it's called Parkinson's desease! Everbody gets that over 30.
Aiming is much better now because it equals the amount of beer your drink - so you are leveled then!

19 and already a German.

don't believe the internet! :)

Inactivity

Impossible to know in Quake because there are no quality young players to test the previous generation.

if aging makes you worse, why are all of the top players better than they've ever been? your statement makes no sense.

I think you need to read my post properly.

nice edit. if you can see improvement in players as they age, even until now, why do you need young players to compare with them?

You might see improvement in players, I don't. The current top players have been getting worse over the last few years as there are gradually less and less serious tournaments.

i couldn't disagree more. toxic is the most obvious person to look at when i think of who has improved most; not only has his aim gotten even better (seems he's consistently hitting closer to 40-45% lg instead of 30-35%), but he now actually has some semblance of strategy about his play. rapha's aim has also improved significantly, allowing him to incorporate new tactics into his gameplay that he couldn't before because his lg wasn't up to par. i think the only player that hasn't improved is cypher, and it's kind of hard to improve when you're already better than everyone else.

Waaaaat?

?

I think latest QCon results kinda disprove that:

* Tox only added timing to his game, he admits it himself in one of his interviews, and his aim was in his usual Toxinator level;
* Rapha wasn't really in top form so we can't really say anything about his current game evolution;
* Cypher won the whole thing.

* Cypher won the whole thing

in the most fucking badass, next level, see-the-matrix like way.

And high on cocaine.

*gamerfood

theres serious. kinda redundant to mention him, but i personally think he wasnt cheating the entire time =PPP

^

lol. weren't you in the same clan with him?

So?

LOL SCHET4 with dodgelaghax and roxeimbat defending other pathetic scheta.

fall is coming)

fek(

so I take your opinion on that topic with a grain of salt. That grain has approximately the same size as the rocky mountains.

So?

so I lol, when you suggest the serious wasn't cheating all the time. Unless you somehow try to refer to the times where he hit his natural 23% accs.

inb4: so? trolololo

"23% accs" - you wouldn't hit over 20 with aimbot, idiot.

get back in your cage boy!

you mad bro?
how many accounts have you made this week so far?

I have made 1 account since I got banned.

Slowly but surely you are turning into a mixture of Sanchez and Daddy. Unfortunately you are not even half as entertaining. Maybe it's because of your lack of originality, maybe it is because you stopped making up those incredibly complicated stories.

U'd seriously think I'd waste my time making accounts every day like Daddy in order to "play" this stupid game?

Considering how much time you wasted playing 1v1 CA on thunderstruck with aimbot - yes.

so... 2 minutes?

Just like Sanchez.

edit: only less entertaining

...

Player not found: intheory, so who are you? You judge by esr posts + x ? x= demo vs u& ? pls tell :D

I exclusively judge by esr posts and crystal ball. :)

I haven't played in ages and I was bad in QL to begin with. But I didn't mind, so I didn't feel the urge to install any hacks to compensate for my lack of talent and training motivation. I'd rather be an honest noob, than a cheating, delusional moron. We have more than enough of those already.

I haven't played in ages and I was bad in QL to begin with.

LOL

So he Hits harder. Hack. Kk

You were going for the easy strawman argument there, but you fail. Obviously there are hundreds of players out there which are way better than me (and better than you and serious), yet I see no reason to accuse them of cheating.

Your little serbian asslicker boy is a hacker and his natural skills aren't even close to what the both of you keep telling yourselves. Deal with it.

gg, no re.

Didnt know hes serbian, cheers bro.
Hundreds of players better than you, cant judge, better than me mby, better than him - no.
His "natural skills" are Top10-20 material, CA + DUELwise (lack of duel exp).

So please bro, don't listen to retards who hit the same or even harder ;D

His "natural skills" are Top10-20 material

"Sanchez" kicking in right there. Get well soon.

What? ESR stories i guess, don't esr me please.

Too late for that, now...

fak 8-[

Can't argue with stupid people M7+3-2+8/2...

I think the affect is overstated by most people.

I personally think it comes down to time and investment more than anything. As you get older, you are able to devote less and less time to competitive gaming. Unless you are at the pinnacle and able to sustain a good quality of life, most people are forced to look into gainful employment which cuts back drastically on available time to game. Add to this with things like a spouse, children, etc and its easy to see where all of the time goes. It's all true for me at least. I play at a fraction of the skill I had as a teen / early twenties, but I know it all comes from the fact that I just can't afford the time to remain active.

I think its mostly as people get older they also get more real life commitments, like a full time job, wife, kids, house etc. And that simple takes a lot of time so you get less time to practise and keep up with the game.

But if you can get paid to play and you can stay motivated I dont think age has such a huge impact that it would make you lose games due to the age alone, it would be because of less playtime.

But its the favorit excuse when some kid frags you in any game +)

Lack of motivation and real life >>> age

Cypher wins Quakecon '50

I think you can be at the top of the Quake game if you keep playing and stay fresh. There are 45+ year old boxing world champs, so it can be done with Quake too.

Even if reflexes diminish, experience and muscle memory should make up for it. After that the big separating factor is time. I reckon depending on the game and time allowing, players should be able to continue into their 40's, maybe 50 max.

This

There are 2 strange views in your post.

1) that people who played this 15 years ago can now aim better is not because they "weren't at their peak 15 years ago". But it is mainly due to hardware changes and a gameplayt that heavily favors aiming.

2) that people would "get worse" at a skill after they turn 20 is pure bullshit. Most science shows that people hardly ever gets worse at a skill they already have.
Also the reaction time of most 50yr olds is pretty much the same as most 20yr olds. Only when they are presented with something they don't already know do the 20yr olds react faster. (aka present someone with a difficult choice and the 20yr old will respond faster)

Now the above can have many reasons.... and I haven't read up on that, so I wouldn't know exactly why that is. Or well as far as I know the scientific world is kinda split between explanation of why it would be :D

What kind of science is that don't you think athletes become worse when they get older?

athletes 'get worse' due to muscles issues.
I dunno about you but my mouse doesn't weigh 20kg.
Their reaction time and brain remains fine.

i was critisizing the very general nature of your statement obviously athletes become worse due to muscle reasons.

Now the point about reaction times is debatable. QL is not a heavily contested game while starcraft is.

Persistent Age-Related Cognitive-Motor Decline in Reaction Times in an Ecologically Valid Video Game Task Begins in Early Adulthood

Did you actually read and understand the paper or do you just post it here because the title makes sense to you?

They kinda throw away all data which happens faster than 230ms after going to a new screen...... Dunno how that's reaction.
It actually seems to be remarkably close to my statement "Only when they are presented with something they don't already know do the 20yr olds react faster. (aka present someone with a difficult choice and the 20yr old will respond faster)"
Because the "new screen is unfamilliar" and the "choice they have to make is fairly complex".
But it's definitely not any pure reaction speed that's measured. As I do hope that starcraft players in general have reaction speeds faster than 230ms :p

of course i didn´t. i read the abstract and it made sense to me.

"Using a piecewise regression analysis, we find that age-related slowing of within-game, self-initiated response times begins at 24 years of age. We find no evidence for the common belief expertise should attenuate domain-specific cognitive decline"

obviously in starcraft you don´t only have to push a button when it colours green but mainly decide in complex situations so while "classical" reaction time might remain the same this fact has little to no influence on your gaming skill. conversly the "complex-decision-reaction-time" does.

Ofcourse you read an abstract that you like......

Well about the "complex-decision-reaction-time", the article actually points out that a lot of oldies make fewer but better decisions.

So it could very much be the question if the older player doesn't just think about more things, which increases the time needed for that.
They don't really point out any reason for the decline in speed they just notice it with their system of measurement.
There are a lot of small things you can point out which don't quite fit with the abstract imho. :)

you sure can but what is this thread about? it is about the question whether players become worse due to cognitive decline, right? the way i read it the study provides evidence to approve of that.

well you might think that but I can point out a lot of things that don't really make it a solid research.

For instance they didn't look at how often a player plays or how experienced the player is (aka how many matches he already had played).
Also their sample size is rediculously low.
And their measurement itself is kinda rediculous.
Or how early a person actually got accustumed to playing.

I mean if you're a 40yr old you didn't really "learn how to handle a computer at a very young age" while people in their early 20's probably did.

There are many many notes to make to this.

However biological research does show a general decline in brain-functions speed (reaction time being one of them) but the relationship between gaming is much more complex.
You can't simply say that someone with Xms less reaction speed should loose matches because of that.

Also quake in general is not very complex and you don't really need to analyse it in any way which is similar to SC. (there are not 20 enemies of different types on your screen in quake. So the game itself can also matter a lot.

In short.... sure there is some biological decline (not too much) but that should lead to any real problems in gaming is heavily contestable... and I would argue that most "decline of oldies" is just due to the "lack of time for gaming" rather than anything else.

Fair enough. you make some good points. Thank you for these insights on how to critically investigate a study.

But why do you consider the sample size of 3305 players ridiculously low?

Well take a look at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F1...ne.0094215 (their plotted data)

It obviously shows that their samples contain much much more 15~25 year olds than it does 25~35 year olds and the group of 35~45 is only a fraction.
There are actually only 11 people above 40 who are measured... and out of that 4 guys are actually below (or very near to) the average of the 20yr olds. (I'm just looking at the images here and estimating the means by visually comparing stuff)

They also subdivide it into leagues... which does make sense on one hand... but it decreases the number of samples (which is very clear at the 40+ range)... which they then use as a mathematical excuse to have a better fit of their function. (aka at higher ages it actually breaks down, but due to the small sample size of 40yr olds the overall deviation from the mean is very small)
----
small correction: Their mean-function doesn't necessarily break down at higher ages. It can still be an accurate mean... but the standard deviation is much larger at higher age groups because of the limited sample size. Which reduces the certainty of their claims.

weird strikes again with the correctness. boom.

It's mostly about having the time and motivation, sometimes a bit about being too young to respect the competition (Ender's game!). Real factors like reaction time are there, but they are minor, and that one can be more than made up with anticipated reactions (those don't diminish).

If there are serious disadvantages, they would probably only become a factor at the age of forty at the earliest. Not that anybody really knows, this is based on theory rather than empirical data, as the factors I described in the first sentence overshadow everything.

It's just the weight of life. When you are young you have less on your mind and you overvalue video games.
As you grow older you unconsciously undervalue video games, despite all the motivation you think you still have for the games.

"undervalue video games"

kaputt?

I'm 34 and i'm way better than i've ever been.

Pretty much what has been said already. Time, motivation, and alienation tend to drop when you get older. Learning may become slower, so between two players of the same starting skill and same training conditions, you would expect a teen to improve faster, but it's a fictional case as in practice the conditions of players have great variance, making age count little.

Imo people always thought you could not be on pro level anymore at an "high" age...but since the professional scene isnt really that old, noone could really tell till today. Now we seen some Pros in the beginning of there 30s still being really good at there stuff, and people are surprised, im really not, i mean, 30 aint no age, not even for shooter games.

Thresh gave an interview last fall and said he though 25 years old was told old and couldn't keep up with younger players. Over the years I've noticed many people say players around 30 were over the hill.

Thresh :<
If you dont compete you cant keep up.

Link to interview?

pardon but could you post these fatal1ty videos on here? i really want to see how he is doing in 1on1 still.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlbIIcvqr0g he so pro, comments say he's like 80 in that video.

sorry, i meant recent games of him, like from 2010-2014...

Oh, you were actually serious? cause he isnt really doing too well, sadly. :P

http://www.twitch.tv/fatal1ty/profile/past_broadcasts

Theres quite a bunch of "recent" Cs:Go vods of him playing, if you're intrested.
Also if u go down quite a bit you find some Quake footage...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd_JDONnz8c And this is from 2013...im not really up-to-hit with Painkiller, but to me this looks pretty decent. ;)

Edit: accordingly of what i heard from him, he doesnt really like Q3/QL since those games are too slow and ppl hide too much, but i dont know if he just said it cause hes not top notch anymore, since he really nerded this game back in the days i assume...and also UT03 or whatever he was playing isnt the fastest game in the world...i think.

nice man thanks! well Painkiller isn't that bad i think, but this game netcode is a piece of shit! :/

maybe he tried to play some CS:GO because it has some better support for tournaments, more than quake i think.

well i agree that Q3/QL is a bit slowly, i definitely prefer Q4 than those others, but i also think that for example: cypher, plays faster than others and his strategy is very based on his aim, this is ironic in compare to a faster game that have move/less aim nor strategy? heheheh

but hey thanks for this post! cheers!

you're welcome ;). Always nice to see people who didnt jump on the fatal1ty hate-train yet!

He already stated that he really loves teambased games, and at one point (if i remember correctly, could be wrong though) he said that he liked them more than 1v1 Games, but due to the Prizemoney issues he just didnt play Teamgames that much.

man, it is just ridiculous on how nowadays LoL and Dota2 have their prizemoney, in 2005 fatal1ty has earned what? 1.4 million overall ?

what bothers me isn't that fact that LoL and Dota2 have better prizemoney than Quake duel, is the fact that the audience doesn't "feel/understand" that when you watch Starcraft 2 and Quake duel, is like to watch Golf and Tennis respectively. I wonder about the audience and not by the support that the game has itself.

and since the economic crisis in 2008, we have less and less sponsorship in Quake duel, have you noticed it? it has decreasing since that time.

but changing the subject of the conversation, i prefer duel than teambased, i started by playing CS 1.5(or 1.3 i believe back in 2002), and i was most of the time sponsored by Lan-houses to play it for free. but i always have had the feeling that i practiced more than my teammates and my aim was always better, so it makes me being frustrated and angered so i move to UT2004 to compete in the WCG 2004. since that time i love duel :0, i guess this is what happened with that guy that won the ESWC and he was a past player of CS.

so i feel that some FPS would save our community, i don't think quakelive is doing this job at all.

Well yeah, its sad to see quake being so low in intrest, but thats how it works nowadays...guess we gotta live with it. We can be happy that Valve saved Csgo from dying last year. They didnt do anything for the game and pros kept leaving it...then they started a 100.000$ tournament and pros came back immediatly, and its still going stronger and stronger.

Imo Id software could do more, if they wanted to...maybe the steam thing is going to change something there.

But i prefer teambased games, i played them much more than i did play 1v1 games...
and i dont really hate dota2/lol either way, i play alot of LoL and i like it, its simple, yet challenging...and you meet new people in literally every game :).
If Quake gets more attention through steam, that would be awesome though, even tho i dont have much faith init.

Edit: Btw. Fatal1ty is still on Rank11 on the highest esport earnings ;). http://www.esportsearnings.com/players
And with all his sponsor/"fan"-events and whatnot over the past ~7-9 Years hes probably already beyond a million as well...but then we could say that most of the LoL Streamers should be around 1 Mill. as well :P

btw just to make clear i don't hate LoL neither Dota 2, actually i played some Dota 1 long time ago and i enjoyed it a bit, but it was only for fun!

yeah, hope the steam thing could change something too!

do you know anybody that bought the fatal1ty utensils?

Well, his Headsets are really popular(like Ranked #1 on Amazon), i got his Mousepad, its really not bad =), it has a little more friction than the QcK+. His Mouse is pretty crappy though.

I also always wanted to buy his Keyboard, it looks sweet.

nice! never heard about his headsets in brazil, actually i also wanted to have his keyboard hahahaha i agree it looks sweet!

i still have a logitech mx518 since back in 2006 i guess, lol!

Uh nice, i also had one around 2007 :D

biased opinions because we're all old as shit

there is also what av3k mentioned in a post recently about "to have a motivation to play". like when you are young usually you have more of it and gradually when you get older you start to lose it. (this have implications in many aspects of living, according to some philosophers).

motivation is the key to everything :>

Kwong lo still dominates the cpm community, and he just celebrated his 75th birthday last week, happy birthday again bud!

175th* Kwong was playing quake before there were computers

this is him, right?

[img1]

It is medical fact that past your early-mid twenties the quality of your myelin starts to degrade and results in reduced reaction time and motor function. I don't think this is significant enough to counteract the experiential advantage these older players gain during that time, at least to a point. As other people have said, I'd chalk it up more to lack of motivation and practice.

give it up, fellas
once you're past 18yo you're too old for gaming cause your fast twitch muscle skill will have eroded. it's true cause thresh said so

This is just muscle memory as theres no input like in videogames where something happens in the game and you have to react to it.

[img1]

[img1]

Funny if you consider the fact that rapha was knocked out in the quarters by that aging player.

tru dat

Reaction time peaks at age 24, then it start a very slow decline that normally is compensated by experience and better decision making till the fourties/fifties where the decline accelerates. This is average data, as anything in life good nutrition is a key aspect to age gracefully.

My reaction times on that test thing when i was 16 with a HP P3 700hz PC was avg between 140 and 160

13 years later, loads of partying, booze, some drug stages my avg is around 200-220 and ive been trying actively to improve it for weeks.

I seem now to go in and out of that zone where everything happens subconsciously where as when i was young i could stay in that zone for 10 hours.

At 16 i would load up cs/quake and be warmed up within 5min now it takes me half hour to an hour..

Plenty of little changes i can see, maybe not all from aging but a lot from the effects of living :)

They've got still something around 5-10 years going for them.

You won't beat the experience, muscle memory and skill with pure reflex. Good player will compensate for lesser reflex by altering his gameplay a little so the factors stated above can be more emphasized.

As with everything, there are notable exceptions to this.

Got nothing to do with biology, just a simple fact of life, you can't play video games all day when you past a certain age.

in a game like quake, its so highly tuned unless you're at a 1:1 with the game the smallest of things cost you big time.

Add in the fact that there is little money for anyone but the top 2-3 players and it becomes an obviously bad investment for anyone past 25 at a push.

The game is really old and stale too. If you compare the number of iterations in STREET FIGHTER from 1999 to 2014, you;ll see why one is still selling millions and the other is not.

There are a lot of studies on this subject and it's not as simple as older=slower.

While reaction times are indeed increases after the age of 20-25 (approx 0.4-1.5 ms/year depending on the type of the task/signal), elderly people also make a lot less error, and do make better strategic decisions too, so that's kinda compensates for the speed degradation in many situations, which is not that much if you think about it.
(Studies with young and older jet pilots showed that the older pilots can and could react almost(!) as fast as the younger ones, but they just make sure that their answer/reaction is always the right one, even if that means that they will finish the task slower/later.)

Other studies also proved that a well used brain degrades a lot slower (somebody who still studies and/or thinks, reads, etc a lot while being older). Some tests between people with low and high education showed as much as decades of speed degradation difference.

Speed is important, but it's also far from being everything.

http://youtu.be/IbUxePfsoWE?t=7s

Reaction time is overrated in my opinion. It's a fact that lower is better, but is it guaranteed? No. Which one is worse?

A) 210 (180 + 200 + 250 / 3)
B) 210 (160 + 205 + 265 / 3)

Even if player B is slower sometimes, we see that in the end he's no slower or quicker than player A. I suspect this is true for the overwhelming majority of people. Not to mention that reaction time varies throughout the day. It is also important to note that sensitivity is a very important variable here. When you react you begin to move your mouse but depending on how slow your sensitivity is the opportunity may pass. Anyway... wisdom, patience and integrity > everything else.

Experience is worth more than a fraction of reaction time you might lose with age.

It would equate to something like 4-8 ping.

I have seen pretty decent players with 20 ping lose to semi pro players of 130-150.

As I said, motivation and having the time to play is everything.
That's what goes with age.

In terms of pure reaction speed, the peak is around the 20s-25 maximum. From there it starts to fall, but there are other important aspects, like experience, general knowledge, hardware.
The brain isn't fully developed until 24-25 years old, for example, even if it's reaction times have already started to decline.

Players of today hits harder than their own self of 7 years ago just because of hardware improvements/ netcode.

I think that a quaker's peak age is between the 18-23 years old, provided that he has the same background of the cyphers and the coollers, aka little gaming nerd kids obsessed with quake and with thousand hours of practice by the age of 15.
Toxic's performance doesn't count. Yes, he hit maybe harder than he ever did in quake live, but he didn't won. He didn't even qualify for the top 3. The top 3.

Everybody can make some changes in his setup and better his aim even at 50 years old.
Also how much does Tox sacrifice for his aim? He makes the whole table shaking, for how low his sensitivity is.

As someone else said, he looks like he's playing with a console controller.
Anyway the q4 version of tox is gone, and he won't come back. It would be intersting to understand what made him so strong in it, if it even is possible. But he isn't the same in ql, also due to age.
Rapha doesn't count too, he played like shit and everybody would have beat him. He really lost his mind in those games, that he could have easily won.

Cypher is always the cypher, the same 16 years old kid that smashes everyone in his path never making it look difficult. But he too changed setup a lot. His old cfgs were nothing like his actual ones, in q3 he aimed completely different.

So the point is, the actual "old" players continue to dominate the scene because they come from an immensely bigger talent pool compared to the actual agonizing small one. Notice that there isn't a single player, not a single one, that have been a champion without coming from a q2/q3 background. And there won't be any. Because the talent pool of those times was way bigger than the one of today, that statistically it's very improbable a young fresh player could arise today and beat the huge experience advantage that the old players would still have.

Quake pro scene is not relevant to age assumptions. A 30 years old Cypher, for dimished and a shell of himself he may be, will still be the top player in quake.

In terms of pure reaction speed, the peak is around the 20s-25 maximum.

source or just talking out of ur ass?

Aging certainly plays a part, but the players you listed are still fucking young.

Soccer players start to get worse beyond 30-35, but that sport is lot more physical. Those are field players too, keepers last until 40.

Quake players... It's hard to tell, but I'd say below 35 they won't start losing their skills in a significant way if they keep up practice.

Can I say something? Kappa

A huge factor in skills degeneration is that adults are permanently 'rusty', due that they can't play as much or as continuously as kids do. As you know, in quake and in other videogames the feeling of "being one with the game", and also of having consistency, is something that takes months and can't be gained by just resume playing again a week before the event. At the same time, if you don't play videogames at all for years the very first next time you play one you'll be crap, no matter what.

And one more thing, I don't think superior reflexes matter much in duel and in quake. Other in-game aspects matter much, much more.

What I want to say is that as long as you can live like a kid then aging doesn't matter in itself in quake :P, and that the more you live like an adult the more your gaming skills will suffer, direct correlation

i used to be a progamer, then i become old. but seriously, i was able to play with high or low sens back in the days, and 8 years later, i have become a filthy lowsenser.