The point is not everybody wants to play a mutli-player FPS, or cares about whether they possess your skill at it. You make a ridiculous assumption that the only reason he preferred single player is that he doesn't possess your oh so amazing twitch reflexes and basically gave him a condescending "just keep at it sonny and you'll be great like me someday"
When did I say I had oh so amazing reflexes? my 10 year old son has better reflexes and he gets terrible scores. Im one of the worst in my clan. But I learned enough about the strategy, picked up enough reflexes to be able to compete against random players. Thats what Im telling him to try. At 30 years of age I made my first forays into online FPS, I sucked, then I got better. And the experience blows most other game types out of the water. Thats coming from a 3 year EQ player, 2 years wow(gave up all the MMO games too addictive and time consuming)
not having twitch reflexes is not a problem. I dont play starcraft because I dont have the skills needed. The incredible multitasking, quick keying reflexes. That I dont have those skills is not a problem. But I may be missing on a really awesome experience. I made attempts at getting good at that game but my brains too slow and it didnt seem that was going to improve by much so I had to concede defeat. But I did try.
If someones playing FPS single player then I strongly encourage them to put the effort into getting the skills to play online because its not even in the same league. Single player is a sad joke compared to online.
I used to spend time on multi-player games. Not so much FPS games, but way too much time in fact spent on things like Everquest and WoW, both PvE and PvP. I tired of the time sink and especially having to schedule game play with potentially dozens of other people for raids and such. I prefer single player, start/stop/pause when I feel like it games. I have to deal with other people all day. I prefer gaming by myself. I find single player a far, far more satisfying gaming experience and twitch skills or lack thereof aren't a factor. I suspect there are a lot of others who feel the same. If you get more satisfaction out of the multi-player aspect, by all means, that's great. Just don't assume there is a "problem" with somebody else because they don't.
FPS are start/stop games. Pausing you just quit out of the game. At most your losing 10 minutes of invested time into a game that you quit. so none of the scheduling problems you mentioned.
By your own admission you have not invested the time into FPS to have an objective view of the merits vs other game types. Im not the top gamer in the world. But Ive been the MMO addict, the RPG addict, the strategy game addict(hearts of iron, civ, sim city, sword of stars anyone?
). I tried the starcraft genre and sucked. So out of all those the most satisfying is FPS.
I wouldnt be surprised if the most difficult of all (starcraft whatever genre that is) is the most gratifying. Considering that of the genres I have gotten good at, FPS was the most difficult and most gratifying.