both like b4nny

talent makes hard work easier and hard work makes you more talented but there are innate effects of each of nature and nurture that the other between them can't give

Proper training/practicing also matters.

Some people don't need practice for mental skills to be good enough. Physical things MUST include practice though.

Very few people are naturally "talented", and if they are, they're SLIGHTLY better than the worst players in the game. That's just your starting point. There are only a few things that can just come "easy" to you. Even things like hand eye coordination are heavily about training.

Talent comes from training. The idea that someone was innately born with a developed muscle memory is kind of crazy.

I had the world's worst coordination (even among the kids around me) until I hit puberty and then it was marginally above average. The funny thing it was when I was a kid that I was always practicing really hard, not when I was a tween. Just goes to show that normal people can easily be naturally better or worse than others at coordination tasks.

Reaction time does increase and peak at an age. Most successful pro gamers are between the age of 18-21. It may have something to do with 18-21 year olds having less things on their plate as far as life goes, but it's never black and white like that.

Note that I was talking about skill level relative to people the same age as me.

I got so much talent, you just don't know it because it's hibernating. It'll come out soon.

I think you're neglecting something. You said you practiced pretty hard. You put work in, and puberty may have been the event that needed to happen for you to realize it was paying off. Were other people practicing as hard as you?

people are just naturally good at some things

hmmm

hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard...

You need both to be top. Yes there are people born with genetic pre-disposition towards physical skill and physical gifts but it is only part of it. Generally early recognition of those gifts leads to encouragement to develop those gifts, which leads to "work" developing those gifts that other kids do not perform because they aren't encouraged similarly, which leads to hobbies which surround those gifts which leads to further development and an increasing gap over these other kids...yada yada yada.

If that early talent is ignored it will degrade, while someone less talented originally can work hard to surpass them.

About FPS "talent":
Most male's excel at tactical planning, tracking motion and seeing detail at a distance compared to women, because those are skills developed for thousands of years as hunting was necessary to survive. Those that were better at those things survived and passed on their genes. Those traits and abilities became part of our evolution (just like our physical abilities). Wouldn't you know it those strengths translate pretty well over to FPS games, so thank Krogor and Dirk your friendly cavemen for the groundwork they laid for you so you could play video games at a high level in 2012.

You would probably find this book interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/0316017922

Really, when it comes to this game there are some major factors that bear onto your success in it that aren't related to work or talent necessarily.

1. You have to be sociable and people have to like being around you (same mumble 3+ nights a week).

2. You have to be mildly to moderately intelligent, at least as regards to situations in the game. Some of this can be made up with raw experience, but in generally thinking things through tends to have better outcomes - this is why some players who have godly DM, and decent personalities, still can't secure LAN wins or even LAN placement.

In general, work is the primary. A good example, even in physical sports, is the training regimen that people like Tiger Woods or Ichiro Suzuki undertook starting from a very young age. Given, some sports demand a certain body type (some positions in American football, basketball, etc) but not all of them - hard work is the primary there.

This thread has been on my mind for a long time, and I have come to the conclusion that, under general circumstances (no deformed wrists / etc.), only the top tiers of the skill ceiling and the lowest tiers of the skill floor are affected by genetics. What this means is that people have different starting points based on their genetics, but the top tiers of players are not really affected by genetics as much as someone might think.

http://i46.tinypic.com/bezgx.jpg

The idea in this picture is that the bottom tier is for beginners, those missing practice. With practice, anyone can get into the middle tier, but nobody can advance into the elite tier without very good genetics and a lot of practice.

Good genetics can give a boost in the beginning and also help increase the rate of progression, but as proven by the top players now, practice is the difference between bad aimers and good aimers.

Also, my whole argument was about aiming, nothing else.

as some support for thorn's point... there was a guy who played TFC at the top level WITH HIS FEET. He had no hands. Sure it probably prevented him from being in the absolute top class of players and his aim wasn't the best of the best, but he competed at that level with his feet for crying out loud. He was better than 95% of the general player population who had two hands...

I'm telling you, it wasn't just suddenly realizing I had good coordination, when I was like eight or nine years old I was spending every day play-swordfighting because I was so bad at it and didn't want to be horrible. I stopped practicing and playing entirely because my friends started doing different stuff, and I started playing RPGs like runescape all the time instead. Fast forward two years later, the past two months I've been trying to play catch every few days with my dad, and suddenly I can actually catch the ball more consistently than him. And even that wasn't like, every time I was getting a little better, it just skyrocketed to a normal level at some point.
Thorn gives the best example in the thread of how both things matter right now.

Flynn, do you study for school? Have you ever seen people study hours and go to study sessions and what not for a math class? They sometimes still fail. And then the people who get straight A's and do amazing on every test? They have natural talent. FPS has a greater phsyical need (muscle memory for aiming) but you can't deny the probability of inherent talent to the mix. Some people don't need serious practice to be better than 90% of the people, they just need it to be better than the 10% that have talent and practice.

#17, you provide a decent example, but you're describing people with BAD genetics, who cannot progress no matter how much they try. A much more likely scenario in school is a smart person who doesn't use his ability to his fullest potential and gets lower grades than someone who studies much more but is not necessarily as smart.

>8-9, shit at swordfighting
>starts playing runescape
>2 years later, posting on tf.tv
>mfw you're 11 years old

The 1 hour in class is enough for people who aren't bad, just like br0 last season. If you're not able to learn in a short period of time, of course you need more practice. Completely agree with you.

Thank you for explaining what talent is.

If I were 11 years old I would be a savant or something.

Also just as there are people with "disorders" that make it impossible for them to perform at a normal level there are people with traits that make it possible for them to perform above most peoples' max capacity. They're both relatively equally rare, though, and a lot of the "good" people there don't even try to do anything special because it's too weird.

I think there are too many shades of grey to this statement. I personally believe I've witnessed the former more than the latter.

Yes I do touch on that. I'm saying that starting out, you may have some talent that puts you slightly above the lower levels of the playerbase.

But most anything from there on out is developed through practice and training. In a situation like math, there are some people who it comes easy to, and that's a talent that applies to every level of math. Whether you are in Calculus, whether you are in Algebra, or whether you're doing grade school Multiplication, having a knack for seeing numbers will help you.

In video games you don't naturally know how to track, you don't naturally know how to move properly, you don't naturally have gamesense. You need to learn all of these. I just think the idea that someone with very little practice can get into the top 10% of anything difficult to get into based on talent and very little practice is very far fetched.

I understand this because I had little to no "training" when I was a kid. I didn't get to be like wareya and practice really hard on video games when I was <14 years old, and I had a slower than average reaction time (280~ ms). I didn't think I'd be doing anything with video games "competitively", let alone even marginally well. Though I can't think of a single player who has made Invite purely off talent with no help from other games (Quake, CS, etc)

I naturally knew how to track and I naturally had gamesense, I never sat down and thought "what the hell am I supposed to do here", I just jumped into an arena FPS the very first time and understood the basics with absolutely no relevant background for these two skills

it's just hard to take advantage of innate talent just like it's hard to develop new skills

but you're missing the argument that talent affects how well you develop skills and you're adding random stuff into what you're arguing against so it's pretty bullshit

fapfapfapfap

you really shouldn't be able to +frag your own posts right after you post them

Talent is definitely something that exists. Talent is not all the product of hardwork.

I could train my whole life and would never outrun Usain Bolt.

In HS me and another short white kid who didn't play basketball at all won the basketball tournament we had. We played every game except one 2v3. We didn't work at all, just had good natural athletic talent.

I have very good athleticism. I played soccer from 5 years old through my senior year of high school. I worked hard at the game, I loved it. Yet I wasn't even a starter on a team that only won 1 game the whole season.

Math class, very little practice, top of the class. Same for at least 20 other people. Although I was probably the only one with a D in homework, extra credit from math team kept me at an A(yeah I was in competitive math, LOL). Math team practice wasn't about the current subject in math so it's not like it was overlapping and I was getting practice from that.
Playing video games, like I said, takes muscle memory which MUST be trained like everything else physical. Math and other academics it's based off your typing/writing skills which about 99% of the population has practice since they were 2 and doesn't need much more work (ie you can still out DM a lot of people just going into the game and a modest FPS background). Talent just gives you a critical thinking edge and much less practice required. Teamwork also is a major factor in playing TF2 which does require practice.

The problem is many of the things you're mentioning don't exactly require practice on TF2. We're seeing that now and we've been seeing it for years that the top aimers did not start at TF2 as an FPS and have a large aiming advantage over others from playing other games competitively. But this doesn't stop at FPS games. Teamwork is not something exclusive to TF2, FPS games, or video games in general as you seem to be painting it. Teamwork is in nearly every sport and knowing your role and how to communicate with others is one that doesn't need to be measured through "hours played" on TF2.
I realize this has to do with practice and not "inherent talent". However, some people can use skills in other areas better to adapt to others. Many people who are describing "naturally talented TF2 players" are most likely describing gamers. People who have been playing Quake, NS, CS, etc. for years and then move into TF2 and are good at TF2 with "little effort" are like that because they've been playing other FPS games for years and the principle remains the same - shoot people.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlCRfTmBSGs

just play the fucking game