I’ve been wondering this recently. I grew up on atari/nes/snes and so of course almost all of those games (pretty sure all) are written in assembly and are rock solid smooth and responsive for the most part. I wonder if this has affected how I cannot stand to play badly optimized games eith even a hint of a laggy feel to it. I’ve always been drawn to quake and cs for that reason: damn smooth. And no, it doesn’t just need to be FPS games either. I cant play beat saber with a modicum of lag or i suck massively, but others can play just fine and not even notice the lag.
Its odd. I feel like a complainer but maybe I just notice it more easily than others?
There are so many things that go into whether a game feels responsive or not. Your experience could be explained by anything from access to stable Internet, to trends in game design philosophy, and vary from game to game based on implementation.
Here’s one of my favorite GDC talks that looks at just one small part of what goes into making a game feel responsive: https://youtu.be/h47zZrqjgLc
I was actually not thinking about online games when posting this. Too many variables there.
Sure, this is just an example of how complex “feel” can get in game development. The video includes several examples where player perception changes drastically from very minor gameplay design changes