm much better at fully using all the mechanics at my disposal and how jump arc, movement speed, what kind of jump, wall-jump and so on effects my gameplay
 

abija

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May 21, 2011
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Anyone who says their skills haven't declined over time is a big fat liar.
Why the fuck would any normal person decline if they keep regularly playing? Reflexes aren't an issue unless you play at competitive level in a very popular game.
 

ERYFKRAD

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I don't know about skill, I always finish games out of sheer cussedness than any dexterity.
 

Silly Germans

Guest
I don't think that skills decrease that much, its more a question of motivation.
Without motivation you're not giving it your best. I played pretty much any game
i could get my hands on eagerly when i was a kid. This determination is gone by now.
 

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