I have head-coached conventional sports for 6 years and multiple esports teams for 5 years, and am published/invited speaker on the latter. I don't speak for the entire field, but can assure you that I and the other coaches I work with place a great emphasis on total, overall well-being of the esports athlete and understand that the sustained effects of stress hormones and excitement during matches can produce some bizarre metabolic demands on the participant. The industry has shifted from binging and caffeine to fitness, healthy habits, and mindfulness. The result is better performance, happier people, and slightly longer careers (though response time still degrades with age). This article isn't great, but nevertheless sums things up:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/sports/esports-league-of-legends.html.
There's some good general research on this topic coming out of UC-Irvine in the US and Kologne University in Germany.
And as an ultrawide owner that's the type of game that works with it. But that's not what top level gaming is. Top end results in the 240hz mess. And I know a ton of streams that fucking lie about what they use and hide the actual gear because if they used what they claimed they used they wouldn't do as well.
And it's not FHD Kollaid. 480hz > 360hz > 240hz > 180hz > 165hz > 144hz > 120hz > 75hz > 60hz > 30hz. That's just a fact, now how fast you are personally and if you can keep up is another matter. I like larger screens as well, but I've also played enough to know having the entire screen in my vision and not having to my eyes, let alone neck, to track things in and of itself is a massive advantage.
Like it or not top level comp is 240hz +
This is an interesting question. I was trying to help my organization spec' out a PC for esports (which will also get primary use and value as a media lab for auto-cad, video encoding, etc. during the school-day), and our tech director went straight to a 144Hz monitor and a graphics card that would greatly exceed that framerate for most games. 144Hz comes out to 7ms/frame. Meanwhile, we were looking at internet ping times of 30+ms, student-athlete reaction times of 170ms+, wired mouse polling rates that hit about 1ms... the FPS and monitor's framerate rate didn't seem like the thing to worry about. Asking around with the gamers they definitely noticed and complained about dropping to 30Hz (our existing PC's do this a lot, unfortunately), but 60Hz at medium resolution seemed fine and no-one really noticed the difference between 120Hz and 144Hz. For streaming, we target 1080p at 60Hz, and it definitely takes a beefier PC to host the game client and simultaneously run all the graphical components and stream/record, but we only need one of those. At some point it's diminishing returns. I play too, at a much lower skill level, and got a curved 2k-res 34" v-synced at 144Hz cheapest possible off-brand because I can, but with my middle aged reflexes and poor eyesight I doubt lower res and 60Hz would even be noticeable for me. I love the curvature and size though: it feels more immersive and I can run plenty big font regardless of resolution.
