What lessons has playing Descent taught you?

[Xfing]

For me it was the very important lesson of "it's not the length of the missile, it's the size of the warhead"

[LightWolf]

It's taught me to be "Not too coward, not too reckless"

[Krom]

Problems in video games are like nails, the solution is always "bring a bigger hammer".

[Sirius]

Maybe too many to count, but Descent being the first PVP-capable game I played against real people, the most significant ones were what it takes to win in a competitive game. There are the raw skills - can you aim, can you dodge a homing missile - and being able to learn them well enough that you don't freeze up when you have to use them unexpectedly. Being able to do multiple things at once - seeing and evading incoming fire while tracking what your opponents are doing next. Learning what sorts of things work to "catch" someone - the shots that are hard to dodge, missile tricks, all that kind of stuff - and of course being able to execute with the right timing. Figuring out how to escape a vulnerable position and get to a strong one. Guessing what people are likely to do - part of it "what do people USUALLY do in this situation" and part of it trying to learn the habits of individual players. And then there's the heavy mind-game stuff - trying to trick people, predict them, figure out when they're onto you and turning the tables, all that sort of thing.

It's a very complex field, and interestingly, it's not just Descent that this stuff applies to. Much of it applies to other games as well, especially action games, and sometimes even real-life sports.