Decline Have your vidya game skills declined over the years?

I think I still have the skills but I don't have the give a shit to really explore them as much as I used to say, ten years ago or so. My fundamentals and overall knowledge tend to carry me well in things like fighting games and I could probably be much better in execution and optimization in my performance but again, there's more important things in life to worry about.

 

This is a much more reasonable explanation!

 

BROS SAME AS SOME OTHERS

JUST TO OLD TO PLAY THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER TO MASTER IT

STILL CAN BEAT TYSONS PUNCHOUT THOUGH MIGHT BE ABLE TO DO SOME OF IT BLIND BUT COULD DEFINITELY DO IT DRINK AS SHIT

I REMEMBER SPENDING EIGHT HOURS MASTERING ONE LEVEL OF GOLDENEYE FUCK THAT SHIT NOW

 

At least admitting you can't be bothered anymore and prefer playing casually is a straight answer. So many people tiptoe around lynch mobs, making meek excuses like "I have kids and a job now, I don't have time anymore to max out all spells in Final Fantasy or repeat the first two levels of some random NES platformer ad nauseam because I'm too clueless to make it further".

Fuck that. Even if I had all the time in the world, that would be a shit way to spend it.

I've played enough "classics" during night shifts in the past few years to be completely disillusioned with these supposed "golden ages". Many of them are pure trash and even the average monocled Kodex Kook Kid poser wouldn't stomach it more than ten minutes if he lacked the knowledge that it's supposed to be a holy cow, even though supposedly it should be a league of its own among today's garbage. Yeah, sure, the golden age of gaming happened right when you were a doe-eyed kid and the best games ever just so happen to be exactly the ones you had back then.

The 80/20 rule was just as ruthless back then as it is today, but as pre-teen fucktards of course we found almost every single game awesome and of course we would devote a lot of time to achieve mastery and familiarity. We weren't better players, we were better time-wasters, plus now we mercilessly purge games that we aren't enjoying. You don't like Paperboy? Tough luck, your next game is coming next Christmas, five months away. Nothing like controlling your expenses, and it's perfectly fine to cut your losses instead of trying your hardest to become better at some shit game you don't like just out of a weird principle that you ought to. That's what retarded kids do.

Playing old "classics" in adulthood is like looking at your girl once you're completely drained: if you still love her you know it's for real.

 

No. My attributes don't deteriorate with age as fast as they do for commoners. Maybe closer to 50 it will really show. I have a friend who is almost there and he's still stomping kids in fighting games with speed and aggression, with lower tier characters too. Vast experience plays a part, but you still have to be able to hit buttons and react quickly.

 

No, they have improved linearly in action games and exponentially in strategies. It is a bit surprising that I found HoMM3 or Civilisation 1 challenging at the easier settings. Very often when I take an older game I didn't play in my time like Master of Magic or Master of Orion 2, I can play at the harder difficulties perfectly fine straight away. I recently played AoE2 after not trying it for about 15 years, and I had little trouble at the highest difficulty. I barely play pure action games, but I recall being very bad at PvP in Ultima Online, whereas now I am usually quite good compared to other players in MMOs.

Also I don't think I found every game awesome as a pre-teen. I was actually less impressed by games as a whole back then because I wasn't as exposed to the genres I liked. Many big games felt pretty unexciting and just made my head ache because of the graphics (e.g., Doom), so I dropped them. It was also easy to switch between games because you had collections of 50+ older smaller games on a single pirated CD.

 

Only my patience. In general I find that if I focus on something I can perform just as well, if not even better than before. Time spent = better I get in fairly linear fashion and that hasn't changed over the years. The decay happens if I cease doing something.

However my patience is nowhere near what it was say, ten years ago. I get extremly frustrated and find myself rage-quitting over smallest of things sometimes and this has made some games like RTS ones nearly impossible to enjoy.

 

Not really, but nowadays I quickly try to ascertain if I'm having fun and whether or not a game has potential to give me further satisfaction, or is more frustration than it's worth. I dropped Ori 2 & Doom Eternal rather quickly because they couldn't satiate my needs despite them being objectively strong games in many respects.

 

I honestly don't think mine have, but then the difference might be that I never played online and maybe didn't have "leet skillz" in the first place. I would imagine the 180 no scope Quake 3 style shit would get harder and harder to manage as you get older, sure. However can I still beat any singleplayer FPS on hard? Sure I can.

 

How many people saying their skills are as sharp as ever in this thread are over 20?

I'm definitely not as fast as I was playing Doom 25 years ago.

 

Ask fatal1ty

 

I'm doing on in Doom because of the decades of muscle memory and experience, but if I try getting into a new competitive shooter, it's a VERY rough ride, going against 17-20 year olds.

 

Also ask: [KILLERS] xXxNoScopeUrMum3000xXx

 

100%
I remember playing CS 1.6 and (don't laugh) Combat Arms when I was a kid and I fucking destroyed shit.
I haven't played multiplayer games in a while, but when I did I just wasn't all that good.
If I were to get back into it, I'd probably try and tilt the shit out of my teammates or tryhard to get good to tilt opponents.
Cause really, that's what multiplayer is all about. And it's something single player CRPGs will never have. Knowing, that out there, somewhere, maybe there's someone who you managed to tilt so much you managed to ruin their day a bit.
Then again, there's been a huge push against "toxicity" in multiplayer games. I'm like "Hey fags, that's a core feature and selling point". Fucking everything is decline when you think about it.
Sorry to get off topic.
Also MMORPGs are a cancer and no one should ever play them.

 

They have, because I can't be arsed.

I still have the same tastes, I still like the same game. But I can't be arsed. I'm too old for "the challenge" of "video games" that "make it rewarding". It is incredibly shallow when you live a fulfilling family,professionnal and creative life full of actual challenges.

Typically, I will put a game in a difficulty setting where it is challenging. After dying a couple of times, I just lower the difficulty, even down to "story mode" if I have to because I seriously do not give a shit what the Internet is thinking about this.

Cheat codes ? Every game should have them. When Shenmue 3 asked me to grind for money recently, I just used Cheat Engine because seriously, what the fuck ?

If you are the kind who worries about this thing, then something is wrong with your life.

 

Grinding in a solo game is basically a loading time: you are not actually playing, you are waiting until you are allowed to do what you did want to do in the first place.

Let me reach for my violin and honor the poor fucks who feel guilty about cheats and ez-mode in solo games.

 

lol cheaters. pathetic. why even play the game. go find a playthrough on youtube and you can watch that while your nurse changes your diaper

 

Because I want to play the game.

 

By the time we get there, you will look back and say "thank God I didn't cheat like these pathetic losers and wasted my time grinding solo games to impress people who don't give a shit".

 

Generally true, but can depend on the game. In Dark Souls you're essentially grinding, but it's a grind that leads to an increase in skill, pattern recognition and eventually, when you ascend, pre-cognition!

 

Maybe you just picked up too many shit aim habits from single player.

Also, how do you even know the age of the opponents and how long they spent with a game? Sounds more like looking for reasons to not play a shitty game.

 

I did not, I was pretty damn good at CoD back in 2007-2010.

 

I'm way too old for any of that twitchy shit, but I'm still sharp as ever in anything strategic. My eyeballs simply no longer have the tracking speed to keep up with anything moving that quickly, all I see is a blur.

 

In my 40s, my attributes that have taken a noticeable hit are:

- Reflexes. Used to be great, now they are merely adequate. Nowadays, I have some minor trouble being on my toes and ready for anything (ie, real-time games constantly throwing enemies at you) for long times. Not a huge change, but noticeable. Cannot do it for more than a couple of hours in a row anymore.
- Concentration span. It used to be great, now it is still very good, but less than before. Nowadays, I can't play a game (or do anything really) all day long without breaks, which I could easily do a few years ago.

In my case at least, I think it is because my nervous system is not as sharp as it used to be. Noticeable difference ever since I started approaching 40 (now I am well past it).