[bullen]

The elephant in the room here is that you can pay to win in any game by buying a monitor with higher reftesh rate and use a larger GPU that uses more electricity to have 2x more time to react.

Fortunately for us humans that seems to stop at 120Hz because most games can't even hold that at a steady rate with a 3090.

Now whether a 300+W gaming device is interesting in the long run will be answered this year by your electricity bill!

[mat0]

By that logic, every sports player that uses high quality gear is "paying to win". Is Nadal winning solely based on the quality of his racquet? Of course not. Would he play with a basic or low quality one? Absolutely not. What's wrong using the best gear possible?

I don't know where'd you get this notion that it stops at 120hz. It's been proven again and again that even with monitors with low refresh rate you still get a better experience by having more fps available. Better so when you have both the frames and the refresh rate in your monitor.

[bullen]

Nope, because they play at even odds, because the computers are all 120Hz.

[taeric]

To be fair, it is a big factor in competitive cycling. Such that, just getting good is not enough. You have to get good and but the best equipment.

Not that big of a deal when you are all getting together in real life. You can see if you were at a disadvantage due to equipment. Online, you don't get to see.

[jaywalk]

There's nothing unique about competitive cycling in this regard. Take two tennis players of comparable skill and give one the best racket and the other a $20 one from Walmart. Or in football, do the same with two receivers and give one the latest Nike Vapor Jet gloves and have the other use no gloves. Or golf with clubs. I could go on and on.

Equipment quality will always have an impact in sports.

[taeric]

To an extent, I can't but agree. The number of components in cycling is staggering, though. And I have seen far more people effectively buying a few seconds time in cycling than I have elsewhere.

And, at high end competitive, I don't really see a problem. Even low level, I don't see a huge problem. But it does exist. Is why I offered this as a "being fair."

[formerly_proven]

Lots of multiplayer games intentionally implement low-vis, low-contrast environments (mud-colored players in mud-colored environments) which is why things like Digital Vibrance and "Black Enhancers" are so popular. Arguably the competitive advantage of those, tuned to the game [1], exceeds everything else once you've done the basics (120+ Hz, normal-acting hardware).

[1] In a particular game I discovered that abusing the R/G/B controls into giving you something that looks almost like one of those colorblind simulations in normal conditions would give you a massive advantage to the point of most players calling hacks.

[1_player]

> The elephant in the room here is that you can pay to win in any game by buying a monitor with higher reftesh rate and use a larger GPU that uses more electricity to have 2x more time to react.

I'll be honest, it sounds like you have no idea how competitive gaming works, or any sport at all. Your comments sounds exactly like thinking one can be better at football by buying more expensive boots.

[Melatonic]

I agree - this is not true at all. A really good competitive gamer is going to destroy even a very very good casual gamer even if you gave them a crap rig running at like 30FPS

Definitely there are real advantages to running higher framerates but its all diminishing returns. If your rig is fast enough to maintain CONSISTENT frames that is probably more important than going for the absolute highest - there is a reason many set a minimum / maximum FPS target. Consistency is important.

Most of the really competitive games arent really all that hard to run either these days - even an older but still decent gaming computer can do great. Considering how cheap it is now to build something that will run most games well vs how it used to be in the past I think the pay to play aspect has actually REDUCED quite a bit. You can buy a quality mouse these days for 20-30$ that would blow away what we had 10 years ago and that mouse probably would last you for as long as you want.

Reminds me of an old racquetball tournament where they would put everyone in the same level (as in the top players intermingled with the bottom) but depending on the players skill they were given a type of massive handicap. If you were in the very top tier racquetball level they gave you a racquet that had been strung in a very clever circular way where there was a literal HOLE right in the middle of the racquet where the sweet spot was!

Spoiler: Those guys still often won

[taeric]

I think the open post was more lamenting that casual play will be annoying by folks that pay to win. And... That feels likely?

Not really new, mind. Lan parties that had that one person that spent way more than everyone else was a thing. Did they automatically win? No. But they punched over their league in the party.

[lbotos]

lol -- Most CS:GO top level players are playing on 240hz, and getting close to 500+ fps.

Also, higher refresh will give skilled players an advantage, but it's def not pay to win.

[bullen]

CS:GO is a game with a tiny map just like Valorant.

[babypuncher]

Higher refresh rates give a slight competitive advantage when all other things are equal, but it's definitely not "pay to win".