In short, what I'm saying is that your current self should be capable of doing anything your past self was capable of and then some. This isn't like a physical sport where age plays a factor in declining ability.
No, this is what you said, less than 4 hours ago:
You say that but what is more likely is that you felt more confident at rope back then because of your skill relative to that of other players.
Telling me I can be as good as I used to be, and that my mind and feelings are pretty much f**king useless are 2 completely different things.
And actually, age can decline, i've cracked my knuckles my whole life and just like my Mum told me as a little boy, I shouldn't have, for one...
I can't tap as good with my left hand as I used to, it hurts and seizes up, I used to be almost as good with my left as I am with my right, now it's not, which is why i'm so excited about learning cross now I don't have to actually cross my arms over.
I'd say that loss of physical ability due to knuckle cracking falls more under 'injury' than 'age-related decline,' but that's kinda moot and splitting hairs.
What I said earlier still applies though... how 'good' someone was at a particular scheme 'X' number of years ago is relative to the overall skill level of everyone else they were playing against at that time, and as I said, players tend to get better as time goes on. This applies to almost any video game. You can look at tournament footage from any competitive game around the time it came out and compare it to people years later playing the same game and there's often a very noticeable jump in skill level, with people who would have been 'elite' back in the day being average today. It's just the natural progression of any game, even professional sports. A good NBA team from today would dominate a good NBA team from the 70's, for instance. The bottom line is that if all things are equal, the version of yourself with more practice/experience is going to be better than the version with less practice/experience.
What I am saying by all of this isn't taking away from any past Worms players at all. What I'm saying is that anyone who has played this game for an extended period of time has only gotten better *overall* due to practice/experience. I am also furthermore saying that anyone who reached a certain level of performance in whatever scheme can still play at that level if they chose to, barring injury and whatnot. A little practice might be needed but those skills don't just disappear into the ether.
Also, I am not saying that these older players sucked and that our memories of them being great are PURELY nostalgia. For anyone reading, please don't misinterpret that. They
were great for their time, and that may or may not mean that they would be great compared to the skill level of players within the past couple of years. What I am getting at is that as time has gone on and people have learned more and more about the intricacies of the game, players
in general have gotten better. Individual players who have been playing for a long time are most certainly better today
on the whole than they were in the past, although they might be a bit rusty at certain schemes... and generally speaking, your garden-variety mediocre modern Worms player is very likely to be of a higher general, overall skill level than that of a player back in the early 2000's of the same relative 'level' (so to speak), and that's because they have been able to learn from other players with years of experience with the game, as not every W2 competency translated over to W:A with perfect accuracy in addition W:A being nearly 20 years old at this point.
The one thing that limits the skill growth of
current players is the lack of game activity. Back in the day the game was far more active, and as a result, more competitive and people developed skills faster.
To get back to the original topic, I like Chicken23's ideas, for the most part. If people want league play to be a big thing again it needs to be accessable to everyone, which means that it needs to be simplified into one Free League with players having the ability to play just about any scheme they want and also do BO3/DON. Also, there needs to be veteran players in AG telling newcomers about the league, how to sign up, how to report games, and letting people know about tourneys/cups/etc. Cater to what is currently popular, even if it sucks. I think Super Sheep Race is wack but if people like playing it, make a tournament. Make Mole tournaments. Hell, have a freakin' Shopper tournament. Anything to drum up interest and excitement and also to get players familiar with TUS and the league. Most importantly veteran players need to come back and start playing regularly because complaining about a lack of activity is kinda circular logic. BE THE CHANGE.