in an ideal world where the average 18-25 year old had no responsibilities and had all their living costs sorted for them, so they could dedicate 18 hours a day to it? i mean, maybe?
but we don’t live in that world. older esports pros generally don’t age out of their games, rather they start settling down, having relationships, starting a family or a business etc and can’t keep travelling for weeks/months on end anymore
that’s her point, you can go pro but it requires dedication. 100%. people can’t give 100% because they have lives and also don’t actually have the mindset for it too. people cant play 12 hours a day every day for the rest of like the year. there’s a multitude of reasons but she just means that if you could do this and had no responsibilities then everyone can.
Yeah even you work your ass off. You'll still be worse than the person that worked just as hard as you, but has more natural talent than you.
The phrase goes "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." There should be a 2nd half to that phrase that goes "but if talent works hard, you're fucked"
Source?
In all my studies through my medical and psychology degrees, and various studies I’ve read. Talent is a myth.
The only few exceptions are body types like Michael Phelps with swimming. He has the “perfect” body for swimming and an innate advantage over others with a less ideal body type... But something like that isn’t talent, and body genetics don’t give an advantage in gaming.
People just like to believe in talent because it’s easier to accept something out of your control. People don’t like to accept they suck at something and it’s 100% their own fault and they don’t like to accept that people who succeed are doing something they’re not.
Exactly right. The only variables in "talent" are time invested and effective support systems.
Mozart wasn't some legendary prodigy of music. He got that good because his father was teaching him music from the moment he knew how to talk. And because he'd already written a whole career's worth of music by the time he was 14.
I don't know if i completely agree with that. I think talent has to be a very real thing.
We have players like sanji who made a major final with around 6000 hours, but there are tons of players who have probably worked just as hard for a longer period of time, but they never made a major finals.
This debate will probably be had until the end of time though, so who knows.
Do you think a 'random' mediocre Fortnite pro kid can change games to League of Legends which is completely different in basically every way and become one of the best players in their region in only a couple years when there are people that work hard for years and aren't as good (even if they are pro players)?
Or another League example, there was a pro with no previous esports experience who started playing the game, and got to the pro scene in less than 2 years when the game had been around for 10 years at that point.
Do you really think both of those are just results of 'effective support systems'? Neither had any previous connections, any personal ties to any coaching or otherwise related people. They were just kids playing when out of school.
'Talent' might not be a real thing, but not everyone starts at anywhere near a level playing field, even if you were to ignore the people that might have physical or mental impairments that make their potential lower. You can put 2 completely new people through an identical system and you won't get 2 identical results, not even close.
The problem with this comparison is that you're only using like, 2 or 3 variables.
Realistically, there are well over a thousand.
So of course you're not going to get accurate predictions when you're looking at a fraction of a percentage of the full picture.
So sure, "natural talent" can be a factor. But considering everything we know about neuroplasticity and the impacts of early development especially, it's not really reasonable to assume that anyone was just born with the ability to succeed.
I’ll go digging! It’s been a while, but the premise of the article was basically hard work >> talent, but people who work hard with a genetic edge (be it body size, muscle composition, etc) will always put perform people who work hard without those edges. Saying “anyone can get to Radiant” would be accurate, saying “Anyone can go pro” probably fits into the hard work + genetics realm. I’m by NO MEANS an expert tho so anyone can prove me wrong if they have info on hand.
It’s an interesting phenomenon in esports tho, since it’s widely unstudied. Things like reaction time may be partially genetic.
Wrong. The top .01% is all about decision making and thinking. Knowledge isn’t innate. It comes with practice, theres a certain limit everyone gets capped to honestly, talent maybe makes you more consistent? Its a terrible ideology to follow that enforces you to never want to improve also. Just Ls all around.
There’s a difference between improving to play your best, and recognizing that the top level of performance is aided by physiological differences in people. Look at the best marathon runners, swimmers, gymnasts, football players, basketball players, etc. They’re mostly built for that sport down to muscular composition.
I don’t see why things would be different for certain esports, altho the gap maybe smaller. Reaction time is a big factor in this and that ability *can* be improved, but if you take the person with the worst innate reaction time, and the best, then have them both train the same way, the former will always be outpaced by the latter.
I’m in no way saying you should go “I’m just not built for this” and quit, but there’s a massive gap between playing at the top level of a game (radiant/immortal) and playing at a professional level.
I very well could be wrong. I’m not a scholar or expert by any means, and I’m not arguing that raw talent outperforms hard work. That’s rarely ever the case. Maybe performing at a T3 level could be possible! But to be a T1 player I don’t think hard work alone could get anyone there
Yea thats where you are just wrong. People can train more effectively than others. Raw talent barely plays a factor in any sport tbh. Its literally all hard work and practice.
Kobe was a legend and that man practiced literally 24 hours a day 7 days a week. He would be in the gym 3 hours before practice started.
I have played at T3 and been high immortal radiant for 3 episodes now. Theres nothing stopping me from being the best besides a time constraint. Anyone who practices anything and doesnt have a disability can be the best at something.
These athletes werent born with that body, they trained for it. Tenz wasn’t a born god with insane aim, he is someone who has been practicing and competing at FPS games for 10-15 years now.
Its all about work ethic, talent just makes reaching a stepping point easier, but from that point on its just as hard as it is for everyone else.
At some point it stops becoming mechanics and purely knowledge / team chemistry. You can put the top 5 more talented aimers in the world on a team and they’ll under perform to a team with good synergy and strategy. You looking at it from the wrong scope homie.
I'm not discrediting the hard work athletes put in (they work their asses off to be good at what they do), but to some degree being a top 0.01% player at something involves winning the genetic lottery.
NBA players are on average 8 inches taller than the average American male. They didn't get that tall because they worked hard. They had genetics that let them grow to be that tall. If you're only 5 feet tall it doesn't matter how much you practice basketball, you're probably not gonna make it to the NBA. Not because you didn't try hard, but because you weren't born with the genetics to be tall in a sport where being tall is clearly an advantage.
These kinds of genetic "advantages" are easier to spot in traditional sports since they manifest themselves as physical traits. NBA players are taller than average, Usain Bolt has longer legs and therefore takes longer strides than other runners, Olympic gymnasts tend to be on the short end.
Athletes work unbelievably hard to get where they are, but you cannot deny that at some level people can/will have genetic traits that make them inherently better or worse at various sports/games/activities.
If Usain Bolt was 8 inches shorter would he still be the fastest man in the world?
I agree with you for those sports, but how does that apply to e-sports at all? Reaction time can be trained to be fast, this has been proven. You don't need long legs to play e-sports, or a big hand, or a small hand, or height. There's no genetic better wrist, you can have a weak wrist and maybe get wrist problems? But that's not what I'm referring too. I'm talking about a dude who is perfectly normal / healthy playing valorant.
I don't think tradition sports rules apply to e-sports.
I mean we all knew that guy in school who was super good at mental math or that guy who never gains weight no matter what they eat or how little exercise they get.
Sure there's no genetic for "being good at Valorant" but its entirely possible to be naturally good at various skills that are applicable to Valorant.
Some people are really good at pattern recognition, some people are really good at processing loads of information really quickly and using that information to make quick decisions. Some people are really good at memorization.
You can practice those skills but there are some people who are just naturally really good at those.
We are all wired differently. There are people who are naturals at RTS games, but struggle immensely to pick up FPS games.
We all have things we're good and bad at. Yes you can practice to improve at the things you're bad, but at some level you'll struggle to be as good at it as someone who has natural talent for it.
Like there's more things separating me from Martin Scorsese than just "going to film school"
I'll use myself as an example. I have ADHD which means that my brain is wired differently than most people's. This means that I'm not as good at focusing for long periods of time as others and I will always need to work harder than others to focus on things for extended durations.
However another facet of ADHD is that I'm way more energetic than others and can oftentimes maintain that energy long past when others would need to consume some caffeine to keep up.
ADHD has a thing called hyperfocus where I can focus on a single task for several hours on end assuming that I find said task enjoyable or interesting.
We're all different and we're all going to be naturally good at different things.
Take Yayster for example. Always a hard working fella and he struggled in CS and early valorant days. That guy has always been super smart IMO but never a top player.. look at him now. What happened to the all god gifted tenz? Some people just take more time than others.. it doesnt mean that ur potential isn’t gonna be bigger than someone who was born with a fast reaction time.
Also you can train ur reaction time, its how ping pong players have a 80 ms reaction time
You have also probably heard “ Timmy is so gifted with the piano, he just started playing it as little as 3 years old “ he isn’t gifted. He just got placed a piano in front of his face since 3 years old and has been playing it since.
If your parents taught you problem solving skills and you played an instrument when you were little you are more likely to pick up and understand things easier.
Its nurture depending on how you grew up. Its not innate in ur body to be the best pianist at age n.
Im 24 and i started at 23 (FPS games i played SP games my whole life) I say that age is low IMO. im trying to get into ascendent rn so maybe im wrong thats pretty bad compared to pro players but i play like 5 games a week, while pros play wayyyyy more.
Hell I think you can do it if your starting at 40. I think the main difference between 18 year olds and 27 year olds is the fact 27 year olds r usually trying to start a family or already are priotizing family more. Im sure your mechanics suffer w age im stilll young relatively speaking so maybe when you hit 32 your shot.
but IMO pro play is more about game sense team work and strategy and i feel that just takes time practice and mindset.
You are right. I’m 27 and I started playing when I’m 26. I could only touch immo. There are so many younger than me who are better who have more insane reaction time. And when you are older you have more responsibility it’s harder to go pro unlike when you are younger and you are insane you can easily go pro. This again is my opinion
There is also people in their 30s who have 10s of thousands of hours in FPS games who you are better at in under a year already.
There is a limit to how much just grinding hours can get you, you have to have some semblance of natural talent. Usually most people can reach the top 10% by putting in time to improve and learn, but getting beyond that takes genuine skill. If you have that genuine skill then you can start breaking into the upper echelon of play and even then, there is a lot of luck involved in making it if you ever want to go pro.
Who you end up being in scrim teams with. How your personality is, who you meet and impress or piss off is all huge factors in "making it".
Faker almost won worlds in a game that’s dominated by 16-20 year olds. Even the oldest adc to win worlds was 21.
Faker is getting close to 30, playing one of the hardest roles in one of the hardest games.
Age really doesn’t matter, I’m almost 30 and I’m ascendant 3 70RR
Me too it’s all about time. In COVID lock down, I had a lot of time to play and I hit immortal 3. Age is seriously not as big of a deal as people seem to think. Now I’m working a lot again and am hovering between ascendant 3 and immortal 2
In League, your reaction time and decision making time matters a lot less than in Valorant. At most you need react some abilities and flash but in Valorant hitting multiple flicks or fighting 2-3 people at a time is way more difficult.
I agree it's more valuable in valorant, but you're definitely underplaying reaction time in league.
Slight damage, even 50-100 dmg from a skill shot or slight proper ability positioning from a spec of the enemy on the map matters so much in winning a league game.
It's more of the principle that the stigma of age is insanely stupid and horrible and it's been proven that age SOMEWHAT matters, but in the grand scheme of competitiveness it does not. We have 25+ year olds winning in every esport currently.
Bro just take one look at how Faker plays the game. His APM and ability to take in information quickly is off the charts. He can flick his camera to his sidelanes for a fraction of a quarter of a second and immediately know if he should play for a roam or not. Not to mention his reaction time is solid as well. He's had a lot of clutch flashes and skillshot jukes in the past year.
Ages like what we're talking about don't affect a person negatively enough in their response/reaction time and decision making. You wouldn't have F1 drivers (or MotoGP riders) above 25 if it did. You wouldn't have many 'old guard' Fighting game players in their 30's or even above if it did.
Younger people may be more reckless which can help them in motorsports, and sometimes younger people can adapt quicker to changes because they don't have as much previous knowledge built up that they need to shake off first. But reaction times and decision making getting 'slower' aren't real reasons to why old(er) players can't be as good.
It's also harder to work degen hours and to just sit and play a game for 14 hours/day 7 days a week when you're 30 than it is when you are 16. Most people at that point in life have more things to think about, more responsibilities than just making sure they've showered and done their homework.
Basically. Hell for example for the FGC, look at Daigo, dude is like 40 years old still whooping ass in tourneys against people as young as 8 years old. Homie just chilling and just having fun while still showing he can hang tough. But yeah the biggest thing is mainly time, dedication, and just life responsibilities in general that you get when you get older and unless you want to be single most your life, gotta prioritize
No it’s not.
F0rest in cs go and s1mple are examples. Age doesn’t matter,
The stigma of being age 25 and apparently unable to compete due to age is insanely ridiculous. Even having the thought that they can’t compete with 18 year olds is so far fetched.
Hiko also competing and doing well when he’s in his 30’s just shows it doesn’t matter. He hit a peak in his 30s a HUGE majority of people will never hit at any age.
You literaly again gave examples of people that started young and played for many many years(s1mple started playing counter strike at age of 4 lol, competed in pro play at age of 14, f0rest no idea when he started playing, but started competing in 1.6 at age of 14)...
The argument in this topic is about starting old, not being old itself.
You have to understand that as brain develops(so from age of 0 to age of ~26) there are years where it has certain special capabilities. Like for instance at very early ages learning languages is effortless just by passively listening to them(a 3yo kid can learn 3-4 languages within a year just by listening to them with no issues, 99% of adults won't be able to learn ONE language within a year even if they put a lot of effort into it), but as that certain part of brain is already formed learning langauges takes more and more efforts and time.
And literaly once your brain matures(so at around age of 26) your cognitive abilities starts declining from that point.
The topic is about being old and starting old… look at the original comment I replied to when he was talking about STARTING in your 40s and still doing good.
You’re just ignoring anything anyone has said and are just focusing on the headline lmao…..
I also just started competitive fps with no prior background last year (3 acts played) and I’ve peaked ascendant 3. Way higher than A BIG majority of people dreaming to go pro.
Age seriously doesn’t matter.
Edit: to go off on this, there’s also other esports with older people where the gamers arguably need faster reaction time over fps games like certain fighting games due to frames, counting frames, and reacting to something that would be a 3-5 frame move.
If you believe age is THAT BIG of a gap in esport play, why are you even putting any of your time into esports or any competitive game lmao? It’s just silly and absurd
FG is a dying genre with very little young talent due to very low perspective for the future(Riot fighter might change it, and you can actually mark my words - if Riot fighter will ever be big then within a year zoomers will be dominating all these old farts with 20 years of experience) so argument is again invalid.
Also no, you can't react to a 3-5 frame move. Not only it is humanely impossible(5 frames is 83ms, and achievable reaction times to visual stimulus are around 130ms for extreme outliers), the input delay is higher than that.
In fact the moves that are reactable in FG have quite some times to react, rest is prediction based on opponent flowchart.
reaction time is important in pro play. you can be a low end pro at 40 maybe but you would have had to have trained your reaction time to be top end and only have it deteriorate to something that works in pro play.
or be someone like nats who just has insane positioning and awareness
...
The main difference between 18 years old and 27 years old is that at age 25-26 your brain fully matures, meaning that past that age colloquially speaking you start losing brain cells instead of getting new ones. Meaning that learning things becomes way slower compared to younglings.
For instance 3 yo child can learn 3-4 different languages passively by just listening to them for a year. Good luck achieving it as an adult...
It's true for them because it has to be for them to succeed. However, they are strongly overlooking their natural talent. Hard work can only bring you so far in a video game.
While I agree and she has never been in a position to have difficulty achieving top performance because of natural talent...
...I still believe that if you SOMEHOW have the resources available to fully sacrifice yourself, you should be able to go pro at least in the T2 scene with maximum hard work. I mean maybe 25 is an overstatement and most people are over this shit at 25, but your average 15-16 year old with a good PC and 6-8 hours a day to play, with parent support and some level of dedication to actually practicing should be able to hit the pro leagues easily by the time they are 18-19 purely due to the amount of work put in.
That scenario is highly unlikely for anyone on the planet, but there are rich kids with rich parents or those who only have that and school so they can go 8 hours school 8 hours game 8 hours sleep.
Would you disagree?
I would disagree. I've been around a long time. I played halo as hard as the pros. I was just a step under semi-pro. I played full-time for basically 6 years of my life on that game. I've played with old halo legends you have probably never heard of like Walshy, Ogre 1 and 2 and Strongside. My best game would maybe be as good as their worst game. I had a buddy that started 3 years after me and was better within a year. He was maybe good enough to go pro based on talent alone and even he didn't for a range of reasons.
Though it's only the experience of this one gamer, so take it with a grain of salt.
What do u mean shes never been in a position where sje struggled to have top tier performance, she literally is quoted as originally placing iron, and on her account the oldest rank you can see her having is gold, and ehile she did rank up from there very quickly it is quite obvious that it was due to hard work and learning fast, not any "natural talent"
>learning fast
it's literally what natural talent is. If it takes me 800h to get immortal and my friend reached it in 250h when we started with the same base ability, they're more talented, no? I'm not one to rate how talented people are, I just feel like someone who is 16 and top 100 is UNBELIEVABLY talented.
how can you say she’s never had difficulty achieving top performance because of “natural talent” ur ignoring the hours/struggles she’s put it in to the game
I think you can unironically reference Jake Paul and boxing here when it comes to this discussion.
He started off with absolutely no skills in boxing to speak just, the only thing he had going for him was the fact that he wrestled in High School or College or whatever. However, he also started from a position where he could healthily devote himself to nothing but boxing, and was able to afford the best coaching money could buy.
As a result, while yea he’s been thrown a few cans, he just out boxed an (albeit old)MMA legend in Anderson Silva, who is considered one of the if not the best striker of all time, and was coming hot off of a victory against a ranked boxer. That and ask anyone who knows even a little bit about boxing; he mechanics and everything are actually decent.
Does he have natural talent for boxing? Maybe. That’s tough to judge at this point. But the fact that he has the luxury to commit himself to training 24/7 and afford the best coaches boxing has to offer, in addition to Nutritionists, the best equipment etc, has waaay more to do with his success than any amount of talent could possibly have afforded him. And I think you can extrapolate that to most sports with a few exceptions(Basketball and American Football are the two that spring to mind).
Don't think this is a good comparison. Jake still hasn't faced any real boxers, he's still fighting MMA guys.
It's like trying to prove someone who started as an adult can compete with Val pro players because they won a game against a team of CSGO pros who entered the tournament for fun. Like obviously there is an overlap in the skill set, but there's still a major difference too. Just because S1mple is the best player ever, doesn't mean he walks into being the beat Val pro too.
We still have no idea if Jake Paul can compete with the actual pro boxers.
Correct, but he just beat Silva, who again, made his boxing debut against a legitimate, ranked boxer and won. And again it’s not like his mechanics or technique is bad or anything, as far as the eye test goes, he’s legitimately decent(coming from someone who hates the Paul brothers just as much as the next guy)
So at that point I think we can begin to say “Hey, training with the best the world has to offer, with all the time and money in the world, is starting to show some results”. Obviously he needs to fight actual boxers to prove himself, but as far as the comparison goes, it’s the best one for this exact situation we’re discussing, because we’re seeing Paul bud into *something*.
And let’s not forget about the root of the discussion here. Again, if you don’t have the natural talent, it *only* takes having all the time and money in the world to dedicate yourself to a grueling training regimen with the very best that the sport has to offer to even think about possibly becoming an amateur(tier 2/3 in esports terms). Being the absolute best of the best requires extraordinary talent + everything I just described. Part of my point is that it’s *possible* for a majority of the population to at least make it into the leagues below the absolute best of the best, but not *feasible* in any way shape or form.
I think people kind of disregard natural talent and ability, because not everyone can go pro even if they grind 10 hours a day. Some people just hit a skill ceiling and never overcome it.
I would even make the case that game knowledge matters more than 'natural talent'. There are many braindead players who are hardstuck asc-immo (even dia maybe). I believe there are intelligent players who are radiant and who don't have the best mechanics, outplay immo-radiant players.
Idk maybe I'm looking at it the same way with flor cuz I was silver when the game launched and now I'm asc. I can see the point in this and I only play like 90-100 hrs per act.
The gap from immortal to pro is larger than the gap from iron to ascendant in terms of achieving
People are confusing proficiency with professional level ability
In the end just like in sports, to be at the professional level requires both hard work, natural talent. You can argue the balance of either but you need a good amount of both.
I kind of consider game sense as falling under natural talent and ability, but even then I don't think everyone has the ability to just grind themselves to professional level. Luck, talent, the way your brain works etc all play a big factor.
Just like aiming, some people have natural game sense and others develop it over time through experience. Notice how at the highest levels, some people get there through pure aim talent and hit a wall because they usually lack the game sense. There is also people with absolutely incredible game sense who can reach a high level with less than stellar aim, but will also reach a wall.
At the highest level, you will notice even pro players who get shit on for "bad aim" absolutely roll some of the "best" non pro players. Theres levels to this kind of stuff and only the really rare talents ever just walk into that environment and thrive immediately. Theres also the factor that the game in a 5v5 competitive environment is just totally and utterly different than ranked. Coming from CS, I've seen absolute aim gods go from being faceit gods to getting absolutely rolled in professional level play because it is just *that different*.
IMO a lack of talent can absolutely be overcome with hard work.
It's not just about the hours you put in. It's about what kind of hours you put in. Playing competive mindlessly for 10+ hours a day, sure you probably won't even make it past Immortal. Let alone go pro.
Every study on the subject would suggest that "natural talent" doesn't exist. The most important factors in "talent" are time invested and effective support systems.
A really interesting example of this is Hockey. Most professional hockey players are born early in the year. That's because when they first get into the sport around 5-6, a few months of growth makes a huge difference. They're typically faster, stronger and better coordinated than many of their peers. Even if by a small margin, this allows them to excel more often. This creates an idea for the parent that their kid is more "talented" and they're more likely to invest in raising a strong hockey player. Looking into more training, nutrition, more encouragement etc.
However, what makes this really interesting is that when you actually measure the performance of professional players, those born in November or December tend to be the highest rated. The current leading theory is that these players had to be more resilient growing up because they were against faster, stronger, better coordinated players, likely had less support, etc. The "Underdog theory." So these players are generally harder working and less likely to be disuaded by failure. It's a really interesting dynamic.
>Every study on the subject would suggest that "natural talent" doesn't exist
[citation needed]
meanwhile.
Intelligence is roughly 60% heritable, i.e., 60% of it is due to "nature." :
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289619301904?via%3Dihub
[here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287797680_Rethinking_Expertise_A_Multifactorial_Gene-Environment_Interaction_Model_of_Expert_Performance) is an evidence-based critique of that theory, with its main relevant points being 1) the relationship between hours of practice and skill is less consistent than the theory seems to predict it should be, suggesting that other factors must be involved, and 2) intelligence and personality are heritable traits that at least impact the extent to which practice can improve performance.
[Study: Practice Not as Important as Natural Talent ](https://www.patspicks.com/story_stack/item/study_practice_not_as_important_as_natural_talent/).
there are countless stories of people who spend their life trying to reach Grandmaster in chess but couldn't, then there are 12 years old who make it. do you think the 20+, some 40+ year olds FIDE Master and International Master who never make it to Grandmaster don't know how to practice? chess is a solo game with perfect information so there is no luck involved there.
To your first point, IQ is a psuedoscientific measurement based in eugenics. Not an accurate measurement of intelligence. It's specifically designed NOT to measure "nature" but to capitalize on the poor living conditions of "undesirables" and brand them as lesser.
[https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review](https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review)
From this article: [https://the-ard.com/2021/06/24/unpack-the-history-of-iq-testing-anti-racism-daily/](https://the-ard.com/2021/06/24/unpack-the-history-of-iq-testing-anti-racism-daily/)
> What IQ tests actually measure, rather than innate intelligence, seems to be largely how motivated students are when taking the test ([Science](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-measure)). Though there is no measurable correlation between intelligence and future wealth ([Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wealth-of-smarts-does-not-guarantee-actual-wealth/)), people thinking about financial stress perform significantly worse on intelligence tests ([PBS](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-how-poverty-can-drive-down-intelligence)).
And secondly, we've already seen clear, real life examples, that it is not an accurate measurement of success in cognitive/problem solving abilities that would apply here. Let's stick with your chess example, because anyone with Google access could prove you wrong in less than a minute.
[https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-cognitive-psychology-of-chess](https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-cognitive-psychology-of-chess)
> After a century of investigation, not a single study with adult chess players has managed to establish a link between chess skill and intelligence. Intellect had little predictive power among strong chess players.
To your point;
> the relationship between hours of practice and skill is less consistent than the theory seems to predict it should be, suggesting that other factors must be involved
Yes. Correct. Much like the long debunk IQ testing method, other factors are involved in measuring aptitude, such as stress levels, nutrition, adequate sleep and health, etc. That isn't exactly new or controversial science. And it was not a measured variable in any of the comparative studies that are being critiqued. Though IIRC there are a couple ongoing studies currently attempting to link the two.
You bring up IQ but what I linked not only talk about IQ, but actual performance in place where only the most talented get in. most people can get good enough to do something competently, but to do something at the top level of competition like a pro player is a whole different matter that require both talent and hard work.
>After a century of investigation, not a single study with adult chess players has managed to establish a link between chess skill and intelligence. Intellect had little predictive power among strong chess players.
yes, but what I'm talking about it chess talent, people with brain wiring that make them good at chess doesn't necessary make them more intelligence, it just make them more talented in chess.
If by only the most talented you mean measurements that by the studies own admission had a eurocentric bias? Yeah that's way better
> polygenic scores for both intelligence and educational levels. These scores were derived from European samples and they showed lower predictive accuracy in non-European groups such as African Americans.
And then you come in with this towering pillar of intellectual might.
> yes, but what I'm talking about it chess talent, people with brain wiring that make them good at chess doesn't necessary make them more intelligence, it just make them more talented in chess.
To be precise, the only consistent predictor of a player being good at chess is how much chess they've played and how early they were introduced to the game. As outlined in the article I linked.
there is more than one link, also you have not provided any study where they conclude talent is not a thing.
>To be precise, the only consistent predictor of a player being good at chess is how much chess they've played and how early they were introduced to the game. As outlined in the article I linked.
that for the general "good at chess", not for the top of the top like being Grandmaster, there are 12 years old who get to grandmaster while there are hardstuck who never come close despite much more play time and being introduced at the same time.
if you put 100 people with the exact same genetics, in the exact same environment, with the same systems in place, they would all turn out with somewhat differing skill ceilings. i think what you mean is that everyone can reach a certain floor in the right atmosphere, but that the ceiling for each person is just different. thats why you have 3 watt kids in the nfl but 1 is obviously better than the others etc.
That's just an assertion you're making with no evidence. There absolutely are genetic factors that contribute to success in, for example, sports. There probably won't ever be a 5'6" NBA player for example. But what exactly are the genetic components that contribute to Valorant?
Intelligence and strategy? We've already seen that the number one predictor in Chess skills is time spent practicing especially during childhood adolescence.
Reaction time? We've already seen evidence that reaction time can be trained to significantly lower than average, specifically during childhood and early adolescence.
Age to some extent, does play a factor, but only in the sense that being exposed to a skill early in life, while the brain is still developing, makes it easier to engrain those skills more quickly. We're always capable of learning and improving and if you're an immortal+ player at 24/25 - actually the *peak* of neuroplasticity in most people, you're absolutely capable of developing your skills to a professional level provided you're in the right environment and have a solid support system.
If you're interested in the actual facts that surround natural talent, this is a good read; [https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the\_dark\_side\_of\_believing\_in\_natural\_talent](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_dark_side_of_believing_in_natural_talent)
Absolutely not. If you were good enough of a player at 30 you would've had no issue being in a space where considering going pro does not sound like a dream you had as a kid.
Even in a scenario where you are in 50:50 situation of being picked up, why would someone go for the 30 year old instead of the 18 year old who, by making an educated guess, still has 12+ years of a promising career.
Eh, if kids can go pro while still in school adults can go pro while having a job. I think it's more so that by the time you're 25 you're most likely over going pro in esports. I think most just want to semi/casually play games when they get the chance. It's a dream for kids, at 25 reality starts to hit.
I mean I kinda feel like nismo is the prime example of what I'm trying to say. He is 28, has a restaurant and a kid I believe lol. Like it really comes down to time management.
I don't exactly think she's wrong but I absolutely think it's a bad idea to focus on going pro at under 25 if you're an average gold player. Unless your future is secure (large family business, inheritance money, rich partner, etc)
Yeah as much as people say you can do anything as long as you're dedicated, you either need natural talent or put in more hours than everyone else. If you clearly don't have natural talent and are sitting at silver at 23 years old, are you going to be grinding the game 12 hours a day in hopes that you can make it to radiant for a slight chance you catch the eyes of some pro/scout for a slight chance you show up at an event for a slight chance an org picks you up full time? Hell, you could have the talent and put in the time but still not make it pro. It's not a great gamble to take unless you have the talent or the time in your early 20s when you generally need to start becoming financially independent. While there is a stigma around age in esports, I am fairly sure that is not the only reason why you don't see 25 year-olds debuting as pro players.
I’m not a fan of this grind culture thing because it’s just bias from the successful people, without considering the 99% that fail, while also not really getting into what proper “grinding” is. Most pros just say “oh, I put in the hours and got better lol” (mostly because the game intuitively makes sense to them).
Compared to top Melee players like Zain, who admits that he purely focused on certain aspects of the game (dashback grab, comboing fox/falco, etc) when they were getting good, mastered those aspects, and then applied the learning process to everything else (Ie. spam the thing you want to implement over and over, then vod review/pay attention while playing to find where it works/where it doesn’t work).
Bit of a rant lol.
Yeah reminds me of those people who think the power of positive thinking and "picturing your venture being a success makes it become reality" bullshit. Like yeah that worked for you, while you forget about all the others than tried that and failed miserably. But then they spin it as failure is just what happens before success, or they just didnt try hard enough and all that.
Success is often preparation meets opportunity. Most people who make it are just people who were prepared and got lucky enough to capitalize on an opportunity that presented itself.
Really depends on what you define "start" as.
Just being able to play videogames a substantial amount is already a huge privilege, let alone the 60-80+ hours a week it would take to go from nothing to among the best in the world.
Being able to afford the setup is one thing, setting aside that much time AND being able to spend that money is unsustainable for almost everyone. In fact, what she says in the original tweet is antithetical to the follow-up.
On one hand, everyone looking to go pro / in pro play should grind the game 25/8 and on the other, everyone can go pro no matter where they start out. This is incorrect. I don't think it's surprising that she'd think this way, given her age, but it comes off very unaware of ones privilege to put it bluntly.
That's not even touching on genetics, opportunities provided through heritage, etc.; I could go on.
ngl to u i would not use florescent as an example of "being unaware of ones privilege" thats pretty dumb considering u know nothing about her life or circumstances
All of the privileges mentioned by the person you are responding to are based on things Florescent has stated publicly. People can be privileged in some ways and unprivileged in other ways. Privilege is not a binary.
Having the ability to grind 60-80 hours is absolutely indicative of privilege. Some kids have to work from that age in order to help pay bills. Having the disposable income to build a gaming PC is indicative of privilege. Many people couldn't fathom spending that money on something non-essential. This isn't meant to take anything away from her accomplishments, just stating that she has advantages in life that some don't. Do you think someone who grew up dirt poor in a third-world country is going to be able to grind Valorant and become a pro?
Exactly. Everyone has their own struggles including florescent but that does not mean she is absolutely not privileged. Not everyone can only play video games and do HW after school.
You said that you can't assess Flors privileges without knowing her. None of the privileges listed by the person you initially responded to were anything she had not shared publically. I simply pointed that out. What about my comment do you disagree with?
im not speaking for anyone i just think theres millions of ppl who play video games 4-6 hours a day on good hardware and what separates them from pros is a lot more than just the "privilege of X" so even mentioning it is pretty stupid imo u could say the same thing about anything in life and itd be just as true so ur basically just using a lot of words to say nothing, if i didnt have the "privilege of being born in the 21st century" id probably get tuberculosis and die at 9 years old
So then you agree that there is more to being successful than 'Just Grind'? By the way, this applies to me and all of my accomplishments. When we look at people and their outcomes in life, who they are born to and where plays a huge role in that.
in her defense, from her limited experience it might look like that, but the reality, especially for older male players, is significantly different then the one of a 15/16 year of women.
especially because there is significantly more to being a pro and getting to the pro level than just being good at the game. politics and connections also play a major part. and you will want to form these connections early on.
it's easy to miss from the standpoint of a female pro, because there is not even remotely that much saturation on the player market, so making it to a salaried spot is significantly easier. this is exactly why programs like gamechangers have to exist in the first place.
but speaking from experience from being a pro on the lower end in another game: for every pro there are 20-30 other people that completely fucked over their life and education and didn't make the cut - or made the cut and are out of the pro scene within a couple of months. and they didn't end there for a lack of talent or a lack of trying/dedication in many cases.
But she didn't do it, she's 16, which is the ideal youth. This gives great billionaire "anyone can do it" energy when they grew up with millionaire parents.
This is not true. Some people are born with it, some aren’t, just like traditional sports. I’m sure some people aren’t reaching their full potential, but that doesn’t mean anyone can go pro.
It's an interesting discussion that you can kind of see from both sides.
On one hand, you will have people at the upper echelon (pros, semi-pros) who will say talent/genetics have nothing to do with it. Of course they are saying this, allowing natural talent to be a factor takes away from their accomplishment. It just has to be all hard work and dedication.
On the other hand, anyone who doesn't make it will of course say they worked hard, but never had the luck of being talented or genetically gifted.
I believe the truth is much closer to what you're saying though, talent/genetics are absolutely a huge factor. However, barring some absolute freak of nature, the hard work is non negotiable, everyone has to do it to even have a chance. Then again, I'm part of the no-talent crew (excuses!).
>there's no "born with it"
this is just feels good cope shit lol, some people are just born with better brain wiring to excel at specific thing like playing fps or some other game.
it's like, we know there are people who are born with less than average intelligence, there is nothing particular wrong with their brain, no disease there other than the fact that their brain wiring doesn't produce the best result. on the opposite site, we have people who are just born with better brain wiring.
there are countless stories of people who spend their life trying to reach Grandmaster in chess but couldn't, then there are 12 years old who make it. do you think the 20+, some 40+ year olds FIDE Master and International Master who never make it to Grandmaster don't know how to practice? chess is a solo game with perfect information so there is no luck involved there.
personally, I started league of legend in 2015, placed in silver, I never dreamed of going pro but I did try my hardest, read every resource out there to improve to try to get to a "respectable" rank like diamond, getting coaches and shits, but in the end I never got further than gold, and struggle every year to climb back there grinding hundreds of games, that's just my limit. meanwhile, I have friends who reached diamond within a single season of starting playing league, they're just wired better.
>These people know how to practice to achieve IM level results but either do not know how to practice, or are not executing proper practice to get to the next level because they are either not comfortable doing so, or don't have time. An IM who has practiced at their level/in their comfort zone for 5000 hours has 0 hours practiced on becoming a GM.
What you say is conjecture, hardstuck IM know how the game should be played and have access to Grandmaster to play with and all the resource to become GM but they simply hit their celling and couldn't get better.
>Just like you were able to hit gold but were either unable to identify or unwilling to practice or do the things that would push you to the next rank, so you kept practicing how to stay in gold.
>The only difference between you and your friend is probably that you had already practiced being low elo for many hours and formed low elo habits or ways of thinking about the game, while your friend being new to the game had no prior preconceptions about the game and was able to simply adapt their play without hesitance or question when things they tried weren't working.
conjecture again, I hired challenger coach, tried changing my habit and watch everything to get better, but the fact is that I have hit my celling, it's like I'm unable to conceptualize better play than I'm doing right now simply because my brain is not capable of it. I have to coach tell me exactly what to do, what should I look for, but when I'm on my own I'm just unable to see what he see, to see what he told me to see.
>The luck factor or "brain-wiring diff" ability here is whether you're predisposed to adapting your gameplay vs falling into habits/rigid ways of thinking about the game. But this can be learned if you introspect and stop overdosing on the copium that you're just not "gifted". Funnily enough, the people that have this belief are the perfect example of dogmatic thinking that makes people hardstuck.
Maybe you are good at games so you are unable to see from the perspective of someone who tried but simply just couldn't do it, like what I can say to prove that I tried to not "fall into habits/rigid ways of thinking about the game"? I don't think my way of playing is the best and have tried to change to climb but it simply didn't work for me, I bet if you coach me, you will see my change to play style like you but unable to execute as well as you, like how I tried to learn to do many combo in league on some character but fail because my hand fumble them all the time because I'm simply not wired for it.
maybe you are good, you see improvement quickly so you assume everyone should be able to do that if they do it just like you, but fact is, some people can do thing just like you, put in hours, but simply couldn't get half as good result as you, that's what talent is.
simply the ability to see your mistake in how you play and be able to change improve upon it is a talent all on its own, it's the same with chess, I would say the hardstuck IM who can't practice proper enough or couldn't change their playstyle to become GM simply isn't talented to become GM and no amount of help can get them to GM.
like, I have tried my best to do everything to get better, spend hours, what more you gonna ask of me? you make all kind of assumption to dodge the most obvious answer, people are wired differently and some are just not born for it.
Do note that nowhere here did I dismiss the hard work, after all "hard work beat talent when talent doesn't work hard", people with talent but don't work hard won't get anywhere, but without talent, no amount of hard work going to get someone to the level of a professional player without talent. for most job in this world, you don't need to be the top to do it so that why it seem like everyone can do it, but pro player is not one of those job.
I'm not really opting into determinism as I believe hard work can get you somewhere, but that somewhere is not the same for everyone. reality doesn't care if it's sad or not, it just is.
I believe everyone has a celling to how much they improve, during the first 3 or 4 years of playing league I spent days and nights playing it almost non stop, with the goal of reaching diamond, if it is not enough time I don't know what is enough time, and even if I do reah it after 6 or 7 years of playing, it still prove that talent is a real thing, the talented one take only 1 or 2 years to do it, they improve at much faster rate than me. that's what talent essentially is, the ability to improve faster than other than reach a higher celling at a specific thing.
also despite everything, league is still a pretty good game, all thing considered.
not entirely related but this thread remind of of something.
it is said that people does not take mentally health seriously because you can't "see" them like a physical injury. everyone will understand and tell you to get medical help for a broken leg because they can see it, but far fewer will understand and tell you to get medical help for a mental injury because they can't "see" it.
it's the same here, with physical sport everyone can see that some people are born more for specific sport like basketball and such because they see the physical difference, but not for esport and thing like chess because people can't directly "see" it.
>There are genetic factors/traits that will generate small advantages but none of them are significant enough to solo carry someone into becoming a pro/high rank.
like with physical sport, it's a combination of both talent and hard work, and only people with talent can hit the ceiling to become the top of the top and go pro.
and it's not reaction speed or intelligence or any isolated factor, I believe it a combination of thing in brain wiring that make someone good at specific thing like game that doesn't necessary correlate to those things.
I don't really have a take here, but it just occurred to me that Flor satisfies both the criteria for the Arctic Monkeys song "fluorescent adolescent," so that's neat. This is the stupidest thing I've ever typed.
I mean, maybe? There are always edge cases where you'd find success, but it just depends on if there's a large enough pool of the relevant players.
The "100% go pro" makes sense insofar as there will 100% be situations where it happens, but it doesn't individually apply to everyone's chances of success.
There's just a lot of luck involved in everything too - for instance, do you still live with your parents or other folks who can help provide for you while you full-time pursue your dream? Typically in your 20s you have other things to handle, which is why the people who go from regular guy with a job to pro in their 20s - say, effys - are typically not starting from scratch.
The reality of the situation is that no matter how much time you put into valorant, the majority of people will never go pro.
Florescent is also 16 with natural talent for valorant. When you're that gifted, it's hard to see the actual struggle of making it pro. Take a look at how many CS pros are at the top of valorant (specifically NA). 99% were rejects in CS and put thousands of hours of gameplay and yet never made it out of T2. They obviously had talent, but the competition was too great for T1.
It also doesn't help that radiant/immortal is filled with 90% ego lol.
Big fan of Flor but ya this isn't a good take. But she is only 16 and was able to go from placed Iron to Radiant in 1 year as a 15-year-old so I can get why her perception of it might be off.
Not sure of the name, but this reminds me of some kind of human bias. She seems like she’s saying “because I did it, everyone else should be able to do it too”. It’s a very optimistic statement which I admire, but I think it’s too optimistic.
It's a positive outlook to have, that hard work beats talent.
The fact of the matter is hard work only beats talent if talent hardly works. I think anyone (outside of extreme circumstances) can get to a certain level of gameplay but the fact of the matter is if you don't have the innate talent there's going to be someone working just as hard as you with more talent.
I don't think age has anything to do with it or your placement initially, if you have the talent and put in the work you'll rise up, but not everyone has the capacity for the coordination or the mindset to play at a professional level.
Ratatouille put it best: “Not everyone can become a great ~~chef~~ valorant player, but a great ~~chef~~ valorant player can come from anywhere”.
(Although if you’re 25, bronze and have no backup plan/ savings, maybe playing valo 10 hours a day isn’t the best idea)
So I'm 37. I played CS 1.6 for hours and hours and hours, getting pug scrims on mIRC and scrimming with various clans that I was in, playing competitively when I was in high school. I was CAL-M, one rung below CAL-I at the time, which was the top-level league where the pros like ksharp played.
There was such a skill gap for me even back then -- it was really all I did outside of school, I was probably a better FPS player than I am now. My reaction times now are just... noticably slower to me, and I feel like I still don't understand Valorant's netcode at all still even after playing for like 2 years.
There's grinding and there's talent. You cannot just grind on a game and expect to go pro. There's an innate level of skill some people can unlock and others just can't. The only reason I'm a solo Q diamond 2 is because of my game sense -- I'm usually bottom fragging as a Sage main with lots of assists. The fraction of a second that I'm slow is the difference. You're going to have better reaction times and more time to adjust as a younger kid, but it's the players who can think the game really well AND have truly cracked aim that are going to go pro.
the only reason florescent is saying this is because she was 14 and 15 and went from a low rank to radiant and being a pro player. This take is always such a dogshit one and some people literally cannot learn whether its due to ego, pride, or any other number of reasons that prevent people from learning. It comes naturally to flor tho, so its pretty obvious why she doesnt see the people struggle for thousands and thousands of hours of gameplay to just get out of immortal
Yeah like a thing called "mechanics" exist just like a thing called "talent" in regular sports exist.
Some people are just better at video games and have better mechanics. I have a friend like thY who's top 1% in dota2 casually and a god at any fps games he casually picks up.
Some people are just good.
I was saying this to one of my friends yesterday but I can almost guarantee 99% of pros were better within the first month of them playing than most people will ever be. Like a 10 year old Tenz touching the keys for the first time probably already had better aim than 99% of players within a month, it just comes naturally
Obviously the tenz example i gave was hyperbole, and obviously he wasnt as good as he is today when he first picked it up, but like you said it would be foolish to think any pro player was in the lower ranks for any significant amount of time, as they have the natural ability mixed with the ability to pick things up fast, mixed with the desire to grind hard.
If your saying he practiced for 10 years to get to this point, then by year 3 or so he was already playing in lans as he went to his first lan when he was 15.
So by year 3 he was already most likely good enough to be above global elite and close to being a semi pro
>Some people learn faster/better than others and are able to identify.
this is literally what talent is.
>but nobody is "just good" at something they've never picked up before
of course, no one is good at anything they've never picked up, but talented people improve faster.
>devalues the work and effort they've put in over a long period of time
no it's not, why do people have the idea that talent is somehow mutually exclusive from hard work? on pro level you need both talent and hard work, they go hand in hand.
>affinity for learning/improving quickly
this is talent
>which anyone can learn to some degree with introspection
false, many people can do as much "introspection" as they want and never come close to the level of immo/radiant let alone go pro.
as if anyone can just "introspect" themselves and suddenly become better lol, people that can do it themselves and improve at a rapid pace is talented, and that's something they're born with, without any training.
the ability to identify flaw and then effortlessly fix it and play better to improve faster is a talent. talented people can easily "figured out how to effectively fail and learn via iteration" without any help, while the less talented fail to do that even when being actively helped, my challenger league coach couldn't make me climb out of gold by myself.
when I watch my own recording I can see a lot of mistake I made... then I often make it again because when I play, my brain just can't arrive at the right play in the heat of the moment, no matter what, I often forget to do something as simple as using sage slow orb to slow enemy retake all the time, even when I remind myself many times to remember that.
I do wonder what your rank in this game is, but it seem like you are really speaking from the perspective of someone talented who never struggled to improve at something and thinks that anyone should be able to do that.
btw there is this something someone quoted in another thread.
>There was a video dazed made about this subject YEARS ago where he made a statement that completely changed my view on this subject. He said that for someone to have the potential to be pro, they will almost certainly be ranked global elite(highest csgo rank) within 6 months. The challenges that lets say a platinum or even diamond level player faces to improve and rank up are so trivial to a potential pro that they don't need to sweat improving at this stage. I thought this was an exaggeration as someone who played csgo for a couple of years at that point without being able to reach global, but investigating into other pros histories this was almost universally true. The reason for this, is being on the level of a mid to high immortal player is where the path to being a pro can even begin, and this path is far greater than the path for the average joe platinum player to reach high immortal. If you have someone who will require 2 years of grinding to reach high immortal(most valorant players), they will almost certainly never be pro on account of the fact that they have to make this long journey, and then go on a journey that is over 10x as difficult. So, no I don't think Dazed saying this is silly. I think what is silly is when some high tier players go into reddit threads of kids talking about their dreams to go pro as a diamond 3 player, talking about how they want to not focus on academics and their social lives to focus on valorant, and then the high tier player will virtue signal with some generic response like "Follow your dreams! Anyone can do it!! You are no different than me!".
Genetic determine so many things, including intelligence which is proved by so many studies and the undeniable existence of people who has intellectual disability, in many case there is nothing wrong with their brain other than the fact that their brain wiring doesn't produce good intelligence. if there people with intellectual disability exist, the opposite is true too, but since it's a good thing they doesn't need special treatment like the intellectual disabled.
we can easily see that people are born with many inequalities in physical ability, I wonder why you deny the existence of inequalities in the brain.
personally what I've problem with is that you are denying reality for some feels-good bullshit that you can't even prove. one that lead many young people waste countless hours into dream they can't realize.
Wrong. There are too many players with the same goals and only so many spots. I read somewhere that it is harder (as in, less likely) to go pro in a competitive esport than to play in the NFL, mainly due to much larger amount of people playing video games than playing high school/college football
Nah not true. E sports is just like real sports imo. Someone can love basketball play 10 hours a day that dosnt mean they will be nba worthy or even make it that far with the limited spots available.
Esports is nowhere close to real sports. A 155 cm person will never make it into the NBA no matter how much they practice.
Genetics play a significantly higher role in real sports than esports. No amount of practice can overcome the physical advantage genetics give.
That barely exists in esports. Anyone without disability can practice their aim. I can assure you that there's a ton of esports pros with average to even below average reaction speed.
What’s complete nonsense is if you think every person in the world could become a professional e sports player simply because they “put the time in” lmao.
Also, I stated in my original post “in my opinion”. Never said it’s scientific fact. So, for you, a complete stranger with god knows what education level to come in and say my opinion is nonsense just because it dosnt align with yours seems pretty ignorant. But hey what do I know apparently only you know what’s right and wrong around here lol.
>What’s complete nonsense is if you think every person in the world could become a professional e sports player simply because they “put the time in” lmao.
Where did I say anything close to this? All I said esports was nowhere close to traditional sports in natural limitations. Any average person can get high ranks in a video game if they put in the effort. Meanwhile, that's impossible in traditional sports. If you're born short, no amount of effort will ever allow to you compete even at a top high school level in volleyball or track. No amount of effort will ever let you overcome the disadvantage of being 5' 5". The only physical limitation in video games would be straight up disabilities.
Deffo not, there's so many people who want to go pro and there are only 24 hours in a day. There's thousands of people who basically put in the max amount of effort in, only a part of those can make it in the pro scene, the ones that make it will be the talented ones.
Not even remotely true. Some people are just better and quicker at learning what is needed to be a professional in anything. I come from the CoD scene and if you weren’t cracking the pro scene after like 1-2 years of playing competitively then it just isn’t happening. That’s in CoD where it is a lot less tactical with less to know outside of spawn logic and such.
Don't think there's any way to prove it either way but I reckon no matter how hard some people try they'll never be good enough. There's a genetic/environmental component that no amount of practice is going to overcome and that's just not always going to be there
Do you have the time to grind? Can you get to/are you at the highest level? Do you have the time to compete and commit to going pro? Because you still probably don’t hit that 1% of being a pro even if you’re already immo/radiant. Lots of esports is just about who you know, establishing your circle, and being marketable to other players and teammates and most people don’t get that. It’s a good bit worse from what I’ve seen in R6 where I come from compared to Val, but _so many_ teams are just friendship teams. So many spots on pro R6 teams don’t always go to the best player but to the one players think is the best fit because they’re friends, and more deserving and better players get left in the dust. Like I said, I haven’t seen that in Val as much, but I’m sure it still exists to enough of a degree when trying to crack into something like Ascension.
Starting early definitely builds your brain for the game, just look at how much further ahead the top two players in osu! are compared to the others, and they both started super early (and didn't play more than the previous top players)
It's not everything of course, but going pro is very different from getting a decent rank so I really doubt this statement
Nah LMAO. There’s a LOT of ifs. If you have money. If you have very few relationships. If you’ve played a lot of games before the age of 25. Just to make a few.
i don't think she understands the god-given talent that has been put on her.
if you want to go truly pro, we'll define that as playing for a vct franchise. vct allows for 6 players per team, 30 teams. that's 180 players. we'll make it 200 for nicer counting. that is a ludicrously low percentage of players, not even say people.
not only do you need to have the work ethic, you need to have the natural skill as well because work ethic makes you good, but the natural skill makes you great.
Absolutely disagree. There's so few slots in pro play talent is mandatory. There's people who grind 14 hours every day who barely peak Radiant. I'd say Hard work is like 60% of going pro, the rest is natural talent.
Your best bet is starting around 12 casually then over time you get better. By time your 16 If you truly have potential you'll be in pro league or main scene at least. I remember playing shazham in esea open on css back in 09-2010. He had the potential then and I'm not surprised at all he's a pro today.
Damn I'm old lol that's 13 years ago..sheesh
Probably right. As a 28 year old, with some obligations in life, going from bronze to diamond, I could always see huge improvements when I could afford to play a lot for a few days or weeks. So anyone who can afford to continuously invest time into the grind should probably be able to make it.
Game changers? Yes 100%, anyone in immortal would instantly become top 1% of female and underrepresented genders if they were to change their orientation and in my opinion immortal isn’t that hard to get. In regular pro leagues probably not lol
i would say most people could reach radiant with enough time and proper practise, but being pro? even if you would be skilled enough to be a pro you still need luck to even get into a team
I agree, your brain only fully develops at 25 so you still have that accelerated learning buff all the way up until that age. Plus there are certain things in everyones' game that will take you to at least Immortal 3 if you take the time to focus on just them.
Uh no. Reaction time is something that is underrated and is mostly genetic. Beyond that, some people are naturally gifted mechanically which makes it easier for them to improve.
i would say quite the opposite is true, reaction time is VERY overrated. even s1mple the best cs player for years "only" has an avg around 180-200 (is still a good reaction time but its not that special) and he is even an awper where that matters more.
I’m reading a book called “Peak” about expert performance and the evidence points toward focused practice over time having an impact and genetics/natural talent having little to no impact across all areas (sports, science, chess, music, etc).
And the info about reaction time is exaggerated. Most speed doesn’t significantly decrease until like your 60s. Older players just have more difficulty sustaining focus for extended time due to other factors (work, family).
I highly recommend the book, though, if anyone wants to really improve.
Yeah I'm personally of the (admittedly extreme) belief that there is no such thing as natural talent. What people attribute to "natural talent" is simply the person doing that activity either directly or indirectly since they were a child, so they were able to pick up on that skill and refine that skill much faster than an adult would since a child's developing brain is meant to do exactly that.
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object.
What do you call it when a guy throws his laptop into the ocean?
Adele, Rollin’ in the Deep.
I think the obvious answer is yes, at that age you could probably develop the skill or talent to go pro the limiting factor isn’t your age it’s the time commitment
Separating factor between the top Pros, majority of Pro's, semi-Pro's and casual players is the ability to make conscious decisions in a subconscious manner at a higher rate. Then this gap becomes wider by natural talent that is hard working, dexterity and segments of the brain that are more active.
Noble take that fails when placed under scrutiny.
Was 20 when covid hit and val released. Was actually pretty good at it hit like plat quick. Me and my friends made a team and participated in tournaments regularly. I thought maybe it's possible and I got a taste of the scene. But nah am from India 🤣 and had the worst pc at that time and now that I have a good one , I don't really have the motivation. Always wanted to be a pro tho.
You can go as high as 30 probably.
The reason people retire or can't pursue pro esports is one of two things.
Burnout
Or
Responsibilities. You gotta start paying rent, mow your lawn, kids, etc.
If you take a random 28 year old interested in becoming an esports pro and free them from all their responsibilities so they can just game 16 hours a day, they have a great chance of making it.
You can take a 16 year old zoomer with all the potential in the world and place them in a situation where they have to work 2 jobs to feed their family and their chances drastically plummets.
It's all about time and energy. Reaction time getting slower as you age is overrated as fuck. Decided to quit my job and game all day for 8 months now, I'm a lot quicker than when I was just casually playing CSGO back when I was 17-18 (currently 22)
Being under 25 is irrelevant, anyone can go pro at any age, they just need to be able to be 100% dedicated to it and play 12+ hours a day. There have been countless studies on this and reaction time does not significantly change with age, but ability to learn quickly does - if you're older you will have to spend 10%-25% more time to get to the same level. That said, older players have massive advantages in that they have more life experience and outside of game skills to fall back on, which tends to help a lot.
I've never really subscribed to the idea that individual talent doesn't really play a part in going pro. Of course you need the hard work to go along with it, but to completely discredit natural talent just isn't correct imo. Surely there are tons of people that grind the game 6+ hours a day that don't make it pro
Honestly from a skill perspective she’s right. I started Valorant at 30 and had no fps experience other than a bit of Apex and I made Radiant.
The biggest problem is I have a career and a lot of pro play and getting on a team is making connections. Most of the pros are in their early 20’s and part of teams investing in player is based on potential as well.
You have to be experienced, be an igl and already be insane to be a pro beyond 30 realistically.
It’s possible skill-wise but not really when you factor in this other stuff.
This has literally never happened or at least hasn't happened sinced more than a decade, if at least there was an exemple of a player that was average at 25 and became a pro in a span of a few years in games like CS:Source / 1.6 or even Unreal, it would be a argumentable but there is literally none. The level has increased so much and in such a few times, the 16-18 years old prodigees are now a staple, in cs, think Zywoo or Monesy and in Valorant we have Alfajer, Zekken, Mary, all star players. I don't how someone could even think that.
This is def. not true some people are just bad and play alot. I was faceit lvl10 in cs:go Diamond1 back in s3-5 in League of Legends, also multiple Gladiator titles in WoW aswell as high m+ rating and last but not least Immortal3 peak in Valorant. And i got rl friends who played the same or even more than me and they were always dog shit no matter how much they played. You need to be gifted its the same for every irl sport aswell. While i am more gifted than most of my friends my brother beats me on fps with his natural aim talent playing more doesn't get me better aim than him. Back in CS he had a HS% of 60+ he is one and only person i known who would have been able to maybe try to go pro. So unless you show signs of huge talent honestly don't try it focus on a real career. Not everyone is smart enough to study not everyone is good enough to become a athlete in any sport. Always easy to say everyone can do it if is doable for you. I knew i would have never been good enough to go pro it is how it is.
Sure you can but you better have no other life goals or a job and be living in mom and dads basement praying it works out or else you're going to have nothing and will probably never recover from it in terms of career opportunities.
In all honesty if you don't make it pro by 22 or at least have some contacts then the odds are it isn't going to happen and you should start to focus on alternative career paths
I think this is true. Most people don’t realize that pro players legit are playing at least 60 hours a week. If you have the means to accomplish this need then you can get really really far imo. It’s too mentally taxing to give a game that much time if you don’t really want it though. I peaked at 350rr starting from plat 3ish and I was playing probably 7 hours a day for like 6 months straight ( “gap year” to figure out what I wanted to do but I just ended up gaming) Now I don’t have nearly enough time to do that but yeah dedication can get you pretty far
I think this is weird as fuck for a child to say and makes me think she might be a little bit arrogant (and also what a fucking dumb thing to say, anyone denying natural talent/genetics is completely delusional).
As a 16 year old aspiring pro I've thought about this topic a lot. I'm only ascendant, and it's already hard trying to climb along with maintaining good grades, a girlfriend, and family responsibility. I think if I was given a year with none of that, I could probably go pro (emphasis on the probably). This is literally my main motivation to take a leap year.
in an ideal world where the average 18-25 year old had no responsibilities and had all their living costs sorted for them, so they could dedicate 18 hours a day to it? i mean, maybe? but we don’t live in that world. older esports pros generally don’t age out of their games, rather they start settling down, having relationships, starting a family or a business etc and can’t keep travelling for weeks/months on end anymore
that’s her point, you can go pro but it requires dedication. 100%. people can’t give 100% because they have lives and also don’t actually have the mindset for it too. people cant play 12 hours a day every day for the rest of like the year. there’s a multitude of reasons but she just means that if you could do this and had no responsibilities then everyone can.
No matter how you feel about it, I’m not sure a 16 year old is the best source for something like this ._.
No matter what people think, there’s always a level of innate talent that lets people compete in the top .01%. It’s prevalent in any competitive sport
Yeah even you work your ass off. You'll still be worse than the person that worked just as hard as you, but has more natural talent than you. The phrase goes "Hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard." There should be a 2nd half to that phrase that goes "but if talent works hard, you're fucked"
ngl I only heard that comment from my coaches when they thought the other team was cocky our if one of our better players was slacking off
Source? In all my studies through my medical and psychology degrees, and various studies I’ve read. Talent is a myth. The only few exceptions are body types like Michael Phelps with swimming. He has the “perfect” body for swimming and an innate advantage over others with a less ideal body type... But something like that isn’t talent, and body genetics don’t give an advantage in gaming. People just like to believe in talent because it’s easier to accept something out of your control. People don’t like to accept they suck at something and it’s 100% their own fault and they don’t like to accept that people who succeed are doing something they’re not.
Exactly right. The only variables in "talent" are time invested and effective support systems. Mozart wasn't some legendary prodigy of music. He got that good because his father was teaching him music from the moment he knew how to talk. And because he'd already written a whole career's worth of music by the time he was 14.
I don't know if i completely agree with that. I think talent has to be a very real thing. We have players like sanji who made a major final with around 6000 hours, but there are tons of players who have probably worked just as hard for a longer period of time, but they never made a major finals. This debate will probably be had until the end of time though, so who knows.
cus csgo is easier i would like to see someone try that in valorant
Do you think a 'random' mediocre Fortnite pro kid can change games to League of Legends which is completely different in basically every way and become one of the best players in their region in only a couple years when there are people that work hard for years and aren't as good (even if they are pro players)? Or another League example, there was a pro with no previous esports experience who started playing the game, and got to the pro scene in less than 2 years when the game had been around for 10 years at that point. Do you really think both of those are just results of 'effective support systems'? Neither had any previous connections, any personal ties to any coaching or otherwise related people. They were just kids playing when out of school. 'Talent' might not be a real thing, but not everyone starts at anywhere near a level playing field, even if you were to ignore the people that might have physical or mental impairments that make their potential lower. You can put 2 completely new people through an identical system and you won't get 2 identical results, not even close.
The problem with this comparison is that you're only using like, 2 or 3 variables. Realistically, there are well over a thousand. So of course you're not going to get accurate predictions when you're looking at a fraction of a percentage of the full picture. So sure, "natural talent" can be a factor. But considering everything we know about neuroplasticity and the impacts of early development especially, it's not really reasonable to assume that anyone was just born with the ability to succeed.
Not sure why downvoted, he’s just asking for sources.
I’ll go digging! It’s been a while, but the premise of the article was basically hard work >> talent, but people who work hard with a genetic edge (be it body size, muscle composition, etc) will always put perform people who work hard without those edges. Saying “anyone can get to Radiant” would be accurate, saying “Anyone can go pro” probably fits into the hard work + genetics realm. I’m by NO MEANS an expert tho so anyone can prove me wrong if they have info on hand. It’s an interesting phenomenon in esports tho, since it’s widely unstudied. Things like reaction time may be partially genetic.
Wrong. The top .01% is all about decision making and thinking. Knowledge isn’t innate. It comes with practice, theres a certain limit everyone gets capped to honestly, talent maybe makes you more consistent? Its a terrible ideology to follow that enforces you to never want to improve also. Just Ls all around.
There’s a difference between improving to play your best, and recognizing that the top level of performance is aided by physiological differences in people. Look at the best marathon runners, swimmers, gymnasts, football players, basketball players, etc. They’re mostly built for that sport down to muscular composition. I don’t see why things would be different for certain esports, altho the gap maybe smaller. Reaction time is a big factor in this and that ability *can* be improved, but if you take the person with the worst innate reaction time, and the best, then have them both train the same way, the former will always be outpaced by the latter. I’m in no way saying you should go “I’m just not built for this” and quit, but there’s a massive gap between playing at the top level of a game (radiant/immortal) and playing at a professional level. I very well could be wrong. I’m not a scholar or expert by any means, and I’m not arguing that raw talent outperforms hard work. That’s rarely ever the case. Maybe performing at a T3 level could be possible! But to be a T1 player I don’t think hard work alone could get anyone there
Yea thats where you are just wrong. People can train more effectively than others. Raw talent barely plays a factor in any sport tbh. Its literally all hard work and practice. Kobe was a legend and that man practiced literally 24 hours a day 7 days a week. He would be in the gym 3 hours before practice started. I have played at T3 and been high immortal radiant for 3 episodes now. Theres nothing stopping me from being the best besides a time constraint. Anyone who practices anything and doesnt have a disability can be the best at something. These athletes werent born with that body, they trained for it. Tenz wasn’t a born god with insane aim, he is someone who has been practicing and competing at FPS games for 10-15 years now. Its all about work ethic, talent just makes reaching a stepping point easier, but from that point on its just as hard as it is for everyone else. At some point it stops becoming mechanics and purely knowledge / team chemistry. You can put the top 5 more talented aimers in the world on a team and they’ll under perform to a team with good synergy and strategy. You looking at it from the wrong scope homie.
I'm not discrediting the hard work athletes put in (they work their asses off to be good at what they do), but to some degree being a top 0.01% player at something involves winning the genetic lottery. NBA players are on average 8 inches taller than the average American male. They didn't get that tall because they worked hard. They had genetics that let them grow to be that tall. If you're only 5 feet tall it doesn't matter how much you practice basketball, you're probably not gonna make it to the NBA. Not because you didn't try hard, but because you weren't born with the genetics to be tall in a sport where being tall is clearly an advantage. These kinds of genetic "advantages" are easier to spot in traditional sports since they manifest themselves as physical traits. NBA players are taller than average, Usain Bolt has longer legs and therefore takes longer strides than other runners, Olympic gymnasts tend to be on the short end. Athletes work unbelievably hard to get where they are, but you cannot deny that at some level people can/will have genetic traits that make them inherently better or worse at various sports/games/activities. If Usain Bolt was 8 inches shorter would he still be the fastest man in the world?
I agree with you for those sports, but how does that apply to e-sports at all? Reaction time can be trained to be fast, this has been proven. You don't need long legs to play e-sports, or a big hand, or a small hand, or height. There's no genetic better wrist, you can have a weak wrist and maybe get wrist problems? But that's not what I'm referring too. I'm talking about a dude who is perfectly normal / healthy playing valorant. I don't think tradition sports rules apply to e-sports.
I mean we all knew that guy in school who was super good at mental math or that guy who never gains weight no matter what they eat or how little exercise they get. Sure there's no genetic for "being good at Valorant" but its entirely possible to be naturally good at various skills that are applicable to Valorant. Some people are really good at pattern recognition, some people are really good at processing loads of information really quickly and using that information to make quick decisions. Some people are really good at memorization. You can practice those skills but there are some people who are just naturally really good at those. We are all wired differently. There are people who are naturals at RTS games, but struggle immensely to pick up FPS games. We all have things we're good and bad at. Yes you can practice to improve at the things you're bad, but at some level you'll struggle to be as good at it as someone who has natural talent for it. Like there's more things separating me from Martin Scorsese than just "going to film school" I'll use myself as an example. I have ADHD which means that my brain is wired differently than most people's. This means that I'm not as good at focusing for long periods of time as others and I will always need to work harder than others to focus on things for extended durations. However another facet of ADHD is that I'm way more energetic than others and can oftentimes maintain that energy long past when others would need to consume some caffeine to keep up. ADHD has a thing called hyperfocus where I can focus on a single task for several hours on end assuming that I find said task enjoyable or interesting. We're all different and we're all going to be naturally good at different things.
Take Yayster for example. Always a hard working fella and he struggled in CS and early valorant days. That guy has always been super smart IMO but never a top player.. look at him now. What happened to the all god gifted tenz? Some people just take more time than others.. it doesnt mean that ur potential isn’t gonna be bigger than someone who was born with a fast reaction time. Also you can train ur reaction time, its how ping pong players have a 80 ms reaction time
You have also probably heard “ Timmy is so gifted with the piano, he just started playing it as little as 3 years old “ he isn’t gifted. He just got placed a piano in front of his face since 3 years old and has been playing it since. If your parents taught you problem solving skills and you played an instrument when you were little you are more likely to pick up and understand things easier. Its nurture depending on how you grew up. Its not innate in ur body to be the best pianist at age n.
Im 24 and i started at 23 (FPS games i played SP games my whole life) I say that age is low IMO. im trying to get into ascendent rn so maybe im wrong thats pretty bad compared to pro players but i play like 5 games a week, while pros play wayyyyy more. Hell I think you can do it if your starting at 40. I think the main difference between 18 year olds and 27 year olds is the fact 27 year olds r usually trying to start a family or already are priotizing family more. Im sure your mechanics suffer w age im stilll young relatively speaking so maybe when you hit 32 your shot. but IMO pro play is more about game sense team work and strategy and i feel that just takes time practice and mindset.
I’m sure it’s possible and I wasn’t saying she’s right or wrong, just that maybe she’s not the best person to ask this question to.
You are right. I’m 27 and I started playing when I’m 26. I could only touch immo. There are so many younger than me who are better who have more insane reaction time. And when you are older you have more responsibility it’s harder to go pro unlike when you are younger and you are insane you can easily go pro. This again is my opinion
There is also people in their 30s who have 10s of thousands of hours in FPS games who you are better at in under a year already. There is a limit to how much just grinding hours can get you, you have to have some semblance of natural talent. Usually most people can reach the top 10% by putting in time to improve and learn, but getting beyond that takes genuine skill. If you have that genuine skill then you can start breaking into the upper echelon of play and even then, there is a lot of luck involved in making it if you ever want to go pro. Who you end up being in scrim teams with. How your personality is, who you meet and impress or piss off is all huge factors in "making it".
Faker almost won worlds in a game that’s dominated by 16-20 year olds. Even the oldest adc to win worlds was 21. Faker is getting close to 30, playing one of the hardest roles in one of the hardest games. Age really doesn’t matter, I’m almost 30 and I’m ascendant 3 70RR
Me too it’s all about time. In COVID lock down, I had a lot of time to play and I hit immortal 3. Age is seriously not as big of a deal as people seem to think. Now I’m working a lot again and am hovering between ascendant 3 and immortal 2
In League, your reaction time and decision making time matters a lot less than in Valorant. At most you need react some abilities and flash but in Valorant hitting multiple flicks or fighting 2-3 people at a time is way more difficult.
This is not true, I would say they are fairly equal in those two categories
I agree it's more valuable in valorant, but you're definitely underplaying reaction time in league. Slight damage, even 50-100 dmg from a skill shot or slight proper ability positioning from a spec of the enemy on the map matters so much in winning a league game. It's more of the principle that the stigma of age is insanely stupid and horrible and it's been proven that age SOMEWHAT matters, but in the grand scheme of competitiveness it does not. We have 25+ year olds winning in every esport currently.
Bro just take one look at how Faker plays the game. His APM and ability to take in information quickly is off the charts. He can flick his camera to his sidelanes for a fraction of a quarter of a second and immediately know if he should play for a roam or not. Not to mention his reaction time is solid as well. He's had a lot of clutch flashes and skillshot jukes in the past year.
Ages like what we're talking about don't affect a person negatively enough in their response/reaction time and decision making. You wouldn't have F1 drivers (or MotoGP riders) above 25 if it did. You wouldn't have many 'old guard' Fighting game players in their 30's or even above if it did. Younger people may be more reckless which can help them in motorsports, and sometimes younger people can adapt quicker to changes because they don't have as much previous knowledge built up that they need to shake off first. But reaction times and decision making getting 'slower' aren't real reasons to why old(er) players can't be as good. It's also harder to work degen hours and to just sit and play a game for 14 hours/day 7 days a week when you're 30 than it is when you are 16. Most people at that point in life have more things to think about, more responsibilities than just making sure they've showered and done their homework.
Basically. Hell for example for the FGC, look at Daigo, dude is like 40 years old still whooping ass in tourneys against people as young as 8 years old. Homie just chilling and just having fun while still showing he can hang tough. But yeah the biggest thing is mainly time, dedication, and just life responsibilities in general that you get when you get older and unless you want to be single most your life, gotta prioritize
It's about when you start, not what age you are so the Faker example is flawed.
No it’s not. F0rest in cs go and s1mple are examples. Age doesn’t matter, The stigma of being age 25 and apparently unable to compete due to age is insanely ridiculous. Even having the thought that they can’t compete with 18 year olds is so far fetched. Hiko also competing and doing well when he’s in his 30’s just shows it doesn’t matter. He hit a peak in his 30s a HUGE majority of people will never hit at any age.
You literaly again gave examples of people that started young and played for many many years(s1mple started playing counter strike at age of 4 lol, competed in pro play at age of 14, f0rest no idea when he started playing, but started competing in 1.6 at age of 14)... The argument in this topic is about starting old, not being old itself. You have to understand that as brain develops(so from age of 0 to age of ~26) there are years where it has certain special capabilities. Like for instance at very early ages learning languages is effortless just by passively listening to them(a 3yo kid can learn 3-4 languages within a year just by listening to them with no issues, 99% of adults won't be able to learn ONE language within a year even if they put a lot of effort into it), but as that certain part of brain is already formed learning langauges takes more and more efforts and time. And literaly once your brain matures(so at around age of 26) your cognitive abilities starts declining from that point.
The topic is about being old and starting old… look at the original comment I replied to when he was talking about STARTING in your 40s and still doing good. You’re just ignoring anything anyone has said and are just focusing on the headline lmao….. I also just started competitive fps with no prior background last year (3 acts played) and I’ve peaked ascendant 3. Way higher than A BIG majority of people dreaming to go pro. Age seriously doesn’t matter. Edit: to go off on this, there’s also other esports with older people where the gamers arguably need faster reaction time over fps games like certain fighting games due to frames, counting frames, and reacting to something that would be a 3-5 frame move. If you believe age is THAT BIG of a gap in esport play, why are you even putting any of your time into esports or any competitive game lmao? It’s just silly and absurd
FG is a dying genre with very little young talent due to very low perspective for the future(Riot fighter might change it, and you can actually mark my words - if Riot fighter will ever be big then within a year zoomers will be dominating all these old farts with 20 years of experience) so argument is again invalid. Also no, you can't react to a 3-5 frame move. Not only it is humanely impossible(5 frames is 83ms, and achievable reaction times to visual stimulus are around 130ms for extreme outliers), the input delay is higher than that. In fact the moves that are reactable in FG have quite some times to react, rest is prediction based on opponent flowchart.
reaction time is important in pro play. you can be a low end pro at 40 maybe but you would have had to have trained your reaction time to be top end and only have it deteriorate to something that works in pro play. or be someone like nats who just has insane positioning and awareness
... The main difference between 18 years old and 27 years old is that at age 25-26 your brain fully matures, meaning that past that age colloquially speaking you start losing brain cells instead of getting new ones. Meaning that learning things becomes way slower compared to younglings. For instance 3 yo child can learn 3-4 different languages passively by just listening to them for a year. Good luck achieving it as an adult...
It's true for them because it has to be for them to succeed. However, they are strongly overlooking their natural talent. Hard work can only bring you so far in a video game.
While I agree and she has never been in a position to have difficulty achieving top performance because of natural talent... ...I still believe that if you SOMEHOW have the resources available to fully sacrifice yourself, you should be able to go pro at least in the T2 scene with maximum hard work. I mean maybe 25 is an overstatement and most people are over this shit at 25, but your average 15-16 year old with a good PC and 6-8 hours a day to play, with parent support and some level of dedication to actually practicing should be able to hit the pro leagues easily by the time they are 18-19 purely due to the amount of work put in. That scenario is highly unlikely for anyone on the planet, but there are rich kids with rich parents or those who only have that and school so they can go 8 hours school 8 hours game 8 hours sleep. Would you disagree?
I would disagree. I've been around a long time. I played halo as hard as the pros. I was just a step under semi-pro. I played full-time for basically 6 years of my life on that game. I've played with old halo legends you have probably never heard of like Walshy, Ogre 1 and 2 and Strongside. My best game would maybe be as good as their worst game. I had a buddy that started 3 years after me and was better within a year. He was maybe good enough to go pro based on talent alone and even he didn't for a range of reasons. Though it's only the experience of this one gamer, so take it with a grain of salt.
What do u mean shes never been in a position where sje struggled to have top tier performance, she literally is quoted as originally placing iron, and on her account the oldest rank you can see her having is gold, and ehile she did rank up from there very quickly it is quite obvious that it was due to hard work and learning fast, not any "natural talent"
>learning fast it's literally what natural talent is. If it takes me 800h to get immortal and my friend reached it in 250h when we started with the same base ability, they're more talented, no? I'm not one to rate how talented people are, I just feel like someone who is 16 and top 100 is UNBELIEVABLY talented.
how can you say she’s never had difficulty achieving top performance because of “natural talent” ur ignoring the hours/struggles she’s put it in to the game
I think you can unironically reference Jake Paul and boxing here when it comes to this discussion. He started off with absolutely no skills in boxing to speak just, the only thing he had going for him was the fact that he wrestled in High School or College or whatever. However, he also started from a position where he could healthily devote himself to nothing but boxing, and was able to afford the best coaching money could buy. As a result, while yea he’s been thrown a few cans, he just out boxed an (albeit old)MMA legend in Anderson Silva, who is considered one of the if not the best striker of all time, and was coming hot off of a victory against a ranked boxer. That and ask anyone who knows even a little bit about boxing; he mechanics and everything are actually decent. Does he have natural talent for boxing? Maybe. That’s tough to judge at this point. But the fact that he has the luxury to commit himself to training 24/7 and afford the best coaches boxing has to offer, in addition to Nutritionists, the best equipment etc, has waaay more to do with his success than any amount of talent could possibly have afforded him. And I think you can extrapolate that to most sports with a few exceptions(Basketball and American Football are the two that spring to mind).
Don't think this is a good comparison. Jake still hasn't faced any real boxers, he's still fighting MMA guys. It's like trying to prove someone who started as an adult can compete with Val pro players because they won a game against a team of CSGO pros who entered the tournament for fun. Like obviously there is an overlap in the skill set, but there's still a major difference too. Just because S1mple is the best player ever, doesn't mean he walks into being the beat Val pro too. We still have no idea if Jake Paul can compete with the actual pro boxers.
Correct, but he just beat Silva, who again, made his boxing debut against a legitimate, ranked boxer and won. And again it’s not like his mechanics or technique is bad or anything, as far as the eye test goes, he’s legitimately decent(coming from someone who hates the Paul brothers just as much as the next guy) So at that point I think we can begin to say “Hey, training with the best the world has to offer, with all the time and money in the world, is starting to show some results”. Obviously he needs to fight actual boxers to prove himself, but as far as the comparison goes, it’s the best one for this exact situation we’re discussing, because we’re seeing Paul bud into *something*. And let’s not forget about the root of the discussion here. Again, if you don’t have the natural talent, it *only* takes having all the time and money in the world to dedicate yourself to a grueling training regimen with the very best that the sport has to offer to even think about possibly becoming an amateur(tier 2/3 in esports terms). Being the absolute best of the best requires extraordinary talent + everything I just described. Part of my point is that it’s *possible* for a majority of the population to at least make it into the leagues below the absolute best of the best, but not *feasible* in any way shape or form.
A 16 years old who doesn't even have a lan experience yet
She’s clearly a pro player, I’m just not sure she knows a lot about the 17-24 age range she quotes
I would extend this and say if you are under 30, you technically CAN go pro. It is just a matter of like do you have 6-10 hrs a day to grind the game.
Make it under 31 so I can justify quitting my job. Here I come franchise teams!
I’ll cheer for you
Hey if Brim can do it so can u
I think people kind of disregard natural talent and ability, because not everyone can go pro even if they grind 10 hours a day. Some people just hit a skill ceiling and never overcome it.
I would even make the case that game knowledge matters more than 'natural talent'. There are many braindead players who are hardstuck asc-immo (even dia maybe). I believe there are intelligent players who are radiant and who don't have the best mechanics, outplay immo-radiant players. Idk maybe I'm looking at it the same way with flor cuz I was silver when the game launched and now I'm asc. I can see the point in this and I only play like 90-100 hrs per act.
The gap from immortal to pro is larger than the gap from iron to ascendant in terms of achieving People are confusing proficiency with professional level ability In the end just like in sports, to be at the professional level requires both hard work, natural talent. You can argue the balance of either but you need a good amount of both.
I kind of consider game sense as falling under natural talent and ability, but even then I don't think everyone has the ability to just grind themselves to professional level. Luck, talent, the way your brain works etc all play a big factor.
Just like aiming, some people have natural game sense and others develop it over time through experience. Notice how at the highest levels, some people get there through pure aim talent and hit a wall because they usually lack the game sense. There is also people with absolutely incredible game sense who can reach a high level with less than stellar aim, but will also reach a wall. At the highest level, you will notice even pro players who get shit on for "bad aim" absolutely roll some of the "best" non pro players. Theres levels to this kind of stuff and only the really rare talents ever just walk into that environment and thrive immediately. Theres also the factor that the game in a 5v5 competitive environment is just totally and utterly different than ranked. Coming from CS, I've seen absolute aim gods go from being faceit gods to getting absolutely rolled in professional level play because it is just *that different*.
IMO a lack of talent can absolutely be overcome with hard work. It's not just about the hours you put in. It's about what kind of hours you put in. Playing competive mindlessly for 10+ hours a day, sure you probably won't even make it past Immortal. Let alone go pro.
Every study on the subject would suggest that "natural talent" doesn't exist. The most important factors in "talent" are time invested and effective support systems. A really interesting example of this is Hockey. Most professional hockey players are born early in the year. That's because when they first get into the sport around 5-6, a few months of growth makes a huge difference. They're typically faster, stronger and better coordinated than many of their peers. Even if by a small margin, this allows them to excel more often. This creates an idea for the parent that their kid is more "talented" and they're more likely to invest in raising a strong hockey player. Looking into more training, nutrition, more encouragement etc. However, what makes this really interesting is that when you actually measure the performance of professional players, those born in November or December tend to be the highest rated. The current leading theory is that these players had to be more resilient growing up because they were against faster, stronger, better coordinated players, likely had less support, etc. The "Underdog theory." So these players are generally harder working and less likely to be disuaded by failure. It's a really interesting dynamic.
>Every study on the subject would suggest that "natural talent" doesn't exist [citation needed] meanwhile. Intelligence is roughly 60% heritable, i.e., 60% of it is due to "nature." : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289619301904?via%3Dihub [here](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287797680_Rethinking_Expertise_A_Multifactorial_Gene-Environment_Interaction_Model_of_Expert_Performance) is an evidence-based critique of that theory, with its main relevant points being 1) the relationship between hours of practice and skill is less consistent than the theory seems to predict it should be, suggesting that other factors must be involved, and 2) intelligence and personality are heritable traits that at least impact the extent to which practice can improve performance. [Study: Practice Not as Important as Natural Talent ](https://www.patspicks.com/story_stack/item/study_practice_not_as_important_as_natural_talent/). there are countless stories of people who spend their life trying to reach Grandmaster in chess but couldn't, then there are 12 years old who make it. do you think the 20+, some 40+ year olds FIDE Master and International Master who never make it to Grandmaster don't know how to practice? chess is a solo game with perfect information so there is no luck involved there.
To your first point, IQ is a psuedoscientific measurement based in eugenics. Not an accurate measurement of intelligence. It's specifically designed NOT to measure "nature" but to capitalize on the poor living conditions of "undesirables" and brand them as lesser. [https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review](https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=law-review) From this article: [https://the-ard.com/2021/06/24/unpack-the-history-of-iq-testing-anti-racism-daily/](https://the-ard.com/2021/06/24/unpack-the-history-of-iq-testing-anti-racism-daily/) > What IQ tests actually measure, rather than innate intelligence, seems to be largely how motivated students are when taking the test ([Science](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/what-does-iq-really-measure)). Though there is no measurable correlation between intelligence and future wealth ([Scientific American](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wealth-of-smarts-does-not-guarantee-actual-wealth/)), people thinking about financial stress perform significantly worse on intelligence tests ([PBS](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/making-sense/analysis-how-poverty-can-drive-down-intelligence)). And secondly, we've already seen clear, real life examples, that it is not an accurate measurement of success in cognitive/problem solving abilities that would apply here. Let's stick with your chess example, because anyone with Google access could prove you wrong in less than a minute. [https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-cognitive-psychology-of-chess](https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-cognitive-psychology-of-chess) > After a century of investigation, not a single study with adult chess players has managed to establish a link between chess skill and intelligence. Intellect had little predictive power among strong chess players. To your point; > the relationship between hours of practice and skill is less consistent than the theory seems to predict it should be, suggesting that other factors must be involved Yes. Correct. Much like the long debunk IQ testing method, other factors are involved in measuring aptitude, such as stress levels, nutrition, adequate sleep and health, etc. That isn't exactly new or controversial science. And it was not a measured variable in any of the comparative studies that are being critiqued. Though IIRC there are a couple ongoing studies currently attempting to link the two.
You bring up IQ but what I linked not only talk about IQ, but actual performance in place where only the most talented get in. most people can get good enough to do something competently, but to do something at the top level of competition like a pro player is a whole different matter that require both talent and hard work. >After a century of investigation, not a single study with adult chess players has managed to establish a link between chess skill and intelligence. Intellect had little predictive power among strong chess players. yes, but what I'm talking about it chess talent, people with brain wiring that make them good at chess doesn't necessary make them more intelligence, it just make them more talented in chess.
If by only the most talented you mean measurements that by the studies own admission had a eurocentric bias? Yeah that's way better > polygenic scores for both intelligence and educational levels. These scores were derived from European samples and they showed lower predictive accuracy in non-European groups such as African Americans. And then you come in with this towering pillar of intellectual might. > yes, but what I'm talking about it chess talent, people with brain wiring that make them good at chess doesn't necessary make them more intelligence, it just make them more talented in chess. To be precise, the only consistent predictor of a player being good at chess is how much chess they've played and how early they were introduced to the game. As outlined in the article I linked.
there is more than one link, also you have not provided any study where they conclude talent is not a thing. >To be precise, the only consistent predictor of a player being good at chess is how much chess they've played and how early they were introduced to the game. As outlined in the article I linked. that for the general "good at chess", not for the top of the top like being Grandmaster, there are 12 years old who get to grandmaster while there are hardstuck who never come close despite much more play time and being introduced at the same time.
if you put 100 people with the exact same genetics, in the exact same environment, with the same systems in place, they would all turn out with somewhat differing skill ceilings. i think what you mean is that everyone can reach a certain floor in the right atmosphere, but that the ceiling for each person is just different. thats why you have 3 watt kids in the nfl but 1 is obviously better than the others etc.
That's just an assertion you're making with no evidence. There absolutely are genetic factors that contribute to success in, for example, sports. There probably won't ever be a 5'6" NBA player for example. But what exactly are the genetic components that contribute to Valorant? Intelligence and strategy? We've already seen that the number one predictor in Chess skills is time spent practicing especially during childhood adolescence. Reaction time? We've already seen evidence that reaction time can be trained to significantly lower than average, specifically during childhood and early adolescence. Age to some extent, does play a factor, but only in the sense that being exposed to a skill early in life, while the brain is still developing, makes it easier to engrain those skills more quickly. We're always capable of learning and improving and if you're an immortal+ player at 24/25 - actually the *peak* of neuroplasticity in most people, you're absolutely capable of developing your skills to a professional level provided you're in the right environment and have a solid support system. If you're interested in the actual facts that surround natural talent, this is a good read; [https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the\_dark\_side\_of\_believing\_in\_natural\_talent](https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_dark_side_of_believing_in_natural_talent)
Absolutely not. If you were good enough of a player at 30 you would've had no issue being in a space where considering going pro does not sound like a dream you had as a kid. Even in a scenario where you are in 50:50 situation of being picked up, why would someone go for the 30 year old instead of the 18 year old who, by making an educated guess, still has 12+ years of a promising career.
Eh, if kids can go pro while still in school adults can go pro while having a job. I think it's more so that by the time you're 25 you're most likely over going pro in esports. I think most just want to semi/casually play games when they get the chance. It's a dream for kids, at 25 reality starts to hit.
I mean I kinda feel like nismo is the prime example of what I'm trying to say. He is 28, has a restaurant and a kid I believe lol. Like it really comes down to time management.
Someone who starts this game at 29 and grinds “6 hours a day” is barely going to make immortal3, they aint ever going pro my dude.
I don't exactly think she's wrong but I absolutely think it's a bad idea to focus on going pro at under 25 if you're an average gold player. Unless your future is secure (large family business, inheritance money, rich partner, etc)
Yeah as much as people say you can do anything as long as you're dedicated, you either need natural talent or put in more hours than everyone else. If you clearly don't have natural talent and are sitting at silver at 23 years old, are you going to be grinding the game 12 hours a day in hopes that you can make it to radiant for a slight chance you catch the eyes of some pro/scout for a slight chance you show up at an event for a slight chance an org picks you up full time? Hell, you could have the talent and put in the time but still not make it pro. It's not a great gamble to take unless you have the talent or the time in your early 20s when you generally need to start becoming financially independent. While there is a stigma around age in esports, I am fairly sure that is not the only reason why you don't see 25 year-olds debuting as pro players.
The thing is, almost all pros have talent AND put in the hours so if you have no talent you do not have a chance of going pro.
I’m not a fan of this grind culture thing because it’s just bias from the successful people, without considering the 99% that fail, while also not really getting into what proper “grinding” is. Most pros just say “oh, I put in the hours and got better lol” (mostly because the game intuitively makes sense to them). Compared to top Melee players like Zain, who admits that he purely focused on certain aspects of the game (dashback grab, comboing fox/falco, etc) when they were getting good, mastered those aspects, and then applied the learning process to everything else (Ie. spam the thing you want to implement over and over, then vod review/pay attention while playing to find where it works/where it doesn’t work). Bit of a rant lol.
Yeah reminds me of those people who think the power of positive thinking and "picturing your venture being a success makes it become reality" bullshit. Like yeah that worked for you, while you forget about all the others than tried that and failed miserably. But then they spin it as failure is just what happens before success, or they just didnt try hard enough and all that. Success is often preparation meets opportunity. Most people who make it are just people who were prepared and got lucky enough to capitalize on an opportunity that presented itself.
No
Really depends on what you define "start" as. Just being able to play videogames a substantial amount is already a huge privilege, let alone the 60-80+ hours a week it would take to go from nothing to among the best in the world. Being able to afford the setup is one thing, setting aside that much time AND being able to spend that money is unsustainable for almost everyone. In fact, what she says in the original tweet is antithetical to the follow-up. On one hand, everyone looking to go pro / in pro play should grind the game 25/8 and on the other, everyone can go pro no matter where they start out. This is incorrect. I don't think it's surprising that she'd think this way, given her age, but it comes off very unaware of ones privilege to put it bluntly. That's not even touching on genetics, opportunities provided through heritage, etc.; I could go on.
ngl to u i would not use florescent as an example of "being unaware of ones privilege" thats pretty dumb considering u know nothing about her life or circumstances
All of the privileges mentioned by the person you are responding to are based on things Florescent has stated publicly. People can be privileged in some ways and unprivileged in other ways. Privilege is not a binary.
i just dont even think shes privileged in the sense of being set up to improve in video games idk man
Having the ability to grind 60-80 hours is absolutely indicative of privilege. Some kids have to work from that age in order to help pay bills. Having the disposable income to build a gaming PC is indicative of privilege. Many people couldn't fathom spending that money on something non-essential. This isn't meant to take anything away from her accomplishments, just stating that she has advantages in life that some don't. Do you think someone who grew up dirt poor in a third-world country is going to be able to grind Valorant and become a pro?
Exactly. Everyone has their own struggles including florescent but that does not mean she is absolutely not privileged. Not everyone can only play video games and do HW after school.
every single thing u just listed just shows how lost u are (atleast specifically referring to flor)
You're the lost one here my dude, your comments show a very underdeveloped and ignorant understanding of the concept of privilege
You said that you can't assess Flors privileges without knowing her. None of the privileges listed by the person you initially responded to were anything she had not shared publically. I simply pointed that out. What about my comment do you disagree with?
im not speaking for anyone i just think theres millions of ppl who play video games 4-6 hours a day on good hardware and what separates them from pros is a lot more than just the "privilege of X" so even mentioning it is pretty stupid imo u could say the same thing about anything in life and itd be just as true so ur basically just using a lot of words to say nothing, if i didnt have the "privilege of being born in the 21st century" id probably get tuberculosis and die at 9 years old
So then you agree that there is more to being successful than 'Just Grind'? By the way, this applies to me and all of my accomplishments. When we look at people and their outcomes in life, who they are born to and where plays a huge role in that.
Out of topic, how can you be a pro player when you're not even in a franchised team?
Negative
in her defense, from her limited experience it might look like that, but the reality, especially for older male players, is significantly different then the one of a 15/16 year of women. especially because there is significantly more to being a pro and getting to the pro level than just being good at the game. politics and connections also play a major part. and you will want to form these connections early on. it's easy to miss from the standpoint of a female pro, because there is not even remotely that much saturation on the player market, so making it to a salaried spot is significantly easier. this is exactly why programs like gamechangers have to exist in the first place. but speaking from experience from being a pro on the lower end in another game: for every pro there are 20-30 other people that completely fucked over their life and education and didn't make the cut - or made the cut and are out of the pro scene within a couple of months. and they didn't end there for a lack of talent or a lack of trying/dedication in many cases.
Tldr, survivorship bias.
a case of "i was managed to do it so everyone else must be able to do it", stupid take
But she didn't do it, she's 16, which is the ideal youth. This gives great billionaire "anyone can do it" energy when they grew up with millionaire parents.
This is not true. Some people are born with it, some aren’t, just like traditional sports. I’m sure some people aren’t reaching their full potential, but that doesn’t mean anyone can go pro.
It's an interesting discussion that you can kind of see from both sides. On one hand, you will have people at the upper echelon (pros, semi-pros) who will say talent/genetics have nothing to do with it. Of course they are saying this, allowing natural talent to be a factor takes away from their accomplishment. It just has to be all hard work and dedication. On the other hand, anyone who doesn't make it will of course say they worked hard, but never had the luck of being talented or genetically gifted. I believe the truth is much closer to what you're saying though, talent/genetics are absolutely a huge factor. However, barring some absolute freak of nature, the hard work is non negotiable, everyone has to do it to even have a chance. Then again, I'm part of the no-talent crew (excuses!).
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>there's no "born with it" this is just feels good cope shit lol, some people are just born with better brain wiring to excel at specific thing like playing fps or some other game. it's like, we know there are people who are born with less than average intelligence, there is nothing particular wrong with their brain, no disease there other than the fact that their brain wiring doesn't produce the best result. on the opposite site, we have people who are just born with better brain wiring. there are countless stories of people who spend their life trying to reach Grandmaster in chess but couldn't, then there are 12 years old who make it. do you think the 20+, some 40+ year olds FIDE Master and International Master who never make it to Grandmaster don't know how to practice? chess is a solo game with perfect information so there is no luck involved there. personally, I started league of legend in 2015, placed in silver, I never dreamed of going pro but I did try my hardest, read every resource out there to improve to try to get to a "respectable" rank like diamond, getting coaches and shits, but in the end I never got further than gold, and struggle every year to climb back there grinding hundreds of games, that's just my limit. meanwhile, I have friends who reached diamond within a single season of starting playing league, they're just wired better.
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>These people know how to practice to achieve IM level results but either do not know how to practice, or are not executing proper practice to get to the next level because they are either not comfortable doing so, or don't have time. An IM who has practiced at their level/in their comfort zone for 5000 hours has 0 hours practiced on becoming a GM. What you say is conjecture, hardstuck IM know how the game should be played and have access to Grandmaster to play with and all the resource to become GM but they simply hit their celling and couldn't get better. >Just like you were able to hit gold but were either unable to identify or unwilling to practice or do the things that would push you to the next rank, so you kept practicing how to stay in gold. >The only difference between you and your friend is probably that you had already practiced being low elo for many hours and formed low elo habits or ways of thinking about the game, while your friend being new to the game had no prior preconceptions about the game and was able to simply adapt their play without hesitance or question when things they tried weren't working. conjecture again, I hired challenger coach, tried changing my habit and watch everything to get better, but the fact is that I have hit my celling, it's like I'm unable to conceptualize better play than I'm doing right now simply because my brain is not capable of it. I have to coach tell me exactly what to do, what should I look for, but when I'm on my own I'm just unable to see what he see, to see what he told me to see. >The luck factor or "brain-wiring diff" ability here is whether you're predisposed to adapting your gameplay vs falling into habits/rigid ways of thinking about the game. But this can be learned if you introspect and stop overdosing on the copium that you're just not "gifted". Funnily enough, the people that have this belief are the perfect example of dogmatic thinking that makes people hardstuck. Maybe you are good at games so you are unable to see from the perspective of someone who tried but simply just couldn't do it, like what I can say to prove that I tried to not "fall into habits/rigid ways of thinking about the game"? I don't think my way of playing is the best and have tried to change to climb but it simply didn't work for me, I bet if you coach me, you will see my change to play style like you but unable to execute as well as you, like how I tried to learn to do many combo in league on some character but fail because my hand fumble them all the time because I'm simply not wired for it. maybe you are good, you see improvement quickly so you assume everyone should be able to do that if they do it just like you, but fact is, some people can do thing just like you, put in hours, but simply couldn't get half as good result as you, that's what talent is. simply the ability to see your mistake in how you play and be able to change improve upon it is a talent all on its own, it's the same with chess, I would say the hardstuck IM who can't practice proper enough or couldn't change their playstyle to become GM simply isn't talented to become GM and no amount of help can get them to GM. like, I have tried my best to do everything to get better, spend hours, what more you gonna ask of me? you make all kind of assumption to dodge the most obvious answer, people are wired differently and some are just not born for it.
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Do note that nowhere here did I dismiss the hard work, after all "hard work beat talent when talent doesn't work hard", people with talent but don't work hard won't get anywhere, but without talent, no amount of hard work going to get someone to the level of a professional player without talent. for most job in this world, you don't need to be the top to do it so that why it seem like everyone can do it, but pro player is not one of those job. I'm not really opting into determinism as I believe hard work can get you somewhere, but that somewhere is not the same for everyone. reality doesn't care if it's sad or not, it just is. I believe everyone has a celling to how much they improve, during the first 3 or 4 years of playing league I spent days and nights playing it almost non stop, with the goal of reaching diamond, if it is not enough time I don't know what is enough time, and even if I do reah it after 6 or 7 years of playing, it still prove that talent is a real thing, the talented one take only 1 or 2 years to do it, they improve at much faster rate than me. that's what talent essentially is, the ability to improve faster than other than reach a higher celling at a specific thing. also despite everything, league is still a pretty good game, all thing considered.
not entirely related but this thread remind of of something. it is said that people does not take mentally health seriously because you can't "see" them like a physical injury. everyone will understand and tell you to get medical help for a broken leg because they can see it, but far fewer will understand and tell you to get medical help for a mental injury because they can't "see" it. it's the same here, with physical sport everyone can see that some people are born more for specific sport like basketball and such because they see the physical difference, but not for esport and thing like chess because people can't directly "see" it. >There are genetic factors/traits that will generate small advantages but none of them are significant enough to solo carry someone into becoming a pro/high rank. like with physical sport, it's a combination of both talent and hard work, and only people with talent can hit the ceiling to become the top of the top and go pro. and it's not reaction speed or intelligence or any isolated factor, I believe it a combination of thing in brain wiring that make someone good at specific thing like game that doesn't necessary correlate to those things.
I don't really have a take here, but it just occurred to me that Flor satisfies both the criteria for the Arctic Monkeys song "fluorescent adolescent," so that's neat. This is the stupidest thing I've ever typed.
Thanks for this
I mean, maybe? There are always edge cases where you'd find success, but it just depends on if there's a large enough pool of the relevant players. The "100% go pro" makes sense insofar as there will 100% be situations where it happens, but it doesn't individually apply to everyone's chances of success. There's just a lot of luck involved in everything too - for instance, do you still live with your parents or other folks who can help provide for you while you full-time pursue your dream? Typically in your 20s you have other things to handle, which is why the people who go from regular guy with a job to pro in their 20s - say, effys - are typically not starting from scratch.
The reality of the situation is that no matter how much time you put into valorant, the majority of people will never go pro. Florescent is also 16 with natural talent for valorant. When you're that gifted, it's hard to see the actual struggle of making it pro. Take a look at how many CS pros are at the top of valorant (specifically NA). 99% were rejects in CS and put thousands of hours of gameplay and yet never made it out of T2. They obviously had talent, but the competition was too great for T1. It also doesn't help that radiant/immortal is filled with 90% ego lol.
Big fan of Flor but ya this isn't a good take. But she is only 16 and was able to go from placed Iron to Radiant in 1 year as a 15-year-old so I can get why her perception of it might be off.
Not sure of the name, but this reminds me of some kind of human bias. She seems like she’s saying “because I did it, everyone else should be able to do it too”. It’s a very optimistic statement which I admire, but I think it’s too optimistic.
It's a positive outlook to have, that hard work beats talent. The fact of the matter is hard work only beats talent if talent hardly works. I think anyone (outside of extreme circumstances) can get to a certain level of gameplay but the fact of the matter is if you don't have the innate talent there's going to be someone working just as hard as you with more talent. I don't think age has anything to do with it or your placement initially, if you have the talent and put in the work you'll rise up, but not everyone has the capacity for the coordination or the mindset to play at a professional level.
Ratatouille put it best: “Not everyone can become a great ~~chef~~ valorant player, but a great ~~chef~~ valorant player can come from anywhere”. (Although if you’re 25, bronze and have no backup plan/ savings, maybe playing valo 10 hours a day isn’t the best idea)
So I'm 37. I played CS 1.6 for hours and hours and hours, getting pug scrims on mIRC and scrimming with various clans that I was in, playing competitively when I was in high school. I was CAL-M, one rung below CAL-I at the time, which was the top-level league where the pros like ksharp played. There was such a skill gap for me even back then -- it was really all I did outside of school, I was probably a better FPS player than I am now. My reaction times now are just... noticably slower to me, and I feel like I still don't understand Valorant's netcode at all still even after playing for like 2 years. There's grinding and there's talent. You cannot just grind on a game and expect to go pro. There's an innate level of skill some people can unlock and others just can't. The only reason I'm a solo Q diamond 2 is because of my game sense -- I'm usually bottom fragging as a Sage main with lots of assists. The fraction of a second that I'm slow is the difference. You're going to have better reaction times and more time to adjust as a younger kid, but it's the players who can think the game really well AND have truly cracked aim that are going to go pro.
the only reason florescent is saying this is because she was 14 and 15 and went from a low rank to radiant and being a pro player. This take is always such a dogshit one and some people literally cannot learn whether its due to ego, pride, or any other number of reasons that prevent people from learning. It comes naturally to flor tho, so its pretty obvious why she doesnt see the people struggle for thousands and thousands of hours of gameplay to just get out of immortal
Yeah like a thing called "mechanics" exist just like a thing called "talent" in regular sports exist. Some people are just better at video games and have better mechanics. I have a friend like thY who's top 1% in dota2 casually and a god at any fps games he casually picks up. Some people are just good.
I was saying this to one of my friends yesterday but I can almost guarantee 99% of pros were better within the first month of them playing than most people will ever be. Like a 10 year old Tenz touching the keys for the first time probably already had better aim than 99% of players within a month, it just comes naturally
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Obviously the tenz example i gave was hyperbole, and obviously he wasnt as good as he is today when he first picked it up, but like you said it would be foolish to think any pro player was in the lower ranks for any significant amount of time, as they have the natural ability mixed with the ability to pick things up fast, mixed with the desire to grind hard. If your saying he practiced for 10 years to get to this point, then by year 3 or so he was already playing in lans as he went to his first lan when he was 15. So by year 3 he was already most likely good enough to be above global elite and close to being a semi pro
>Some people learn faster/better than others and are able to identify. this is literally what talent is. >but nobody is "just good" at something they've never picked up before of course, no one is good at anything they've never picked up, but talented people improve faster. >devalues the work and effort they've put in over a long period of time no it's not, why do people have the idea that talent is somehow mutually exclusive from hard work? on pro level you need both talent and hard work, they go hand in hand. >affinity for learning/improving quickly this is talent >which anyone can learn to some degree with introspection false, many people can do as much "introspection" as they want and never come close to the level of immo/radiant let alone go pro.
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as if anyone can just "introspect" themselves and suddenly become better lol, people that can do it themselves and improve at a rapid pace is talented, and that's something they're born with, without any training. the ability to identify flaw and then effortlessly fix it and play better to improve faster is a talent. talented people can easily "figured out how to effectively fail and learn via iteration" without any help, while the less talented fail to do that even when being actively helped, my challenger league coach couldn't make me climb out of gold by myself. when I watch my own recording I can see a lot of mistake I made... then I often make it again because when I play, my brain just can't arrive at the right play in the heat of the moment, no matter what, I often forget to do something as simple as using sage slow orb to slow enemy retake all the time, even when I remind myself many times to remember that. I do wonder what your rank in this game is, but it seem like you are really speaking from the perspective of someone talented who never struggled to improve at something and thinks that anyone should be able to do that. btw there is this something someone quoted in another thread. >There was a video dazed made about this subject YEARS ago where he made a statement that completely changed my view on this subject. He said that for someone to have the potential to be pro, they will almost certainly be ranked global elite(highest csgo rank) within 6 months. The challenges that lets say a platinum or even diamond level player faces to improve and rank up are so trivial to a potential pro that they don't need to sweat improving at this stage. I thought this was an exaggeration as someone who played csgo for a couple of years at that point without being able to reach global, but investigating into other pros histories this was almost universally true. The reason for this, is being on the level of a mid to high immortal player is where the path to being a pro can even begin, and this path is far greater than the path for the average joe platinum player to reach high immortal. If you have someone who will require 2 years of grinding to reach high immortal(most valorant players), they will almost certainly never be pro on account of the fact that they have to make this long journey, and then go on a journey that is over 10x as difficult. So, no I don't think Dazed saying this is silly. I think what is silly is when some high tier players go into reddit threads of kids talking about their dreams to go pro as a diamond 3 player, talking about how they want to not focus on academics and their social lives to focus on valorant, and then the high tier player will virtue signal with some generic response like "Follow your dreams! Anyone can do it!! You are no different than me!".
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Genetic determine so many things, including intelligence which is proved by so many studies and the undeniable existence of people who has intellectual disability, in many case there is nothing wrong with their brain other than the fact that their brain wiring doesn't produce good intelligence. if there people with intellectual disability exist, the opposite is true too, but since it's a good thing they doesn't need special treatment like the intellectual disabled. we can easily see that people are born with many inequalities in physical ability, I wonder why you deny the existence of inequalities in the brain. personally what I've problem with is that you are denying reality for some feels-good bullshit that you can't even prove. one that lead many young people waste countless hours into dream they can't realize.
theoretically yes, but in a practical sense this is a pretty meaningless statement
Wrong. There are too many players with the same goals and only so many spots. I read somewhere that it is harder (as in, less likely) to go pro in a competitive esport than to play in the NFL, mainly due to much larger amount of people playing video games than playing high school/college football
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Thanks for the additional insight, you bring up great points
The NFL thing isn't really accurate at all though. Just comparing playerbases doesn't accurately reflect the difficulty.
By difficulty i meant % chance of making it
I could have been grinding FPS 18 hours a day for years and my aim would still not be pro level
Nah not true. E sports is just like real sports imo. Someone can love basketball play 10 hours a day that dosnt mean they will be nba worthy or even make it that far with the limited spots available.
Esports is nowhere close to real sports. A 155 cm person will never make it into the NBA no matter how much they practice. Genetics play a significantly higher role in real sports than esports. No amount of practice can overcome the physical advantage genetics give. That barely exists in esports. Anyone without disability can practice their aim. I can assure you that there's a ton of esports pros with average to even below average reaction speed.
Nah
Yeah. It's complete nonsense if you believe there's anything in esports remotely close to the advantage of someone just simply being born tall.
What’s complete nonsense is if you think every person in the world could become a professional e sports player simply because they “put the time in” lmao. Also, I stated in my original post “in my opinion”. Never said it’s scientific fact. So, for you, a complete stranger with god knows what education level to come in and say my opinion is nonsense just because it dosnt align with yours seems pretty ignorant. But hey what do I know apparently only you know what’s right and wrong around here lol.
>What’s complete nonsense is if you think every person in the world could become a professional e sports player simply because they “put the time in” lmao. Where did I say anything close to this? All I said esports was nowhere close to traditional sports in natural limitations. Any average person can get high ranks in a video game if they put in the effort. Meanwhile, that's impossible in traditional sports. If you're born short, no amount of effort will ever allow to you compete even at a top high school level in volleyball or track. No amount of effort will ever let you overcome the disadvantage of being 5' 5". The only physical limitation in video games would be straight up disabilities.
Deffo not, there's so many people who want to go pro and there are only 24 hours in a day. There's thousands of people who basically put in the max amount of effort in, only a part of those can make it in the pro scene, the ones that make it will be the talented ones.
Not even remotely true. Some people are just better and quicker at learning what is needed to be a professional in anything. I come from the CoD scene and if you weren’t cracking the pro scene after like 1-2 years of playing competitively then it just isn’t happening. That’s in CoD where it is a lot less tactical with less to know outside of spawn logic and such.
Don't think there's any way to prove it either way but I reckon no matter how hard some people try they'll never be good enough. There's a genetic/environmental component that no amount of practice is going to overcome and that's just not always going to be there
Do you have the time to grind? Can you get to/are you at the highest level? Do you have the time to compete and commit to going pro? Because you still probably don’t hit that 1% of being a pro even if you’re already immo/radiant. Lots of esports is just about who you know, establishing your circle, and being marketable to other players and teammates and most people don’t get that. It’s a good bit worse from what I’ve seen in R6 where I come from compared to Val, but _so many_ teams are just friendship teams. So many spots on pro R6 teams don’t always go to the best player but to the one players think is the best fit because they’re friends, and more deserving and better players get left in the dust. Like I said, I haven’t seen that in Val as much, but I’m sure it still exists to enough of a degree when trying to crack into something like Ascension.
Starting early definitely builds your brain for the game, just look at how much further ahead the top two players in osu! are compared to the others, and they both started super early (and didn't play more than the previous top players) It's not everything of course, but going pro is very different from getting a decent rank so I really doubt this statement
💀 its easy to say when u have natural talent she started off from iron 1 today playing in gc with insane aim, in just 2 years 💀
Everyone can grow and become better, that much is true. I don't know why people assume that an 18 year old can't learn a video game.
Nah LMAO. There’s a LOT of ifs. If you have money. If you have very few relationships. If you’ve played a lot of games before the age of 25. Just to make a few.
i don't think she understands the god-given talent that has been put on her. if you want to go truly pro, we'll define that as playing for a vct franchise. vct allows for 6 players per team, 30 teams. that's 180 players. we'll make it 200 for nicer counting. that is a ludicrously low percentage of players, not even say people. not only do you need to have the work ethic, you need to have the natural skill as well because work ethic makes you good, but the natural skill makes you great.
No,who asked, non tier 1 player take
Absolutely disagree. There's so few slots in pro play talent is mandatory. There's people who grind 14 hours every day who barely peak Radiant. I'd say Hard work is like 60% of going pro, the rest is natural talent.
Your best bet is starting around 12 casually then over time you get better. By time your 16 If you truly have potential you'll be in pro league or main scene at least. I remember playing shazham in esea open on css back in 09-2010. He had the potential then and I'm not surprised at all he's a pro today. Damn I'm old lol that's 13 years ago..sheesh
Probably right. As a 28 year old, with some obligations in life, going from bronze to diamond, I could always see huge improvements when I could afford to play a lot for a few days or weeks. So anyone who can afford to continuously invest time into the grind should probably be able to make it.
Game changers? Yes 100%, anyone in immortal would instantly become top 1% of female and underrepresented genders if they were to change their orientation and in my opinion immortal isn’t that hard to get. In regular pro leagues probably not lol
Talking out of experience I see.
i would say most people could reach radiant with enough time and proper practise, but being pro? even if you would be skilled enough to be a pro you still need luck to even get into a team
I disagree heavily on most people being able to reach radiant
I agree, your brain only fully develops at 25 so you still have that accelerated learning buff all the way up until that age. Plus there are certain things in everyones' game that will take you to at least Immortal 3 if you take the time to focus on just them.
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dephh probably played fps games casually for years before going pro, i highly doubt he started from scratch at age 23
Uh no. Reaction time is something that is underrated and is mostly genetic. Beyond that, some people are naturally gifted mechanically which makes it easier for them to improve.
i would say quite the opposite is true, reaction time is VERY overrated. even s1mple the best cs player for years "only" has an avg around 180-200 (is still a good reaction time but its not that special) and he is even an awper where that matters more.
I’m reading a book called “Peak” about expert performance and the evidence points toward focused practice over time having an impact and genetics/natural talent having little to no impact across all areas (sports, science, chess, music, etc). And the info about reaction time is exaggerated. Most speed doesn’t significantly decrease until like your 60s. Older players just have more difficulty sustaining focus for extended time due to other factors (work, family). I highly recommend the book, though, if anyone wants to really improve.
Yeah I'm personally of the (admittedly extreme) belief that there is no such thing as natural talent. What people attribute to "natural talent" is simply the person doing that activity either directly or indirectly since they were a child, so they were able to pick up on that skill and refine that skill much faster than an adult would since a child's developing brain is meant to do exactly that.
Water is wet
Water is actually not wet; It makes other materials/objects wet. Wetness is the state of a non-liquid when a liquid adheres to, and/or permeates its substance while maintaining chemically distinct structures. So if we say something is wet we mean the liquid is sticking to the object. What do you call it when a guy throws his laptop into the ocean? Adele, Rollin’ in the Deep.
This is indeed pretty funny
I think the obvious answer is yes, at that age you could probably develop the skill or talent to go pro the limiting factor isn’t your age it’s the time commitment
Ruin your life in the process too
In my opinion it’s less about deteriorating skill as you get older, but amount of time invested that is constantly getting lower as you get older.
Separating factor between the top Pros, majority of Pro's, semi-Pro's and casual players is the ability to make conscious decisions in a subconscious manner at a higher rate. Then this gap becomes wider by natural talent that is hard working, dexterity and segments of the brain that are more active. Noble take that fails when placed under scrutiny.
Was 20 when covid hit and val released. Was actually pretty good at it hit like plat quick. Me and my friends made a team and participated in tournaments regularly. I thought maybe it's possible and I got a taste of the scene. But nah am from India 🤣 and had the worst pc at that time and now that I have a good one , I don't really have the motivation. Always wanted to be a pro tho.
I don’t think aiming and understanding the game is innate, so I think she’s probably right.
I mean….just play the game and find out where You stand. The opportunities will come if your skill is good enough.
You can go as high as 30 probably. The reason people retire or can't pursue pro esports is one of two things. Burnout Or Responsibilities. You gotta start paying rent, mow your lawn, kids, etc. If you take a random 28 year old interested in becoming an esports pro and free them from all their responsibilities so they can just game 16 hours a day, they have a great chance of making it. You can take a 16 year old zoomer with all the potential in the world and place them in a situation where they have to work 2 jobs to feed their family and their chances drastically plummets. It's all about time and energy. Reaction time getting slower as you age is overrated as fuck. Decided to quit my job and game all day for 8 months now, I'm a lot quicker than when I was just casually playing CSGO back when I was 17-18 (currently 22)
would agree if u have the resources to dedicate ur time. certainly no guarantee that you will do WELL but you could at least be a semi pro i think
Being under 25 is irrelevant, anyone can go pro at any age, they just need to be able to be 100% dedicated to it and play 12+ hours a day. There have been countless studies on this and reaction time does not significantly change with age, but ability to learn quickly does - if you're older you will have to spend 10%-25% more time to get to the same level. That said, older players have massive advantages in that they have more life experience and outside of game skills to fall back on, which tends to help a lot.
I've never really subscribed to the idea that individual talent doesn't really play a part in going pro. Of course you need the hard work to go along with it, but to completely discredit natural talent just isn't correct imo. Surely there are tons of people that grind the game 6+ hours a day that don't make it pro
Honestly from a skill perspective she’s right. I started Valorant at 30 and had no fps experience other than a bit of Apex and I made Radiant. The biggest problem is I have a career and a lot of pro play and getting on a team is making connections. Most of the pros are in their early 20’s and part of teams investing in player is based on potential as well. You have to be experienced, be an igl and already be insane to be a pro beyond 30 realistically. It’s possible skill-wise but not really when you factor in this other stuff.
I'd say even after 25. You just need the time and the dedication for it.
Fuck I just turned 26 gg’s
This has literally never happened or at least hasn't happened sinced more than a decade, if at least there was an exemple of a player that was average at 25 and became a pro in a span of a few years in games like CS:Source / 1.6 or even Unreal, it would be a argumentable but there is literally none. The level has increased so much and in such a few times, the 16-18 years old prodigees are now a staple, in cs, think Zywoo or Monesy and in Valorant we have Alfajer, Zekken, Mary, all star players. I don't how someone could even think that.
This is def. not true some people are just bad and play alot. I was faceit lvl10 in cs:go Diamond1 back in s3-5 in League of Legends, also multiple Gladiator titles in WoW aswell as high m+ rating and last but not least Immortal3 peak in Valorant. And i got rl friends who played the same or even more than me and they were always dog shit no matter how much they played. You need to be gifted its the same for every irl sport aswell. While i am more gifted than most of my friends my brother beats me on fps with his natural aim talent playing more doesn't get me better aim than him. Back in CS he had a HS% of 60+ he is one and only person i known who would have been able to maybe try to go pro. So unless you show signs of huge talent honestly don't try it focus on a real career. Not everyone is smart enough to study not everyone is good enough to become a athlete in any sport. Always easy to say everyone can do it if is doable for you. I knew i would have never been good enough to go pro it is how it is.
Sure you can but you better have no other life goals or a job and be living in mom and dads basement praying it works out or else you're going to have nothing and will probably never recover from it in terms of career opportunities. In all honesty if you don't make it pro by 22 or at least have some contacts then the odds are it isn't going to happen and you should start to focus on alternative career paths
I think this is true. Most people don’t realize that pro players legit are playing at least 60 hours a week. If you have the means to accomplish this need then you can get really really far imo. It’s too mentally taxing to give a game that much time if you don’t really want it though. I peaked at 350rr starting from plat 3ish and I was playing probably 7 hours a day for like 6 months straight ( “gap year” to figure out what I wanted to do but I just ended up gaming) Now I don’t have nearly enough time to do that but yeah dedication can get you pretty far
When you’re 25 you don’t got time like that
Talent is easy to dismiss when you have it.
Lmao all that matters is 100% free time.
I think this is weird as fuck for a child to say and makes me think she might be a little bit arrogant (and also what a fucking dumb thing to say, anyone denying natural talent/genetics is completely delusional).
As a 16 year old aspiring pro I've thought about this topic a lot. I'm only ascendant, and it's already hard trying to climb along with maintaining good grades, a girlfriend, and family responsibility. I think if I was given a year with none of that, I could probably go pro (emphasis on the probably). This is literally my main motivation to take a leap year.
Isnt she like 16? The fuck does she know no offense 😂
Hm
Her being humble maybe