A post in another thread summed up a thought I'd had a lot lately.
We're all better. Newbs have it REALLY hard. The shrinking playerbase has brought advanced tactics and phenominal twitch-play/aim/reflex play down into the vanguard/mainstream of Hawken players.
MMR means little anymore, as all players get into the few servers playing. Smurfing/Alts has made MMR much steeper in value: if you get over 1600, you're playing 3+ year vets who know all the tricks. If you are 1400, you're playing 1250 newbs or you're playihng someone who "would have been 2200 in '2014 MMR points'".
We, nearly all, even Kittens, who I watched play Predator and think is *much* improved from where I would guess he thinks he still is (what a sentence this is), are really setting a high bar. Everyone I've seen lately has dodge timing and body-block/separation timing. Everyone has secondary timing. Everyone uses radar and predicts. Everyone knows the maps and how to use verticality/3-dimensions. Everyone has reasonable aim and learned to put ordnance where people *will be*.
Yes, there are still standouts. There always will be. For the most part, I sense we've lifted the meta, and the median (though MMR as a number is compressing). And, our 'relative position' to players we recognize may or may not have changed, but a good deal of us would have handed the elite of two years ago their asses (at first contact. Then players would learn and adapt...).
In 1898, the head of the US Patent Office claimed that all inventions which could be made had been made. Are we near the skill ceiling as a playerbase?
How much higher does it go in a small pool?
What happens if/when we do get a new platform/influx of new users (if that ever comes to pass)? I think it would need to be pretty massive, or we'd continue to face exactly what we see now: about 1 new player in 50 making it over the skill hump (such as Kittens).
Kittens, I hope you don't mind me using you as a recent/relevant example.
I'm positive others have the same thought, and I'm pretty certain some of you will offer other opinions. What are your thoughts?
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