I've never played any one game long enough to become a top-tier player in it, but I've run into some players in the various games I've played who were so far-and-away better than the competition that I had to wonder what separates them from other experienced, pretty good players.
Since I don't have an example of me being amazing at any game, I'll give an example of a friend being amazing at one, at least in my adolescent (at the time) eyes...
About ten years ago, I attended summer camp with a couple of my friends who were Counterstrike: Source fans. Mostly we played the zombie mode, which doesn't exactly require much skill, but we had all played enough of the competitive modes to be half-decent at the game. We weren't good, but we weren't bad either.
And then, at camp, we met Brandon. Brandon was a kid from Taiwan whose parents sent him to camp in the US, and he too was a CS:S player. However, Brandon was also part of a gaming clan and played quite a lot. My friends and I figured that probably meant he was moderately better than us. We invited him to our evening LAN parties (they shut down access to the network but one of my friends "figured out" how to make LAN work).
Turns out it wasn't even close. Brandon wiped the floor with us. It got to the point where he would use the HK USP (the starting handgun) and wipe us out as we struggled in vain with our M4s and our AK47s. Since we outnumbered him, we at least had the good grace not to camp, use the AWP, or other cheap tricks, but even so, it was extremely embarrassing to run into the guy and get immediately wiped out by a pistol headshot. [footnote]It's worth noting that Counterstrike wasn't as twitchy as modern shooters. It seems that nowadays if you get the drop on someone in CoD, you can easily bring them down within a second. In CS, weapons didn't have ironsights aiming, and they would rapidly lose accuracy even after a short burst. Plus it took several body hits for a kill, and even grenades only did 60% damage on a direct hit. So overall firefights tended to last longer. Other than the AWP (an overpowered sniper rifle), your only insta-kill option was a headshot. Most fights resulted in us getting in a body shot or two before being dispatched with a headshot[/footnote] Eventually we got decent enough that when pitted 3 v 1, he would at least have to use an MP5 to beat us most of the time.
At the time we were certain that he was using an aimbot. He was offended when we mentioned it, and tried to give us advice like "stop aiming center mass and just go for headshots," "listen to the enemy footsteps," and "watch for shadows behind corners" but we were never sure if he was being serious or making fun of us. Watch for shadows, really? My taste in gaming has since moved towards RPGs so I never got good enough at FPSs to determine if he was telling the truth.
update: thanks to DoPo and Loonyyy for clearing up that people did in fact use shadows and directional sound in CS:S. Impressive stuff!
Since I don't have an example of me being amazing at any game, I'll give an example of a friend being amazing at one, at least in my adolescent (at the time) eyes...
About ten years ago, I attended summer camp with a couple of my friends who were Counterstrike: Source fans. Mostly we played the zombie mode, which doesn't exactly require much skill, but we had all played enough of the competitive modes to be half-decent at the game. We weren't good, but we weren't bad either.
And then, at camp, we met Brandon. Brandon was a kid from Taiwan whose parents sent him to camp in the US, and he too was a CS:S player. However, Brandon was also part of a gaming clan and played quite a lot. My friends and I figured that probably meant he was moderately better than us. We invited him to our evening LAN parties (they shut down access to the network but one of my friends "figured out" how to make LAN work).
Turns out it wasn't even close. Brandon wiped the floor with us. It got to the point where he would use the HK USP (the starting handgun) and wipe us out as we struggled in vain with our M4s and our AK47s. Since we outnumbered him, we at least had the good grace not to camp, use the AWP, or other cheap tricks, but even so, it was extremely embarrassing to run into the guy and get immediately wiped out by a pistol headshot. [footnote]It's worth noting that Counterstrike wasn't as twitchy as modern shooters. It seems that nowadays if you get the drop on someone in CoD, you can easily bring them down within a second. In CS, weapons didn't have ironsights aiming, and they would rapidly lose accuracy even after a short burst. Plus it took several body hits for a kill, and even grenades only did 60% damage on a direct hit. So overall firefights tended to last longer. Other than the AWP (an overpowered sniper rifle), your only insta-kill option was a headshot. Most fights resulted in us getting in a body shot or two before being dispatched with a headshot[/footnote] Eventually we got decent enough that when pitted 3 v 1, he would at least have to use an MP5 to beat us most of the time.
At the time we were certain that he was using an aimbot. He was offended when we mentioned it, and tried to give us advice like "stop aiming center mass and just go for headshots," "listen to the enemy footsteps," and "watch for shadows behind corners" but we were never sure if he was being serious or making fun of us. Watch for shadows, really? My taste in gaming has since moved towards RPGs so I never got good enough at FPSs to determine if he was telling the truth.
update: thanks to DoPo and Loonyyy for clearing up that people did in fact use shadows and directional sound in CS:S. Impressive stuff!