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Have my fellow Dakkas of a certain age (40+) changed gaming habits as they've got older

Was discussing this with a couple of my gamer geek chums and whilst we can afford and have bought shiny whiz-bang PC's or latest consoles we've generally ended up playing rather undemanding (spec-wise) slower game like the various Civs, turn(ish) based strategy games or older style RPGs, rather than speedy super pretty shooters etc

Nope. Play the same sorts of things I always have... Mostly RPGs and turn based strategy. (My first PC games were Wizardry and Ultima IV, and aside from an Atari when I was younger, never caught console bug)

But then I've never seen 'super pretty' shooters. Just boring ones with repetitive, uninteresting gameplay.

I’ve noticed that I can’t do as well in COD-style games. Any shooters I play are slower paced, like Mechwarrior Online or Holdfast. I’ve always enjoyed RPGs and TBS, and play those almost exclusively these days.

Agreed! I have that conversation with my students all the time. It might be a matter of practice as well- young me pumped far more hours into video games than old me does.

On the other hand, I find those longer, slower Mechwarrior Online or World of Warship games so much more satisfying when you get a really good game. Which sounds contradictory, but I don't play as many rounds per day as I used to.

I'm the same way.. if I play COD I get creamed by kids that have grown up with game pads and thumbs that have mutated enough to allow them to fire with pixel-point accuracy from clear across the zone. I like shooters if I can play just single player games or Co-op horde mode kinds of games. My favorite are really long adventure games like the witcher, they take a long time to finish so I feel like I get my money's worth and in most cases I can sit back on the sofa and just play, rather than sitting hunched over a desk at home all night after sitting hunched over a desk all day at work.

 Necros wrote:
I'm the same way.. if I play COD I get creamed by kids that have grown up with game pads and thumbs that have mutated enough to allow them to fire with pixel-point accuracy from clear across the zone. I like shooters if I can play just single player games or Co-op horde mode kinds of games. My favorite are really long adventure games like the witcher, they take a long time to finish so I feel like I get my money's worth and in most cases I can sit back on the sofa and just play, rather than sitting hunched over a desk at home all night after sitting hunched over a desk all day at work.

yep this is pretty much where I am, at the dawn of affordable broadband in the early 00's I could usually acquit myself reasonably well at Quake, Unreal or the like, these days not last is a good day, last shooting game I was passable at was Orcs Must Die and even that was more pattern learning and defensive placement rather than twitch prowess, and good against remotes is far easier than the living

Eh, while reflexes do tend to decline with age, people tend to compensate fairly well in other ways - a middle-aged FPS player might not be able to hit a pixel at 300 yards in a fraction of a second, but they tend to have better map awareness and superior tactics - if you know that people most often come out of that door at a given point in a match, or typically go for that weapon/pickup/vehicle first, you can set yourself up to murder the enemies before they know you're there.

I think Gitzbitah has the right idea - the main difference is the level of commitment to "git gud". When I played Quake 3 Arena, Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, BF 1942 and Vietnam etc, I'd play them for hours at a stretch, usually several days a week. Hell over the school holidays I must have been putting in hundreds of hours a month. I'm still in my early 30's, but if I pick up a random twitch-based FPS game these days I usually absolutely suck at it because I'm almost never prepared to put in that amount of time, I just want to play the campaign or do a few rounds of multiplayer and have a bit of fun.

TLDR being if you're willing to put in the same slightly ridiculous amount of time as the younglings, you can probably still do really well just by relying on skills others than twitch shooting, but most of us aren't bothered to.

There is that, but the older games you mention you tended to 'git gud' by you knowing getting good, the newer shooters tend to have levelling systems or perks where you have grind yourself 'better' whilst constantly getting kicked in the teeth to get anywhere near equal footing, something I'm don't really have much of an urge to do

I mostly just find I have shifted away from multiplayer.

I used to pretty competitively play Counter Strike Source back when I was a student, plus dump a lot of time into other online shooters. Just 5 years without a gaming PC and I'd entirely lost my reflexes and muscle memory. I also just don't have the time anymore that I had then. I've tried a few times to get back into Counter Strike and I never get a single kill. Single and living at home as a student meant I had copious free time to game. Living with my fiancee and working full time? Not so much.

So while I still play fast paced shooters, I limit myself to single player campaigns. The AI isn't nearly as good as a person. What I do play online is slower paced, generally Battlefield type games. But I still don't get the time to put into them, so games with long progression systems I just bypass altogether.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Have my fellow Dakkas of a certain age (40+) changed gaming habits as they've got older

I'm currently playing Diablo-ish Eternium and PUBG Mobile on Bluestacks, where I used to play a lot of Starcraft-like games and MMORPGs. I like mobile-based gaming, where I can jump in and not be overwhelmed by the game.

 -Loki- wrote:
I mostly just find I have shifted away from multiplayer.

I used to pretty competitively play Counter Strike Source back when I was a student, plus dump a lot of time into other online shooters. Just 5 years without a gaming PC and I'd entirely lost my reflexes and muscle memory. I also just don't have the time anymore that I had then. I've tried a few times to get back into Counter Strike and I never get a single kill. Single and living at home as a student meant I had copious free time to game. Living with my fiancee and working full time? Not so much.

I think that's probable the fairest assessment. Think it's more of a thing as you get older and other responsibilities enter the picture, you don't have the hours to spend pumping into games that give you that edge, rather than it being to do with you losing your 'twitch' response. My friends and I reached what was probably a ridiculous level with the N64 games Goldeneye and Mario Kart, we must have spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours in the multiplayer mode to the point where we were blind-firing and shooting people through closed doors. These days when I boot up the SNES mini I can't get off the first level in Ghosts'n'Goblins..

The kind of games that I like, and have always liked, have been RTS style games. Even back when that barely even existed: I loved Herzog Zwei, for example. So my eventual degradation hasn't really hindered me, I'm still OK at micromanagement.

Games requiring any sort of reflexes I struggle with now, though. I tried playing Super Mario Brothers 3 again when I got a Super NES classic? That very first Goomba killed me reliably. Mega-Man is another one I can't go back to, nor Bionic Commando.

I've been moving to strategy games a lot now as well - especially turn based. I was never good at RTS games that need high click rates or certain build orders to get optimal games. Even less so now.

Turn based though? I've been enjoying Xcom 2 and Battletech lately, with Pheonix Point coming up. Turn based you can play at your own pace, weight up options without being pushed. Stellaris is slow paced enough that I can play it at my own pace as well.

Though I'll buy the gak out of a sequel to Doom 2016.

I now use slow or pause for Total War battles. A few years ago that would have been cheating.

I do restrict my use of pause though. I always used pause for the beginning of battles to give initial move and target orders to my units, which I never considered to be cheating. Now sometimes I use pause during a battle to catch up.

Now, I'm not yet in my 40s, however, this past weekend my neighbor and I had an experience which I think may throw a wrench into things.

See, my neighbor got a 500-in-1 NES thing, and hooked it up to his TV, and we were playing some of the classics that we grew up on. . . They kicked our asses. In some ways, the classic games are far more difficult to learn, and far more punishing when you aren't good. We were playing old stuff like 1942, MK 4, Ninja Turtles, Double Dragon, etc. and while both of us are experienced gamers, and have modern systems, neither one of us made it far in any of the games we played

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Now, I'm not yet in my 40s, however, this past weekend my neighbor and I had an experience which I think may throw a wrench into things.

See, my neighbor got a 500-in-1 NES thing, and hooked it up to his TV, and we were playing some of the classics that we grew up on. . . They kicked our asses. In some ways, the classic games are far more difficult to learn, and far more punishing when you aren't good. We were playing old stuff like 1942, MK 4, Ninja Turtles, Double Dragon, etc. and while both of us are experienced gamers, and have modern systems, neither one of us made it far in any of the games we played

Well while it may or may not matter, certain all in ones, pie stations and the like dont exactly match up to the OG consoles. latency and what not. if you are not used to it compared to the original game it can throw you off.

A lot of those old games are muscle memory, where you need programmed reactions and specific timing from lots of repetition, or you fail

 Desubot wrote:

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
Now, I'm not yet in my 40s, however, this past weekend my neighbor and I had an experience which I think may throw a wrench into things.

See, my neighbor got a 500-in-1 NES thing, and hooked it up to his TV, and we were playing some of the classics that we grew up on. . . They kicked our asses. In some ways, the classic games are far more difficult to learn, and far more punishing when you aren't good. We were playing old stuff like 1942, MK 4, Ninja Turtles, Double Dragon, etc. and while both of us are experienced gamers, and have modern systems, neither one of us made it far in any of the games we played

Well while it may or may not matter, certain all in ones, pie stations and the like dont exactly match up to the OG consoles. latency and what not. if you are not used to it compared to the original game it can throw you off.

Very true.

Although have been beating my head against a wall with the official SNES-mini version of Castlevania IV, and from memory that wasn't even considered one of the hardest ones in the series. Grrrrrr!

I did start up Ghouls N Ghosts, spent 30 minutes trying to complete the first level, then had to go and sit in a darkened room..

I'm not quite up to the 40+ age band, but I'm rapidly approaching it. I've had a noticeable reduction in reflexes, such that I can't really do the FPS thing like I used to be able to. I also suck at most of the old console games I used to play, but I also don't have the time or enthusiasm to contribute toward 'getting gud' anymore.

And then there's times when I'll just be on fire and carry the team even in something I don't normally do so well in, like Siege. It's some x factor present I haven't quite been able to nail down. I think there's some magic combination of diet/exercise/alcohol that gives me the good days. I should try to work that out sometime.

I'm only 30, but my reflexes in games are dramatically faster than where they were at 10 years ago...

So...is this like my prime and it all goes down from here?

 trexmeyer wrote:
I'm only 30, but my reflexes in games are dramatically faster than where they were at 10 years ago...

So...is this like my prime and it all goes down from here?

It differs from person to person.

Until I was in my early twenties I was playing Counter Strike, Day of Defeat, Quake 3, Unreal Tiurnament and other fast paced shooters. It was my genre of choice.

Then after a series of changing circumstances I found myself as a console gamer. I went from fast paced multiplayer first person shooters with mouse and keyboard to single player action games with a game pad.

Years later when I got a gaming PC I found my mouse and keyboard coordination and reflexes were gone. I also don’t have the time in my life to dedicate to building them back up. I enjoyed the hell out of Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein TNO single player but I’m not about to climb in to a multiplayer match. The first game I bought for my new PC was Overaatch and I just can’t get into a groove.

If you never stopped playing your games of choice it’s going to be a slower transition.

 trexmeyer wrote:
I'm only 30, but my reflexes in games are dramatically faster than where they were at 10 years ago...

So...is this like my prime and it all goes down from here?

No, it is bs. Your reflexes are based on how much you play/how often. The breakdown in reflexes over time is so little it is almost negligible to anybody who plays a game regularly/practices anything. What you see in this thread are people who are kind of confirming their own bias on the issues. "I am getting older so my reflexes are dropping!" No, you are losing muscle memory because you do not play as much as you used to.

I am also 30, 31 next month. The more time I put in to a game, the better I am at it. I have still yet to hit my peak in gaming as I am generally always climbing ladders. (Overwatch/League/Battlerite)

Pro LoL players used to talk about this all the time. About how they are 18 but plan to retire when they are 21/22 because the younger kids will be outshining them. The current best players in the world are all about mid 20s now and show no sign of stopping. It is all about practice and time. It is very rare to see an 18 year old in the scene come out and just show up long time vets. Very rare.

This whole theory is currently being debunked by just about every pro e-sports league in the world right now.

Fair point, but I still suspect there's some breakpoint regarding age/reflexs vs experience, like the E-sports example there is negligible difference between 18 and 22 but between 22 and 45 the gap is maybe wide enough to make a performance difference

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Fair point, but I still suspect there's some breakpoint regarding age/reflexs vs experience, like the E-sports example there is negligible difference between 18 and 22 but between 22 and 45 the gap is maybe wide enough to make a performance difference

I think the answers more complex. I would say that reflexes fade, but those that continue to game regularly end up with so much experience that it starts to take the place of reflexes. Just like a player who knows the map and spawn points can destroy someone inexperienced, that sort of intuitive knowledge of a game is easier to build up with the library of instinctual knowledge an old gamer acquires. That peculiar in the zone feeling hits more and more frequently in the (admittedly few) games I dedicate myself to these days. It's not that I'm outclicking my opponents, it's just that I have games where all the timing of powers, reloads, etc, just click as naturally as breathing.

and that's not because I'm faster than I was- I'm not. It's just that you've seen it all before, and can start acting before there's anything most people would realize they should react to. That gives the appearance of better reflexes. It's like that old saying, "Fear an old man in a profession where men usually die young."

My tastes have certainly changed as I got older. I used to play damn near anything and could find enjoyment in it. Lately though I just roll my eyes at most games I see. I tend to go for games that I can take a slower pace at and kindda go how I feel like going. Think like Fallout or Legend of Zelda. I still really like a good challenge though so even Fallout/Skyrim has been annoying me lately as its just WAAAY to easy, and the way the difficulty increases by just taking more bullets/arrows just annoys me further.


Ive become very picky as I age lol

[quote=KingCracker 750710 10016450 e54fd7b5a2c98960210e541243b2d60e.png Ive become very picky as I age lol

People look at these things all wrong. When most people talk about reflexes, they are thinking about how fast you can aim and shot. How quick you can dodge. They also forget that experience changes their reflexes. I always reload a weapon after a fight in a game. It has become second nature to me, it has become a reflex. I reflexively check my mini map. Sort my inventory. Sell off trash. All of these things are reflexes we all do instinctively by now.

Do now sell yourselves short old men. Your reflexes are not slow because of your age, your reflexes are slow because you are slacking. Grab them bootstraps!

I did give Overwatch a go and didn't acquit myself too badly but the felt the role/objectives meant a massive variable between decent matches and cat herding shambles wasn't my cuppa (WoW PvP kind of stomped that out of me)

I am 40 this year and while yes my reactions are maybe a little slower that seems to have been balanced out by experience.

I mean in a lot of cases I have been playing FPS games for longer than many of my opponents have been born.

I can spot a perfect camping spot in a few minutes and find the op weapons/combos faster than most. I played the original R6 and Ghost Recon games where the AI made sky net look cute an cuddly and is still more of a challenge than modern rl players.

Hell I still get kicked from servers for hacking because I am destroying the youth of today.