Not playing CoD. OT: It cant be as easy as luck or one shot, or even shooting some one in general. You need to have a strategy to killing. People with no skill just go "pew pew pew! Your dead!" People with skill think about every kill as a puzzle were you have to do everything precisely to get the kill. It isn't shoot, it's the four shot or other special ways of killing people.
So is knowledge of the game and it's mechanics considered skill or not? You could argue it makes me better at winning and thus I have more skill at winning games. Even though it's considered knowledge rather than skill. Basically Skill =/= winning games if you use the proper techniques. Some tactics can be just as effective without requiring skill.
"A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both." -Wiki Anything in gaming could really fall under this category. Just because something is easy, doesn't mean it does not require skill, it may just require less skill. Even so, this could ALWAYS be improved upon.
Fair enough, Aiming is the basic skill one must learn in order to function, kind of like learning the attack buttons on a fighting game, you'll never win if you don't learn these. but after basic attacking is learned, one must learn to defend (or in FPS games, when to retreat or use cover), which becomes infinity more useful than perfecting one's aim. and the last step in skill is using both at the same time, and since there are no more steps after that players must perfect their ability to excel at both.
Aim is significantly different than just learning the combos in a fighting game though. There is a cap on how good you can be at inputting combo commands, and aiming is a living thing that you must adapt to each situation and each opponent. I liken button combos to the "forging takes skill" debates. Before you can even play the game at a moderately high level, you must memorize the combos and learn them into your muscle memory, and when that's done there is no more aptitude progression in that area. That's similar to learning the forge glitches in Halo 3. Many scrubs would love to claim those are skillful, but they're just a barrier you have to overcome before you can really attempt the real challenge of designing a good map. A "skill" is, to me, something which helps players to win against other closely matched players, something that separates players from each other. There's a certain baseline for aiming skill that you must meet in order to be able to really compete, but you can get better and better beyond that, especially when you start mixing in different strafes and creative use of cover and map geometry while aiming. There's a progression that doesn't really stop with aiming skill. Reaction time, anticipating the opponent's strafe, precision accuracy of thumb movements, and various other things go into aim ability, and not everyone even among the best players in the world is equally good at these things, so I'd call aiming an actual skill. Aim in shooters, actions per minute in strategy games, and reaction speed in everything are about the only non-metagame things in any videogame that I'd truly call skill. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but outside of those elements, just about every video gaming skill is in out-thinking your opponent; in the metagame. Anticipating his moves, learning his patterns, abusing his weaknesses, deceiving his attempts to learn yours, and all the other stuff that's not directly built into the rules of the game qualifies as metagame, and that's where the bulk of the skill in videogames lies. Videogames aren't like sports where your options are restricted only by the rules and your physical ability to perform, videogames have limits on how fast anything can be, how strong anything can be, and rigid definitions of how every possible move behaves, so the actual performance of just about any possible move is not a skill.
There is actually a lot of thought put into every move and decision made for gaming, and with that said, I think skill is best defined as the ability to make the right decisions, and execute them to better you or your team's chances of winning. So in other words, playing the objective in an objective game, or killing others without dying, yourself in a TDM or FFA game. You're K/D ratio shouldn't matter in an objective game, because it's all about the win in that situation, so a "skilled" player will either play the objective, or play support for the objective, i.e. protecting a flag carrier, holding people off a hill point from a vantage point of a map, etc. I look at skill in games similar to learning to play an instrument. I'm a drummer, and I started because I have a strong interest in music, but in no way was I talented or gifted, I started with fundimentals and worked my way up to where I am now, and I still have lots to learn. To become good at a game, using Halo as an example, to be better at decision making and learn basic map control, I would play lots of Team Slayer or Lone Wolves. With experience, comes knowledge, which brings the ability to think and ask yourself questions while play, like, "Am I in a good position right now?", and with your knowledge, comes the answer to that question, and the ability to correct yourself. I think aim would be fundamental part of an FPS, if you are missing your shots, you will not succeed. That is one of the reasons I do not try my hand with the Sniper in Halo without practice, or knowing that there is someone better on my team who could benefit from it a lot more than I could. Skill is not determined by MLG, or your GB rank, it's knowing your abilities and limitations, and making an effort towards improving upon them.
Fighting games have almost MORE metagame than FPS games, for instance, BlazBlue has a guarding system that works like this, you hold back to guard, and standing guards will block Overhead attacks, and medium attacks, and crouch blocking guards medium attacks and low attacks, there is a ton of metagame in reading which attacks Overhead and low attacks have tricked you're opponents guard, and started you're offense. Another example of depth in BlazBlue is that some characters will need to setup certain traps to be successful, Like Arakune, he needs to hit his opponents with certain attacks to build up a "curse" bar. But once he fills his "curse: bar, he can summon a bug from any direction on the screen. This is all really complicated to explain but what I'm trying to get at is that there is a TON of Metagame in Fighters. Breaking defense, Stopping grabs, reading repetition, and choice of offense.
Yeah, that was kinda my point. The real skill in fighting games is almost entirely in the metagame, with some reaction speed thrown in. But if you're relying on reacting rather than predicting, you're probably losing. The performing of combos is not part of the skill that wins fighting games at high levels, since everybody is equally good at it.
Ah I see, I misinterpreted your previous post, but at its basis, leaning a combo and aiming are Basic parts of both games where its not perfection but improvement.