No.

Talent gets overstated by people who don't want to put in work, but it still exists.

Michael Jordan wouldn't have been as good if he was shorter. He wouldn't have been as good if his hands weren't so huge. Good still, sure, but worse.

In video games it's just not as physically obvious.

I must find a beautiful wife that is very good at games so we can breed ultimate gamer babies with our gamer genetics.

that means you'd have to be good at games

jks ily

I think being the best at something, not only tf2 comes down to to how competitive the thing is. There are people that are naturally talented for some activities and we all know that, but the person still needs to develop his natural talent through practice. Of course the ammount of work he gotta put in to reach a certain level will be considerably smaller than an ordinary person, but he still needs practice. What we dont know is how big the difference is, and that's what make things hard, because at the same time you are putting all your hard work into something there might be someone who is willing to do the same and it will require 2x less work than you to reach the same, that's why being THE BEST at something is really hard.

If we were talking about some popular traditional sport, no you cant be the best just by pure hardwork as naturally talented people from all around the globe ended up finding out that they are naturally good at the sport due to its popularity/exposure, and they are practicing as hard as they can to become the best at it. But we are talking about tf2 a small-sized esport title. The competition isnt too big. No one here except b4nny makes a living off the game, we've all got irl things to do, so we end up treating the game as entretainment/a more serious hobby. So the chances of naturally talented people grouping and grinding until they become the best are actually much lower when compared to bigger esport titles. So yeah i think its possible for someone to become the best at tf2 by working really hard.

I think b4nny is the perfect example to ilustrate that. We know a few of other invite/prem players that can be considered more naturally talented than b4nny, but as he put much more hard work into the game than anyone else here he still manages to be the best. We dont know how "big" b4nny's talent to the game is as there isnt any exact way to measure it, but im pretty sure people here can cite some examples of players they think are more naturally talented and also are extremely dedicated, but b4nny with his 15,000+ hours into the game still at the top.

Also, this hard work vs talent dichotomy isn't so accurate. Multiple factors can influence someone at becoming the best at something, not only those 2 factors. Environment, opportunities, mentality, health and other factors are also important.

lol 400 word essay

i've always thought talent wasn't some kind of natural skill but rather a natural potential to improve faster, which would explain why some people climb the ranks very quickly (they still have to put in work of course).

This happens a lot more than you think. It's why some people are naturally more dextrous (sometimes significantly more) than others. The argument is whether or not anybody could reach maximum dexterity despite how naturally dextrous they are.

I also feel like genetics is being used as an umbrella term in this discussion, and I would consider someone's attitude/approach towards improving as part of who they are i.e genetics. Somebody willing to improve however could make the efforts to change their attitude.

Also you might aswell believe that natural talent does not exist if you think it can't for tf2. People termed naturally talented at an instrument for example just click with the instrument and learn it very quickly in the same way somebody naturally talented at a game/tf2 just clicks with the game, learns it quickly and applies what he's learnt with less effort than somebody who's no good at video games.

I literally think it's mentality only. I hate to be the one to make the argument that hours don't really mean much, because I'm someone who can put in the time anytime they want, but I think with some fair logic it's pretty easy to conclude the amount of time invested doesn't mean much either. It's literally what you do with the time. A player like me has over 10k+ hours in the game, and plenty of invite players and IM players could out DM me and they have a total of less hours than me. This is simply because the hours they actually invest to the game is towards contributing to their DM (where mine has mostly been somewhere else). I think hours is a grossly over rated concept and people use it as a demotivating factor, which leads more into mentality.

I've seen plenty of 'up and coming' players that I believe have the ability to be top level players. I heavily believed - and still do believe - talent exists in Invite that could topple froyotech. The problem is the determination and the optimism. I feel like optimism is so out of place in this scene. People are so used to accepting the fact that this game isn't going anywhere, the time is useless, and all that yadda yadda. Yet they still continue to play, and most of these people for the sole purpose of enjoyment of the time. Most players of this game have a good basis for optimism, which is enjoying themselves. However I've seen these same players constantly find excuses for why things aren't in their favor. Dying because the enemy team was dumb and not them, getting 'unlucky' with the game, they don't have 5 ping, etc. Every single player that has ever been at the top has almost guaranteed gone through same shit as these players, yet they reached the top while most don't. I heavily believe it's because they don't let these factors hold them back from wanting to improve. I think most up and coming players let their natural talents develop them, but when it comes to putting in any actual effort, they let these factors hold them back. I think that pretty much separates the top level to the bottom level.

If you want another example (that I love) you can look at our first match against Froyoblack in the most recent season. I dropped 6 times and we lost the match. Now I can go on that was literally the worse match I have ever played and how many things came into affect my mentality that day, but that's pretty irrelevant towards why mentality can make players good. It's pretty obvious we lost that match solely because I was having an extremely bad game. Do you know what Froyotech did compared to what any other team on the planet might've done? Instead of just writing off the loss on me having a bad day and going on with themselves, they looked for any other reason they could for why they loss. They analyzed the game and didn't include any mention of the drops I've had, they made it a nonfactor. A mentality like this is why some people are better than others in my eyes. Any other team in this game would've looked at my stats, and just wrote it off.

I do believe there is such a thing as natural talent. I also believe that anyone with the proper mindset can overcome someone who happens be more naturally talented than them yet have a poor mindset. One thing people should remember is to also remain optimistic. Being optimistic doesn't mean you have to be disappointed that you lost, it just always mean you have room for improvement. That's a good thing.

best take in the thread

If you wanna make prem then keep together as a team maybe play a couple of seasons in the lower divs and then you are prem. This is how I have made prem like 3 different times, not by joining a random team but by joining an upcoming team and improving and playing together for a season or two.

TF2 is still a team game at the end of the day and an experienced team who have worked out their own gameplan always have an advantage over a random mix put together (unless the mix consists of top prem plays). In fact i'll prove it give me 2 seasons then come back to this post and ill be in prem again.

Definitely not. Given similar circumstances a more intelligent player will be better than a less intelligent player. It’s not very evident in tf2 because there are some seemingly unintelligent players near the top due to the size of the scene. In csgo intelligence plays a bigger role. Hence why teams with crazy aimers often get beat by tactical teams with smarter players.

some people also lack mental stability to actually reach their full potential or are stuck with shitty setups

nah granny's got alzheimers she wont be able to remember if we got ad or not

you never know what you will be genetically predisposed to, remind yourself of that the next time you are anxious about trying something new

sure you could argue talent doesn't matter but how likely are you to put in the hard work if it feels like you have no talent in the given domain?

No.

But it's not genetic or physical or talent. It's because most of us don't have the discipline or mentality to be the best. We fuck about in 2fort instead of playing dm, watching our demos and thinking about how to improve.

Some of it comes down to intelligence. Stupid people won't make as good as a decisions as smart people, but also having the discipline to stick to a good training regime is crucial.

Basically, hours do matter, but mostly if you apply them in ways that will yield the most improvement.

A football analogy. When Isco signed for Real Madrid, he wanted to impress so he turned up an hour early for training on his first day. When he got there, Cristiano Ronaldo was already out on the training field practicing. Ronaldo isn't the (second) best player by coincidence luck or even just talent; he's worked hard and trained in the best ways to improve.

Good players work hard, great players even have talent, but the best have both qualities.

.

no lol

There are hard limits to your training capability and your biological makeup influences this just as much as it influences other sports, physical or otherwise. By training you are engaging in an act of refining your biology, that's what it fundamentally is. In the case of physical sports you enhance muscle and stamina; in the case of mental sports you reorganize neural pathways in the brain.

The neurological training is not some mysterious amorphous mist that can magically be molded into whatever you'd like. It's a very real, very physical thing observable in the way of neuron connection. As you engage in mental activities your neural composition physically begins to shift and morph, but bound to certain restrictions. You can think of it as your Operation System, in which you can program and code new software but you are still fundamentally locked down to that OS.

I for one have significantly lower reaction times than most people I've played together with. Whereas they easily hit sub 200 ms reaction times I struggled to hit 250ms. Was it my 60 Hz monitor? Was it latency in showing the image or the mouse click? Was I just mysteriously tired or undisciplined every time I tried to do the test? Maybe, but would a change of setup improve things significantly? It's important to focus on the consistency.

I don't believe that people are capable of all hitting the same reaction time benchmarks consistently. Sounds kinda dumb to think that everybody is capable of being perfectly equal in that regard. You don't need to introduce cripples or sick people to observe discernible variances. This became obvious to me years ago when I taught a friend how to play competitive TF2 and in his first season he was playing two whole divisions higher than where I was.

The same logic applies to all other things. When a player has the optimal abilities straight off the bat we call this "talent", as though they tapped into some Heavenly secret or something. They didn't, they're just better by definition. It is those players/athletes/competitors who, together with rigorous disciplined training, make it to the world stages.

There is a fallacy in disregarding the biological argument, for it presupposes that all shortcomings are chalked down to purely lack of discipline, lack of training, lack of proper mindset, etc. But show me someone who's been dicking around in the competitive scene for 5000+ hours with no success only to then one day become magically good by "discipline" alone. It's far more common to witness these two subgroups: talented people who rise very fast and soon make it to the top and slow risers who eventually hit some kind of plateau and never advance further.

I do get above 300ms many times, and my tension is low, still doesn't play that much skill-wise

dqs

epsilon and mixup in a nutshell

this and this tbh

there are a couple of things that I've found to be true when improving on any personal skill

1. unless you're physically handicapped your response times are almost entirely determined by your personal conditioning, people tend to have what seems to be natural talent because their conditioning is more geared towards what they're playing and they therefore also have the confidence to play well. if you work on your awareness I'm sure your response times can reach relatively high levels if you're committed and consistently practicing, seeing the game for what it actually is tends to help you with any attitude problems too, there are countless studies out there proving that things like meditation work wonders on neuroplasticity and spatial awareness

2. a lot of players go through the game reacting to in-game situations impulsively rather than responding to them consciously, which can also apply to attitude and how you approach your practice. taking the game too personally or seriously to make sure you feel like you're good at it (e.g. playing to win and not improve outside of officials) will stop you from developing a healthy level of personal detachment to improve from the ground up, and overthinking the game to be some rigorous kind of maths test when it's theoretically quite simple is symptomatic of this imo. there's a lot to be said about improving your cognitive abilities along intuitive lines so that they become lightning fast and appropriate towards what's actually happening

just my two cents, there are a lot of great books out there discussing the same thing but these two seem to get to the meat of the problem

Being able to adjust your own mentality and dedicate yourself towards achieving a goal is a talent within itself

(Being able to work hard is a talent)

if u got awful ass reactions like me u just gotta think a little harder about whats gonna happen so ur rdy

theres a reason quake dads still win over all these 14 year olds

(besides the fact that no 14 year olds have any interest in playing qc)

habib is the best player in the game rn

map knowledge and pickup rotations give way more of an advantage in quake than mechanical skill/reaction times, so that would explain why quake dads can roll so easily

Everyone ive ever known in this game who came from nowhere and had extremely good 'talent' in terms of dm started playing quake or unreal tournament when they were about 5 so I'm not really sold on the genetics argument tbh.

It's probably pretty possible for anyone to be at the top in TF2 because it's a pretty small game and there's really only 1 hugely dominant team in any given region. U just need to have 6 people who actually have the time to put the work in which would mean salarying them which isn't going to happen lmao.