Practice and the perfects
 

Now I'm positive there is allot of people like this but...I'm a slightly below average gamer who believes in something called practice in video games. i think that if i play a game enough then I can get a good as the pros...the thing is i also believe that there are people that can pick up the game and just blow through all gamers (no matter how hard they worked)with minimal resistance. those people i call Perfects. but also i believe in Defects those that can hardly ever improve no matter how hard they try in a game. like i suspect I'm a defect in Halo (all of them!!!) most of the time I'm on the bottom of the list unless i hold my weapon (the plasma pistol-i I'm good with that thing!)then i can muster one or 2 kills off of someone...but on the flip side when i play GTA4 it takes a huge collaborative effort to take me down once and maybe if you catch me off guard you could get away with a kill. but on team fortress 2 i am a normal player thats just there to give support to the perfects that can capture the point before i get there or im the guy that will hold off everyone till the last possible second before reinforcement arrives dieing the instant they do...
anyways I'm getting off topic...What do you believe? do you think that perfects are just practiced players or do you think that a practiced player could never beat a perfect without backup? do you think defective players can rise up? or do you think that players just get short bursts of "perfect" and some players just know how to hold that?

I think there are 4 basic "stats" for a gamer, Raw Skill, Retention, Reflexes, and Timing. Considering this I lean more to the some people are just naturally better than others thought group, but I also do believe that people can get better through practice.

Something I have noticed about my personal gaming skills is that I have only an average capacity for skill, but I have an incredibly high retention rate for games.

Once I learn something in a game it is mine. Example, I have a friend who used to go to Smash Bros tournaments, even managed to win a few, however he stopped playing due to burnout, I managed to talk him into playing Melee with me so we picked up the game the other day and played all night. I basically spent the first 4 hours we played dominating him, but after he go back into the groove he stomped my ass. Also, I am a human walkthrough. I can walk you through anything I have experienced first hand like I did it five minutes before, despite the fact I cannot remember most of the previous day with out thinking real hard more often than not.

So my skill level has a definite cap in most games, and I see extremely diminishing returns on practice. However, I do have higher than average timing and reflexes.

So if you view the four main categories in gaming skill as I do then they are: Raw Skill - Initial skill level and the height practice will take you, Retention of Skill - the amount of practice you require to fight at top skill, Timing - Ability to judge situations and react accordingly, this is that sixth sense of knowing exactly when the right time to use that Pokeball for maximum carnage, and Reflexes - the ability to roll with the punches and react to the unexpected. With that in mind I would rank myself thusly...

Actually i agre with Evilness. But i should add that i own a Free extra feat that allows me to reduce the learning curve of any game. It is really great!

But maybe you should consider Hand-Eye coordination too. THat helps a lot in Driving games and Shooters

I think your graph is a bit off in that what you're calling Raw Skill is kind of two different things, IE initial ability and then the capacity for developing skill over time. In particular I think the former is basically already covered by the Reflexes and Timing categories so I would take that out of the definition and called it Learned Skill or Learning Capacity or some such thing.

I guess reflexes/timing would also be affected over the long term by learning as at least in my case my reactions initially tend to suck (mainly due to not knowing what to react to) but after a lot of playing I tend to be really on the ball.

It's interesting that you bring up retention as that's one thing I've always been terrible with; regardless of how well I might at one point have known a given game, it always takes me a bunch of hours to re-teach myself how to play it after any significant length of time without.

Re: the original post I think a lot has to do with how well a given game's controls mesh with your existing predelictions?

I think there are certain people who are more easily able to dedicate themselves to learning how to play anything a certain way.

I mean, take Smash Bros competitive scene for example. Brawl is being ragged on like crazy since there's not nearly as much exploits therefore significant less technical skill. The people who owned in Melee were good at getting every SHFFL and wavedash in there they needed to survive.

I don't think there's anything that can't be overcome about one's inherent skill with lots and lots of practice, but I simply don't have the patience to be able to sit there and try to perfect FRCs in Guilty Gear. I get frustrated easily and I start to slip. I'm just not competitive material in that game.

Totally agree with you, I was just being kind of lazy so I didn't have to draw a complicated graph. Of course that brings up the question of why did I bother drawing a half-assed graph.
Well, yeah but there still is a human cap over how much you can train your reflexes. Its cliche, but some people got it while others just don't.
Nobody ever mentions Skill Retention, but I find it is a big player in how a person performs.

Of course, Fifth, you also pointed out the interdependencies that are present between the "skills." Any graph I may make does not take into account any synergies that pop up.

For example, I am a really great early game to mid game guy to have on your team, but by late game my performance tends to lag. I have also found through trial and error that I make a great front line gunner/bait in FPSs.

EDIT: You think that is a more accurate name for that section?

Timing and Reflexes as two separate categories sticks out for me, since I always understood perception, foresight, timing, and reflexes all to be pretty much encompassed under one term.

I suppose that technical skill is a bit like skill capacity, since you're only as willing to practice as long as you're willing to play said game.

And I don't know how Koreans fit into all this but I think their skill cap must be pretty high since my favorite image to mock from BlizzCon year 1 was the two korean guys, champions of WCIII and SC, holding big checks.

Timing in this context might more accurately (and less confusedly) be referred to as "Judgment". The judgment to know what to use and when to use it.

That said I fill the stable slot of "fill-in-the-blanks"-ing. The solo agent, if you will, working on whatever the rest of the "team" currently isn't preoccupied with doing. I can also make a decent distraction when I need to, and support classes/weapons are my friends.

I think that graph is a decent enough as a generalized form, but obviously it gets broken down even further as you split off into genres. The core skills remain the same, but the things that they encompass (i.e. being able to hit any key 1-8 in an MMO versus being able to double jump and shoot in TF2) change. I think how you get good at video games is dependent to some degree on what game it is.

For instance, when I played Halo 2 actively on Xbox Live (under the callsign/gamertag Ca1amity), I can honestly say that I was damn good at it. That being said, I had a 200-odd button regiment that I went through every morning or two that kept my fingers fast enough, and I play through Legendary at least once every two weeks. This worked well for Halo 2, but it's not pratical in other games.

I like how everyone brings up reflexes, because it's a skill that a lot of people don't understand you need for video games. Both physically and mentally.

And here I thought I was good at Halo 2 back in the day.

Than again I did win a 2 v 4 Ninja Bomb game with my roommate.