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Comment by shortstuffsushi | Hacker News Reader

Is this intended for people new to FPS? I've been playing since early teens, coming up on 32 now... still consistently in the top while playing the handful of shooters I play. Perhaps it's because I'm not playing the twitch shooters though? I mostly play Battlefield.

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Yeah it reads more like an intro to FPS play for anyone who is new rather than something age specific.

I'm 49 and have been playing multiplayer online FPS games since Quake. I currently play PvP in Destiny 2 which is one of the fastest movement FPS games currently played and I'm ranked pretty highly in Elo across most of the playlists in the game:

https://destinytracker.com/destiny-2/profile/bungie/46116860...

My reflexes haven't declined to any great degree. I'm sure if I measured them yearly since my early 20s there would be a measured decline, but it would be something on the order of handfuls of milliseconds, not a giant change despite the fact that I'll be half a century old next October.

IDK about pro-level and such, but for normies, it's been my experience that knowing levels really well is way more important than reflexes or any of that. Learning the right "flow" for movement through a level such that you are usually looking the right way to line up a quick shot on the next target, and that you're rarely blindsided, is the key to at least mid-level success, and can narrow the gap between fast, young players and older ones (though of course having faster and/or more precise reactions is still an advantage).

I agree, I am super suspect of this article being true. Most of it is about training time. And Teens have much much more of it, given summer vacation, or, just not having any responsibilities ever.

I would say any decline I've noticed is due to "training time," yeah. I will sometimes go a few months without playing... jumping back in will take me a few rounds to get back to "good," and I feel a similar slope when I start new games. I imagine if I played from end of work til sleep every night like when I had time as a kid, I would probably be as then-me, if not better.

Agreed, I was surprised that the "equipment" section talked about monitors with high refresh rates as opposed to ergonomic mice and such. It was somewhere around 30 when I started to worry more about getting RSI than losing.

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