I'm really starting to wonder about this, whether its still persistent in the universe, or if its one of those things that got left behind.

It's easy enough to argue that Flynn in the new film was, at some point, god-like on the grid, but that could just as easily be attributed to how he designed it, rather than any special abilities that humans loading into the grid might have.

I hope it's still there, but I also hope it retains the kind of subtlety it had in the first film, instead of it turning into Neo. The film seems plenty flash enough without it going to that extreme.