I've been playing online FPSs for years now, but I've always been absolutely terrible at them. I can maybe get a 1:1 K:D ratio on a good round, but my average is probably closer to 1:3 or 1:4. This has been pretty consistent in every FPS I've played over the years. I'm not sure what I'm really doing wrong. I use cover. I try to flank with my teammates. I throw grenades to flush enemies out of cover. But somehow it always seems like they're faster, more accurate, better able to get the drop on me.
Is it just because I only play them for a few weeks or months before moving on? Is this something that gets better with practice, or do I have some kind of undiagnosed motor deficiency?
Yes. Sweats are called sweats for a reason. They’re may not be playing 24/7, but they’re playing enough to make it their second life. Also, hacks and Smurf scrounge are lucrative businesses. The latter because high skilled players get upset when they get matched with others with the same or higher skill, so they rather go stomp on some noob instead of getting good
Oh god yeah, this. You're not going to get good until you've got like 500+ hours in a game.
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It happens a lot that a game pops up that's similar to a previous game, and then you have a section of the playerbase that came from the other game and they'll be more skilled than new players. For example, Splitgate is very similar to Halo. I played it a ton in beta and was surprised at how good some players were when the game had only been available for a couple of weeks, but the answer to how they were so good is that they had played hundreds of hours of a very similar game. I think that the amount of time it takes to get good varies from person to person but it will always be pretty high, it's just that some people get a head start from their previous experience.