This is entirely exaggerestimating™. Several parts are both false and fallacious. "Average reaction time is like 13-14 frames" is by itself wrong, as average human reaction time is no more than 13 frames (.215 seconds). Saying a number is "like" another under or overvalues the original number, depending on the desired argument.
(...)
So let's pretend people who go into competitive video gaming tend to be people with, you know, good reaction time. Not great, good. We don't all get to be blessed with Taj's 8-9 frame inputs, and that's fine. But there are still a largely reasonable amount of people with 11 and 12 frame reactions. Let's exaggerestimate™ this by only looking at the number that supports our argument better. 11 Frame reaction time means that with merely above average reaction time you have 6 frames to do something about it. Three times as long as your original, logically and factually, incorrect statement.
I remembered it was 14 frames and searched for the actual number after writing the post, so when I found it I just added the "13-", I should have been less lazy, so I'm sorry about that.
Going by your logic(which I'll address in the next paragraphs), you have 6 frames to respond.
What options do you have that would deal with fair in that period of time?
I'd like you to answer this question even if you don't agree with what's next, so we can at least evaluate the options characters have in our best case scenario.
Don't forget what you input takes place at the next available frame, so that adds time between your reaction and the action in game.
I'll use collapse tags to avoid cluttering the page.
Moving on to what you said and being factually correct:
[COLLAPSE="
"]We'll go with 215ms(12.9 frames) as mean reaction time.
Let's also consider a 9 frame reaction time for top level players, which puts them next to Olympic athletes, which is to be expected anyway for top players in almost any competitive video game.
That would mean they have tons of time to react, but wait, could there be a difference between reacting to something and recognizing what that is and reacting accordingly?
Apparently there is!(SHOCKING)
According to studies about this, reaction time in this instance goes down from our 215ms(or 220 according to the studies) to 384ms(THAT'S 23 FRAMES, WOW).
And could there be a difference in reaction time when the amount of things you could react to increases?
Why, yes there is!
Reaction time scales proportionally to N or log(N), depending on the study, with N being the number of valid stimuli.
But what did the studies say that "just a bit" was? It was 40ms per added item.
We also have to consider other factors, like how tense you are(reaction time becomes worse if your are too tense or too relaxed) and how much you've practiced the situation.
[/COLLAPSE]
So if we wanna be factual, your statement was wrong
, but thanks for trying.
And we go back to what I said, reacting to the move will in most instances be because you expected it, most likely because you discarded other options as viable alternatives, due to the distance between your opponent and you, because you recognized a pattern or for another reason that seemed compelling enough during the match.
[COLLAPSE="Bibliography"]Donders, F. C. 1868. On the speed of mental processes. Translated by W. G. Koster, 1969. Acta Psychologica 30: 412-431.
Hick, W. E. 1952. On the rate of gain of information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 4: 11-26.
Laming, D. R. J. 1968. Information Theory of Choice-Reaction Times. Academic Press, London.
Miller, J. O. and K. Low. 2001. Motor processes in simple, go/no-go, and choice reaction time tasks: a psychophysiological analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 27: 266.
Nickerson, R. S. 1972. Binary-classification reaction times: A review of some studies of human information-processing capabilities. Psychonomic Monograph Supplements 4: 275-318.
Sternberg, S. 1969. Memory scanning: Mental processes revealed by reaction time experiments. American Scientist 57: 421-457.[/COLLAPSE]