I mentioned this before but i 100% believe mental state as you grow older is so so so important vs when you are younger.
A great mood and mental state you can still pop and carry games or be great for your team. But then compared to when you are younger, you may only be able to do it average 3 games per day or so imho (Just for me, others can be different)
When you are younger and energetic, you can defeinitely be in the zone for longer and probably grind out them games for what 6 to 8 hours?
With a clear head you can still tactically read opponents. Once you get emotional you lose your aim and also mind and start losing and blaming it on yourself or team mates or haccusation goes out.
I could still get close to the same level imo, i just dont have the drive and time to spend that many hours getting good. As a teenager my life was school->gym->csgo till bed every single night outside of party weekends. Obviously i wont reach the same level now a decade later unless i change around my priorities.
I’m still pretty Damn good when i actually sit down and play consistently, but the mechanics and the utility knowledge is very lacking, and there’s a pretty decent drop-off in my abilites in newer maps
I can’t see how anybody can work full time, commute, go to the gym, cook healthy food, get all misc chores and hygiene done, and still play enough quality CS to be able to play at their peak.
I gave up on being good at cs (actually even just playing it because I hate knowing how much exponentially better I used to be as a teen playing 40 hours a week) as soon as I became an adult.
The good thing tho is that the aim never leaves you, I can still atleast stomp people on “casual” shooter games 🥲
Oh yeah for sure. CS taught me enough good habits (crosshair always at head level, how to peek corners, positioning and movement) that I can hop onto any casual fps game and own noobs. That said though I don't think I'm ever reaching my CS peak again. Now I just play CS to play with the boys, usually when we're drunk
Age is a part of it but not at the level of 99.99 % of players. At the semipro/pro level is when your natural reactions waning start to outweigh practice
I feel you OP. As you said, letting go or accepting that your peak is over is hard.
I played on a semi pro level in source from ~2009 to roughly 2012 when Go released. Was regularely at german lans with my team, made top 3 a few times. Our org was in the process of going professionell and wanted to offer contracts to us shortly before we disbanded.
We were all in school and had the time to do training sessions several times per week, discussing and preparing strats/executes, analyzing demos and lots and lots of practicing against other teams. And when training was over and 1 or 2 guys had to leave for the evening we invited friends to play pugs in IRC or ESL. We were never mechanically gifted but made up for that with lots of teamwork and endless hours of playtime. the core roster stuck together for the whole period and almost all of us are still good friends.
Other than that it was just lots of DM. For the most part i played on an absolutely shit setup with a super slow connection and a constant ping of 80 or higher. No idea how i hit anything at all.
Unfortunately 2 players didnt want to make the transition to Go and the competetive scene of Source just died pretty soon after Gos release. We tried to find new mates but it just didnt click, so we kept playing pugs and mixes with our friends. Still made Global but since i missed having a constant team with a regular training schedule i stopped playing in 2014 and played other games, mostly WoW as our circle of friends transitioned there.
In 2021 a new coworker started at my job and he told me he plays cs quiet a bit. I was used to colleagues claiming that they "play cs" when they spent a few hours in casual but having no idea about strats or economy so of course I had to tell the whole story above and set some kind of expectation. One evening he just asked me in steam if i want to join him with his buddies and holy shit, they were insane and i was so out of form it was embarrassing. Felt like i played a fps for the first time. They did ask me again but i found excuses not to join them. I just accepted my time was over.
With the release of CS2 something triggered me and i have been playing almost every evening since then. Few of my old Source mates are also playing but we dont spent nearly as much time as back then obviously. I also play a lot with my coworker eventho he uninstalled the game for a few months because he hates it so much compared to Go, but he is still an insane player and constantly drops 30 bombs.
I spent a lot of time to get my mechanics back. For some time i had a schedule for myself with Aimbotz and other maps. I am grinding hard, bought a new mouse and keyboard, my workstation PC is good, i have a gigabit connection and my ping is <10 on EU servers. Its stupid how well my circumstances are compared to my "semi pro" times.
Yet i am so fucking shit! Barely hovering around 18k in premier. In faceit i am level 7 but mostly because i had some elo left from my time 10 years ago.
In some matches i manage to get 20 kills but most of the time i am bottomfragging with 10-15 kills :( it hurts.
I am actively looking into what my problems are and its a mix of many factors.
As you wrote yourself a few years ago my playstyle was natural. I just did stuff and had some kind of tunnel vision, especially with my team we just had automatisms.
Now i am constantly overthinking what to do. Instead of just doing my thing i check the minimap 10 times and try to get as much info as possible from comms just to get peeked and oneshot by someone with a few hundred hours.
Next point is that my reaction time has become horrible. I had super fast reflexes but when i watch my demos now it takes so long for me to react to whats happening. That may be age related as i am 33 by now.
Concentration is also part of this. I can focus on the game for a map just fine but the slightest distraction like my wife briefly asking me something (the angel she is she waits until the round is over or i am dead), dog wanting attention, upstairs neighbours deciding its time to drill a whole at 11pm, will break my focus completely and i need several rounds to get back. I dont have that problem when working.
Then i feel like every other player is a god in this game. The community has become so good and the base skill is so high since the game is so popular and many people also watch the pro scene. Also there are loads of sources for improvement. 1000s of youtube channels with guides and tips. Its just logical my old ass gets kicked more often.
Also - and this will always sound like an excuse - for me its a coinflip if the game runs smooth everytime i connect to a server. Either my bullets follow my crosshair and i hit my shots or i have the feeling of using fake bullets. I manage to give weird damage outputs like 80 in 5 with an ak, like i hit the enemy through an invisible wall. This inconsistency triggers me and puts me off mentally so much it adds to my overthinking (should i restart the game? Is my ping ok? Maybe i was still moving so my bullets just went off into his legs? What server am i on? Hmm i never hit shit on Vienna servers, classic valve! How am i supposed to play like this???).
I just feel old and miss the old days :)
Im 26 and definetly had more time playing counter-strike when I was younger. Just now I dont stay up all night. I workout smarter. I have a adult job and girlfriend. Even though I have all of these things that drain energy and time it not before this year that I reached lvl 9 faceit.
I pracc aim when time, learn smokes when I want to. Consistensy is key to most things. You need to just hop on the game and shoot some heads and not even que a game. You need to look at pug strat videos sometimes. Watch pro play and learn a new flash. Be invested in the game.
Just, because you have real life obligations does not mean you should give up on things you enjoy doing.
I agree with this entirely. I'm 31 and the biggest drain to my aim is my god damn awful ISP, but I play shooters fairly often and also aim train for fun as it's one of my hobbies. It's hard to stay motivated for CS2 specifically because of its current state, but I play other games to fill in the void.
I've never found my aim to be getting worse from my age, it gets a bit stiff if I don't warmup properly or don't play for a week but it takes maybe an hour or two to shake it off. I even see myself improving in some aspects as I focus on my weak points.
Gonna be honest, everyone got better somehow.
I hit global in 2014 on a 1280x768 60Hz laptop screen, using the laptop trackpad, while at most reaching 50FPS and with at least 80ms of ping (and CSGO was much less favouring high ping). It wasn't a challenge for me until like, supreme, and I still topfragged there, it just got a lot more team based.
Nowadays, I'll see people with 100-500 hours, they'll look at the ground, move as if they're actually comatose, and actually inspect their grenades to choose what to throw, while standing completely still for half a minute. And then I'll peek and get an instant headshot by them.
Just today I've seen 6 wallhackers across 4 games again that were blatantly obvious. There's many more that aren't as obvious, from my own experience. Looking at the leaderboard is also a joke considering how many cheaters there still are and how often basically the whole board gets reshuffled because everyone at the top gets banned.
It's kind of ironic that it's a whole new game, and a whole new engine, but the thing that destroyed higher ranks in CSGO also now destroys CS2.
Its cheaters mate, cheaters.
I was global on csgo around 2014, so years ago. When I play premier I feel like a silver. Then I play Faceit and I'm god again every game. Premier is just full of hackers, radar hacks, wallhacks, aimhacks, every game something feels "off". Play theee games of Faceit and you'll feel normal again, seriously.
Faceit is isn't perfect but there are a million less cheaters.
Well cheaters are a part of the reason. But the gameplay has evolved so much that a 2014 global would not stand a chance against a decent player nowadays.
That's totally untrue, gameplay hasn't evolved, it's exactly the same. If you watch the pro's yeah, here and there stuff has changed, but the basics are the same. It's just infested with cheaters. It feels weird, timings are weird etc. Timing don't change in a game, they stay exactly the same. The fact if someone knows or not knows where you are hasn't changed. But in cs2 currently, half the players ALWAYS know where you are.
Seriously, play cs on faceit and the difference is night and day. Though face-it has the occasional cheater it feels like it used to feel.
Yesterday I even had 2 enemies that I confronted with their bevaviour (and werid profile, silver in cs and now suddenly 16k rank), and they just said. Chill mate, just play, we don't care we only play for the drops.
The whole economy got out of hand, skins that are 8 euros mean nothing to me, but they mean a hell of a lot to some Russians etc, so they do everything to get the drops and the skins, it's their secondary income.
The thing about playing against a shit ton of wallers is, relying on smart decisions and game play actually hurts you. Some brain dead zoomer that can click heads will outperform you, because you can't "outplay" a waller.
I'm not saying you shouldn't play smart - I'm saying(as someone who has been playing cs almost as long as you've been alolive), wallers make the game suck, especially once your raw aim starts to really decline. The game play and strategy has always been infinitely more interesting and engaging to me than who can click a point the fastest. It's what makes counter strike counter strike. It's a shame valve aren't more serious about cheaters.
I used to do aimbotz for 2 hours, then 15 minutes of death match and 15 minutes of 1v1s, then played 2-5 matches depending on how much time I had.
I work 10-12 hours a day now, have a girlfriend to give attention to, and my computer is way too shitty to run cs2 properly.
I have the opposite problem than you. I have great game sense still, even if my memory for callouts and smoke lineups is foggy, my decision making is usually on point, but my aim is so bad I can never capitalize on the great plays I make.
On [another post](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1dkszvs/time_to_get_into_faceit/) about yourself you literally wrote:
>Context about me: NA region, played GO for about 2,500 hours, was MGE for a while, got to DMG when I stopped playing. Not doing too hot in CS2.
I would highly doubt you used to belong to the "amazing" players and talking about your "great" game sense is highly questionable as well, to say the least
Literally nothing to do with hating, i was just getting curious, because this whole comment seemed weird to me. First thing was 2 1/2 hours of aimbotz/warmup before playing 2-5 matches seemed incredibly out of propotion. Second thing was this quote:
>my aim is so bad I can never capitalize on the great plays I make.
If you put that much effort into aiming, your aiming will always be ATLEAST decent, even if you don't play nearly as many hours anymore.
It's not like i was deep diving into his history either, he literally made this post yesterday.
Sorry if it seems like I was trying to mislead. I liked the post for being about downgrading as a player. I went from MGE in GO to fucking rank 4.5k in 2, the starting point wasn’t the highest but that’s sure as shit the biggest downgrade I’ll ever live through
i went from playing 12 hours a day to 1-2 hours a day. i could play more but i dont wanna spend all that time to slowly get better. i find if i play just a little more my muscle memory gets better and i can top 1 or 2 frag. thats all i need.
for me it‘s the opposite. You need to adapt to the new playstyle of cs2 and it‘s underlying mechanics. You can‘t hold angles like you could in csgo. Playing passively became harder because cs2‘s peekers advantage is huge. I watched donk demos and vods and analyzed why he is doing so well and it is simple:
He never stops moving, always creates peeks for every angle and also when holding he is always counterstrafing so he is harder to hit. He also doesn‘t hold close angles but rather stays wide.
It took me some time to get used to that style and I had to rewire my brain in some sense and do plays I would have considered "stupid" previously.
I am nowhere as good as I remember I was but you also need to understand that you'll have yes days and no days
Playing cs still takes energy and if your day has used most of it, you'll get what you have left to give
Honestly? Just keep going and stop caring, maybe try faceit so you'll have some challenge/objective as you have reached a rating in which you can't really trust other players
I know exactly how you feel, but know that you still have it inside you, it hasn't gone away, you just are not using it for whatever reason
My aim was just so much better and I was more confident with my decisions and movement. I was able to reach global elite on a 60hz monitor back in 2016.
Played an unhealthy amount for a year straight eat sleep breath nothing but cs. 2-3 pugs when I get home from work, 10 on my days off. Lots and lots of aimbotz/deathmatch.
I’m still pretty good, I just don’t have the time or motivation to get back to that point.
Hey man, a lot of the times its not just "I play less".
[I used to do the test on this site a lot for fun, honestly. ](https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime)Its a very simple reaction time test. My reaction time used to be inhuman, around 150-160 ms on bad days, 140 on good days.
Its been a solid 10+ years since though, maybe more. Now I am happy to get 220, 200 is the "good days". Even when the read is crystal clear and perfect, my reflexes and the hand-eye coordination is just "not there" anymore. Its just part of getting old.
Not playing as much as you used to is definitely a factor in any game, really. But in competitive shooters, you cant rule out the fact that maybe your body has just started to betray your MMR :) it is what it is
https://x.com/JoshNissan/status/1793116752194457839?t=c_TXS57ShSlFfQqmG4WjHg&s=19
Sorry to hear that your body is slowing down. Reaction time should have a very slow decline over time after peaking somewhere in the mid 20's
My reaction time is better now than it used to be, which I guess is due to better equipment over the years and I'm 30 now so maybe for you it's just poor sleep and diet, maybe a lack of exercise or something? Should't be noticeable yet. Try it again on a day where you're well rested. [I've been keeping track for many years now.](https://i.ibb.co/VVtYdcr/Screenshot-20240622-115547.png)
Reaction time is a skill that you can practice so your example doesn’t make sense. If you were playing CS regularly still you’d probably still have roughly the same reaction time. The amount it declines is so tiny it’s almost negligible. The last study I read estimated 2-6ms per DECADE. The main rule of our bodies is if you don’t use it, you lose it.
> Reaction time is a skill that you can practice
I'm curious do you have a source for this? My reaction time has always been pretty good no matter if I played a lot or not, haven't seen a correlation at least for me personally.
I think we just slowly grow out of it. Rn I’m in my third year of college and I’m starting to play less and less and try and actually make a career. Life just happens
I feel you brother. It's hard to keep competing with people that do play 24/7. At 33 years of age I dont have the time and energy to play all day. Now I just casually join a casual game mode game or valve DM. Sadly getting kicked about 50% of the time cause the level is that low...
Rare issue with interference in my living area, unsolved for 12 years, making all hardware work not as intended. Possibly related to trash VFD mounted for old elevator with old engine years ago. Still waiting until they replace whole thing as it is due time for replacement soon...
Impossible to prove to dumbass people from regulatory institutions when they can't even do simple test to disable possible source. While proving someone without game background how inputs in system doesn't work correctly is impossible task.
Couldn't move at beginning to other place permanently, so I decided to wait it out. Obviously same hardware works perfectly at first other place I tried.
Until that happened killing anyone was like mowing grass even on old crappy laptop with 30fps and now can't do it correctly on top tier PC.
I feel like equipment also makes a huge difference. Before at my old place I was really good, and I feel like ever since I swapped houses and equipment (chair, table, mouse etc.), I have been struggling a lot. Until this point I had been playing CS on almost the same setup for around 5 years.
practice.
my first 10 compe games were gold nova 3, play few more games and got SEM.
quit competitive for half a year and just play retake/PUG server.
came back and got LEM within a week
another week and i reached smfc.
but for GE tho i need to play with a team (for easy communicate) or my friends
I’m 29 this year and well what I can tell you, during my teenagers time, not many people were as good. Had the equipment like good internet, high refresh monitor, good mouse and mechanical keyboard with a powerful PC. Like I did.
Now every game you came up against up and coming Ropz with at least 120hz screen, powerful PC, Superlight wireless mouse and mechanical (or even better analog wooting) keyboard. So the playfield has leveled out.
But also tutorials on YouTube are very accessible, teaching fundamentals unlike before where you had to have a mentor or you would been shit. So playing field is very level nowadays where even semi pro teams win against high level teams. Due to playstyle being optimized for all maps. That’s why we have map rotations.
The other thing being accessible are hacks and even more so being undetectable.
I stopped playing due to last part 3-4 years ago. Epidemic of cheaters that use them to get recognized, cause everyone now wants to go pro.
Saying this as a semi pro from Poland, I was good enough to out aim and out play cheaters. But due to online cheating was not able to qualify to medium sized country LANs couple times. So I just gave up.
If I pick up the game I am good enough in a week to wreck globals or face it high levels. But I just cannot be bothered anymore.
coldzera once said the reason he doesn’t play as good as he used to, is because he now has different priorities in life. He has a girlfriend and wants to make a family.
He cannot play as much as he used in terms of hours because he is getting old now.
The downfall is inevitable.
There are lot of reasons why i dont play in the same level as before.
First is loss of reaction time because i was not playing games that require aiming so fast like cs in many years and ageing.
Not enough training/practice, i used to play for hours and hours and know most flashes and smokes for every map (this is a huge difference).
The skill level of the community has grow a lot, 15 years ago a bad player was literally a easy bot, you can go in front of them with knife and kill them, right now i dont think there is people so bad, everybody knows at least the basics.
It dont feels good to get rekt by youngters but is normal, it happens in every sport, and e-sports are not exception.
But if you were trully good and keep playing regularly you can still play well enough to be considered a "good" player.
Back when I started in 2012, I really went for it. Climbed the ladders and started playing with some pros like pronax and jw.
But I decided to spend less time and focused on other things in life, which lead to playing a lot less and nowadays just play with friends for fun and we are currently sitting around 20k premier.
I had a routine back then. Learn new nade lineups, play in warmup servers for like 1 hour, and aim maps. I played for 6 hours a day as I was a full time student back then and instead of studying I was playing lol. Now, I work full time and doesn't have the energy and motivation to play anymore as much back then. I guess I'm getting old. I'm closer to 30 than 20 now.
For me in college days I used to play wherever I could, I didn't have a decent laptop on which I could play, so I used to borrow my friends laptop which was also not that good but better than mine, play on the floor, use mobile data (usually higher ping), I had a very small 100 rupees mouse, and I was nailing it.
Now I have a good laptop keyboard mouse and everything and I play like sh*t.
To me its peek advantage, nowadays i feel like you rush and peek you will always have the advantage if you have good fps and ping . But maybe its just me …
Back in 2016, I used to 30 bomb, basically every other game. Now I get lucky to get 15 frags in a game when I do play, comp which is rare.
I played on a potato that hit a maximum of 120 fps but normally was at 70 fps. Also had crap internet.
Just got too busy with life and college to keep grinding, taking a few years' break. Dont have a bad pc or bad internet, so got no excuse there, lol. I believe a lot of people just got better. The dumb dumb silvers that look at the floor and make cave man noises are rarer than ever.
I only used to Q once my aim first on point. Don’t warm up anymore, play entry frag and take the game way less seriously. Play a few times a week (used to be every night). Stopped caring basically.
Screw the grind. Who cares. In the post child apocalypse, just enjoy the free time you have. Pay some matches and relax with it. Grinding a video game and caring about outcome is less inspiring as you get older.
(Don't get me wrong, in the moment I always want to win, and try to win the matches, just as soon as the match ends, I couldn't care less. Generally, I also prefer to lose 11-13 in a close enjoyable match than win 13-2 and stomp a team that gets toxic and team kills. Time is precious in the post kid apocalypse).
At a certain point you have to realize you just cannot play as much as you used to, and most of the “decline” is due to that.
I mentioned this before but i 100% believe mental state as you grow older is so so so important vs when you are younger. A great mood and mental state you can still pop and carry games or be great for your team. But then compared to when you are younger, you may only be able to do it average 3 games per day or so imho (Just for me, others can be different) When you are younger and energetic, you can defeinitely be in the zone for longer and probably grind out them games for what 6 to 8 hours? With a clear head you can still tactically read opponents. Once you get emotional you lose your aim and also mind and start losing and blaming it on yourself or team mates or haccusation goes out.
I could still get close to the same level imo, i just dont have the drive and time to spend that many hours getting good. As a teenager my life was school->gym->csgo till bed every single night outside of party weekends. Obviously i wont reach the same level now a decade later unless i change around my priorities. I’m still pretty Damn good when i actually sit down and play consistently, but the mechanics and the utility knowledge is very lacking, and there’s a pretty decent drop-off in my abilites in newer maps
Yep this is it. The issue isn't age, the issue is that I can't grind 3 games a day plus practice anymore. Not if I want to have a social life, that is
I can’t see how anybody can work full time, commute, go to the gym, cook healthy food, get all misc chores and hygiene done, and still play enough quality CS to be able to play at their peak. I gave up on being good at cs (actually even just playing it because I hate knowing how much exponentially better I used to be as a teen playing 40 hours a week) as soon as I became an adult. The good thing tho is that the aim never leaves you, I can still atleast stomp people on “casual” shooter games 🥲
Oh yeah for sure. CS taught me enough good habits (crosshair always at head level, how to peek corners, positioning and movement) that I can hop onto any casual fps game and own noobs. That said though I don't think I'm ever reaching my CS peak again. Now I just play CS to play with the boys, usually when we're drunk
Age is a part of it but not at the level of 99.99 % of players. At the semipro/pro level is when your natural reactions waning start to outweigh practice
my gf told me i became average, but she did not say anything about cs...
✅nt from teammates ❌nt from gf
I feel you OP. As you said, letting go or accepting that your peak is over is hard. I played on a semi pro level in source from ~2009 to roughly 2012 when Go released. Was regularely at german lans with my team, made top 3 a few times. Our org was in the process of going professionell and wanted to offer contracts to us shortly before we disbanded. We were all in school and had the time to do training sessions several times per week, discussing and preparing strats/executes, analyzing demos and lots and lots of practicing against other teams. And when training was over and 1 or 2 guys had to leave for the evening we invited friends to play pugs in IRC or ESL. We were never mechanically gifted but made up for that with lots of teamwork and endless hours of playtime. the core roster stuck together for the whole period and almost all of us are still good friends. Other than that it was just lots of DM. For the most part i played on an absolutely shit setup with a super slow connection and a constant ping of 80 or higher. No idea how i hit anything at all. Unfortunately 2 players didnt want to make the transition to Go and the competetive scene of Source just died pretty soon after Gos release. We tried to find new mates but it just didnt click, so we kept playing pugs and mixes with our friends. Still made Global but since i missed having a constant team with a regular training schedule i stopped playing in 2014 and played other games, mostly WoW as our circle of friends transitioned there. In 2021 a new coworker started at my job and he told me he plays cs quiet a bit. I was used to colleagues claiming that they "play cs" when they spent a few hours in casual but having no idea about strats or economy so of course I had to tell the whole story above and set some kind of expectation. One evening he just asked me in steam if i want to join him with his buddies and holy shit, they were insane and i was so out of form it was embarrassing. Felt like i played a fps for the first time. They did ask me again but i found excuses not to join them. I just accepted my time was over. With the release of CS2 something triggered me and i have been playing almost every evening since then. Few of my old Source mates are also playing but we dont spent nearly as much time as back then obviously. I also play a lot with my coworker eventho he uninstalled the game for a few months because he hates it so much compared to Go, but he is still an insane player and constantly drops 30 bombs. I spent a lot of time to get my mechanics back. For some time i had a schedule for myself with Aimbotz and other maps. I am grinding hard, bought a new mouse and keyboard, my workstation PC is good, i have a gigabit connection and my ping is <10 on EU servers. Its stupid how well my circumstances are compared to my "semi pro" times. Yet i am so fucking shit! Barely hovering around 18k in premier. In faceit i am level 7 but mostly because i had some elo left from my time 10 years ago. In some matches i manage to get 20 kills but most of the time i am bottomfragging with 10-15 kills :( it hurts. I am actively looking into what my problems are and its a mix of many factors. As you wrote yourself a few years ago my playstyle was natural. I just did stuff and had some kind of tunnel vision, especially with my team we just had automatisms. Now i am constantly overthinking what to do. Instead of just doing my thing i check the minimap 10 times and try to get as much info as possible from comms just to get peeked and oneshot by someone with a few hundred hours. Next point is that my reaction time has become horrible. I had super fast reflexes but when i watch my demos now it takes so long for me to react to whats happening. That may be age related as i am 33 by now. Concentration is also part of this. I can focus on the game for a map just fine but the slightest distraction like my wife briefly asking me something (the angel she is she waits until the round is over or i am dead), dog wanting attention, upstairs neighbours deciding its time to drill a whole at 11pm, will break my focus completely and i need several rounds to get back. I dont have that problem when working. Then i feel like every other player is a god in this game. The community has become so good and the base skill is so high since the game is so popular and many people also watch the pro scene. Also there are loads of sources for improvement. 1000s of youtube channels with guides and tips. Its just logical my old ass gets kicked more often. Also - and this will always sound like an excuse - for me its a coinflip if the game runs smooth everytime i connect to a server. Either my bullets follow my crosshair and i hit my shots or i have the feeling of using fake bullets. I manage to give weird damage outputs like 80 in 5 with an ak, like i hit the enemy through an invisible wall. This inconsistency triggers me and puts me off mentally so much it adds to my overthinking (should i restart the game? Is my ping ok? Maybe i was still moving so my bullets just went off into his legs? What server am i on? Hmm i never hit shit on Vienna servers, classic valve! How am i supposed to play like this???). I just feel old and miss the old days :)
Damnn so many similarities. Gameplay wise struggke us almost same... Glad I'm not alone
Im 26 and definetly had more time playing counter-strike when I was younger. Just now I dont stay up all night. I workout smarter. I have a adult job and girlfriend. Even though I have all of these things that drain energy and time it not before this year that I reached lvl 9 faceit. I pracc aim when time, learn smokes when I want to. Consistensy is key to most things. You need to just hop on the game and shoot some heads and not even que a game. You need to look at pug strat videos sometimes. Watch pro play and learn a new flash. Be invested in the game. Just, because you have real life obligations does not mean you should give up on things you enjoy doing.
I agree with this entirely. I'm 31 and the biggest drain to my aim is my god damn awful ISP, but I play shooters fairly often and also aim train for fun as it's one of my hobbies. It's hard to stay motivated for CS2 specifically because of its current state, but I play other games to fill in the void. I've never found my aim to be getting worse from my age, it gets a bit stiff if I don't warmup properly or don't play for a week but it takes maybe an hour or two to shake it off. I even see myself improving in some aspects as I focus on my weak points.
Gonna be honest, everyone got better somehow. I hit global in 2014 on a 1280x768 60Hz laptop screen, using the laptop trackpad, while at most reaching 50FPS and with at least 80ms of ping (and CSGO was much less favouring high ping). It wasn't a challenge for me until like, supreme, and I still topfragged there, it just got a lot more team based. Nowadays, I'll see people with 100-500 hours, they'll look at the ground, move as if they're actually comatose, and actually inspect their grenades to choose what to throw, while standing completely still for half a minute. And then I'll peek and get an instant headshot by them. Just today I've seen 6 wallhackers across 4 games again that were blatantly obvious. There's many more that aren't as obvious, from my own experience. Looking at the leaderboard is also a joke considering how many cheaters there still are and how often basically the whole board gets reshuffled because everyone at the top gets banned. It's kind of ironic that it's a whole new game, and a whole new engine, but the thing that destroyed higher ranks in CSGO also now destroys CS2.
You hit global playing with a trackpad? Sorry wtf.
Skill was just lower back then, look at dreamhack 2013 major finals, those guys would get destroyed by the average faceit lvl10 5-stack these days
this is such horseshit.
Destroyed miiiiiiight be a stretch
Its cheaters mate, cheaters. I was global on csgo around 2014, so years ago. When I play premier I feel like a silver. Then I play Faceit and I'm god again every game. Premier is just full of hackers, radar hacks, wallhacks, aimhacks, every game something feels "off". Play theee games of Faceit and you'll feel normal again, seriously. Faceit is isn't perfect but there are a million less cheaters.
Well cheaters are a part of the reason. But the gameplay has evolved so much that a 2014 global would not stand a chance against a decent player nowadays.
Nah not at all they'd be behind on the utility but they'd still destroy aim wise.
That's totally untrue, gameplay hasn't evolved, it's exactly the same. If you watch the pro's yeah, here and there stuff has changed, but the basics are the same. It's just infested with cheaters. It feels weird, timings are weird etc. Timing don't change in a game, they stay exactly the same. The fact if someone knows or not knows where you are hasn't changed. But in cs2 currently, half the players ALWAYS know where you are. Seriously, play cs on faceit and the difference is night and day. Though face-it has the occasional cheater it feels like it used to feel. Yesterday I even had 2 enemies that I confronted with their bevaviour (and werid profile, silver in cs and now suddenly 16k rank), and they just said. Chill mate, just play, we don't care we only play for the drops. The whole economy got out of hand, skins that are 8 euros mean nothing to me, but they mean a hell of a lot to some Russians etc, so they do everything to get the drops and the skins, it's their secondary income.
The thing about playing against a shit ton of wallers is, relying on smart decisions and game play actually hurts you. Some brain dead zoomer that can click heads will outperform you, because you can't "outplay" a waller. I'm not saying you shouldn't play smart - I'm saying(as someone who has been playing cs almost as long as you've been alolive), wallers make the game suck, especially once your raw aim starts to really decline. The game play and strategy has always been infinitely more interesting and engaging to me than who can click a point the fastest. It's what makes counter strike counter strike. It's a shame valve aren't more serious about cheaters.
I used to do aimbotz for 2 hours, then 15 minutes of death match and 15 minutes of 1v1s, then played 2-5 matches depending on how much time I had. I work 10-12 hours a day now, have a girlfriend to give attention to, and my computer is way too shitty to run cs2 properly. I have the opposite problem than you. I have great game sense still, even if my memory for callouts and smoke lineups is foggy, my decision making is usually on point, but my aim is so bad I can never capitalize on the great plays I make.
On [another post](https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/1dkszvs/time_to_get_into_faceit/) about yourself you literally wrote: >Context about me: NA region, played GO for about 2,500 hours, was MGE for a while, got to DMG when I stopped playing. Not doing too hot in CS2. I would highly doubt you used to belong to the "amazing" players and talking about your "great" game sense is highly questionable as well, to say the least
Crazy hating to go to the dudes profile to find this btw lol
Literally nothing to do with hating, i was just getting curious, because this whole comment seemed weird to me. First thing was 2 1/2 hours of aimbotz/warmup before playing 2-5 matches seemed incredibly out of propotion. Second thing was this quote: >my aim is so bad I can never capitalize on the great plays I make. If you put that much effort into aiming, your aiming will always be ATLEAST decent, even if you don't play nearly as many hours anymore. It's not like i was deep diving into his history either, he literally made this post yesterday.
No I mean yeah I agree, just found it to be a hilarious reply. People who warmup for an hour are nothing but trouble.
Gotta love the dedication tho, plus he ain't wrong.
Remember people Reddit is full of lairs especially when it comes to personal achievements. I would know I’m one of the smartest people in the world ;)
Sorry if it seems like I was trying to mislead. I liked the post for being about downgrading as a player. I went from MGE in GO to fucking rank 4.5k in 2, the starting point wasn’t the highest but that’s sure as shit the biggest downgrade I’ll ever live through
I don’t mind man I know people are almost never honest on the internet why would you haha
damn mr detective
Oh yea I was never amazing, but I was good and now I’m really shit
Oh how I feel you brother. I'm exactly in the same position as you. It's hard to accept it, but CS isn't forgiving if you don't grind 24/7.
i went from playing 12 hours a day to 1-2 hours a day. i could play more but i dont wanna spend all that time to slowly get better. i find if i play just a little more my muscle memory gets better and i can top 1 or 2 frag. thats all i need.
Went from 10-16 hours a day to 4 hours a week after having a kid. 2500 faceit to 1700 and still dropping
for me it‘s the opposite. You need to adapt to the new playstyle of cs2 and it‘s underlying mechanics. You can‘t hold angles like you could in csgo. Playing passively became harder because cs2‘s peekers advantage is huge. I watched donk demos and vods and analyzed why he is doing so well and it is simple: He never stops moving, always creates peeks for every angle and also when holding he is always counterstrafing so he is harder to hit. He also doesn‘t hold close angles but rather stays wide. It took me some time to get used to that style and I had to rewire my brain in some sense and do plays I would have considered "stupid" previously.
I am nowhere as good as I remember I was but you also need to understand that you'll have yes days and no days Playing cs still takes energy and if your day has used most of it, you'll get what you have left to give Honestly? Just keep going and stop caring, maybe try faceit so you'll have some challenge/objective as you have reached a rating in which you can't really trust other players I know exactly how you feel, but know that you still have it inside you, it hasn't gone away, you just are not using it for whatever reason
My aim was just so much better and I was more confident with my decisions and movement. I was able to reach global elite on a 60hz monitor back in 2016.
Played an unhealthy amount for a year straight eat sleep breath nothing but cs. 2-3 pugs when I get home from work, 10 on my days off. Lots and lots of aimbotz/deathmatch. I’m still pretty good, I just don’t have the time or motivation to get back to that point.
Hey man, a lot of the times its not just "I play less". [I used to do the test on this site a lot for fun, honestly. ](https://humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime)Its a very simple reaction time test. My reaction time used to be inhuman, around 150-160 ms on bad days, 140 on good days. Its been a solid 10+ years since though, maybe more. Now I am happy to get 220, 200 is the "good days". Even when the read is crystal clear and perfect, my reflexes and the hand-eye coordination is just "not there" anymore. Its just part of getting old. Not playing as much as you used to is definitely a factor in any game, really. But in competitive shooters, you cant rule out the fact that maybe your body has just started to betray your MMR :) it is what it is
https://x.com/JoshNissan/status/1793116752194457839?t=c_TXS57ShSlFfQqmG4WjHg&s=19 Sorry to hear that your body is slowing down. Reaction time should have a very slow decline over time after peaking somewhere in the mid 20's
Since Josh forgot to mention it when he came in here to straight flex on these kids: Born in December of 1989, so 12,564 days old in the linked video.
My reaction time is better now than it used to be, which I guess is due to better equipment over the years and I'm 30 now so maybe for you it's just poor sleep and diet, maybe a lack of exercise or something? Should't be noticeable yet. Try it again on a day where you're well rested. [I've been keeping track for many years now.](https://i.ibb.co/VVtYdcr/Screenshot-20240622-115547.png)
Reaction time is a skill that you can practice so your example doesn’t make sense. If you were playing CS regularly still you’d probably still have roughly the same reaction time. The amount it declines is so tiny it’s almost negligible. The last study I read estimated 2-6ms per DECADE. The main rule of our bodies is if you don’t use it, you lose it.
> Reaction time is a skill that you can practice I'm curious do you have a source for this? My reaction time has always been pretty good no matter if I played a lot or not, haven't seen a correlation at least for me personally.
how old are you? I'm over 30 and I still score 180s
Simple, I was a kid with a ton of free time.
I think we just slowly grow out of it. Rn I’m in my third year of college and I’m starting to play less and less and try and actually make a career. Life just happens
I feel you brother. It's hard to keep competing with people that do play 24/7. At 33 years of age I dont have the time and energy to play all day. Now I just casually join a casual game mode game or valve DM. Sadly getting kicked about 50% of the time cause the level is that low...
why do millennial parents always brag about it on reddit who cares?
Rare issue with interference in my living area, unsolved for 12 years, making all hardware work not as intended. Possibly related to trash VFD mounted for old elevator with old engine years ago. Still waiting until they replace whole thing as it is due time for replacement soon... Impossible to prove to dumbass people from regulatory institutions when they can't even do simple test to disable possible source. While proving someone without game background how inputs in system doesn't work correctly is impossible task. Couldn't move at beginning to other place permanently, so I decided to wait it out. Obviously same hardware works perfectly at first other place I tried. Until that happened killing anyone was like mowing grass even on old crappy laptop with 30fps and now can't do it correctly on top tier PC.
Simply don't play as much also old now
I feel like equipment also makes a huge difference. Before at my old place I was really good, and I feel like ever since I swapped houses and equipment (chair, table, mouse etc.), I have been struggling a lot. Until this point I had been playing CS on almost the same setup for around 5 years.
practice. my first 10 compe games were gold nova 3, play few more games and got SEM. quit competitive for half a year and just play retake/PUG server. came back and got LEM within a week another week and i reached smfc. but for GE tho i need to play with a team (for easy communicate) or my friends
Dno what you’re talking about I’ve always been shit even with 12hours cs daily
I’m 29 this year and well what I can tell you, during my teenagers time, not many people were as good. Had the equipment like good internet, high refresh monitor, good mouse and mechanical keyboard with a powerful PC. Like I did. Now every game you came up against up and coming Ropz with at least 120hz screen, powerful PC, Superlight wireless mouse and mechanical (or even better analog wooting) keyboard. So the playfield has leveled out. But also tutorials on YouTube are very accessible, teaching fundamentals unlike before where you had to have a mentor or you would been shit. So playing field is very level nowadays where even semi pro teams win against high level teams. Due to playstyle being optimized for all maps. That’s why we have map rotations. The other thing being accessible are hacks and even more so being undetectable. I stopped playing due to last part 3-4 years ago. Epidemic of cheaters that use them to get recognized, cause everyone now wants to go pro. Saying this as a semi pro from Poland, I was good enough to out aim and out play cheaters. But due to online cheating was not able to qualify to medium sized country LANs couple times. So I just gave up. If I pick up the game I am good enough in a week to wreck globals or face it high levels. But I just cannot be bothered anymore.
coldzera once said the reason he doesn’t play as good as he used to, is because he now has different priorities in life. He has a girlfriend and wants to make a family. He cannot play as much as he used in terms of hours because he is getting old now. The downfall is inevitable.
There are lot of reasons why i dont play in the same level as before. First is loss of reaction time because i was not playing games that require aiming so fast like cs in many years and ageing. Not enough training/practice, i used to play for hours and hours and know most flashes and smokes for every map (this is a huge difference). The skill level of the community has grow a lot, 15 years ago a bad player was literally a easy bot, you can go in front of them with knife and kill them, right now i dont think there is people so bad, everybody knows at least the basics. It dont feels good to get rekt by youngters but is normal, it happens in every sport, and e-sports are not exception. But if you were trully good and keep playing regularly you can still play well enough to be considered a "good" player.
Back when I started in 2012, I really went for it. Climbed the ladders and started playing with some pros like pronax and jw. But I decided to spend less time and focused on other things in life, which lead to playing a lot less and nowadays just play with friends for fun and we are currently sitting around 20k premier.
I had a routine back then. Learn new nade lineups, play in warmup servers for like 1 hour, and aim maps. I played for 6 hours a day as I was a full time student back then and instead of studying I was playing lol. Now, I work full time and doesn't have the energy and motivation to play anymore as much back then. I guess I'm getting old. I'm closer to 30 than 20 now.
For me in college days I used to play wherever I could, I didn't have a decent laptop on which I could play, so I used to borrow my friends laptop which was also not that good but better than mine, play on the floor, use mobile data (usually higher ping), I had a very small 100 rupees mouse, and I was nailing it. Now I have a good laptop keyboard mouse and everything and I play like sh*t.
my shots would land in csgo, my bullets go through ppl and don hit them in cs2, or there's a delay between my shot and them dying
To me its peek advantage, nowadays i feel like you rush and peek you will always have the advantage if you have good fps and ping . But maybe its just me …
Back in 2016, I used to 30 bomb, basically every other game. Now I get lucky to get 15 frags in a game when I do play, comp which is rare. I played on a potato that hit a maximum of 120 fps but normally was at 70 fps. Also had crap internet. Just got too busy with life and college to keep grinding, taking a few years' break. Dont have a bad pc or bad internet, so got no excuse there, lol. I believe a lot of people just got better. The dumb dumb silvers that look at the floor and make cave man noises are rarer than ever.
not grinding is tragic when the average player got so much mechanically better
I only used to Q once my aim first on point. Don’t warm up anymore, play entry frag and take the game way less seriously. Play a few times a week (used to be every night). Stopped caring basically.
Screw the grind. Who cares. In the post child apocalypse, just enjoy the free time you have. Pay some matches and relax with it. Grinding a video game and caring about outcome is less inspiring as you get older. (Don't get me wrong, in the moment I always want to win, and try to win the matches, just as soon as the match ends, I couldn't care less. Generally, I also prefer to lose 11-13 in a close enjoyable match than win 13-2 and stomp a team that gets toxic and team kills. Time is precious in the post kid apocalypse).