A Dilemma of the Old School Gamer

As I play more and more games I find myself moving farther and farther away from the primary playerbase of most of them. Almost like an old man telling young kids to stay off his lawn I find myself becoming detached from the other gamers as well as the games themselves as they move more toward an easier/faster gaming style and away from what I enjoyed when I started, primarily in MMOs.

Yesterday I decided to venture into ST for the first time to see a bit of it before the content becomes somewhat obsolete with the expansion. I formed a good group on the Freeport server and we were dropping trash quickly and one shot the first boss with over half of us being new in the zone. Even though I am undergeared somewhat I was keeping up with the raid geared swash for the most part as I fancy myself a good gamer and above average at least. All was well as we pushed along and cleared trash to the second boss. We got to the second boss where we were told it was a "tank and spank" and then midfight was told we had to stop attacking on an emote. Emote came up and I turned off auto attack and someone didn't ultimately wiping us. I believe the person who attacked was the Fury which was fine because mistakes happen. After rezzing the Fury just disbands and leaves. From there the tank started having "issues" and just dc'ed and never came back. The swash suddenly had to "go eat supper" and me and my friend who started the group was pretty much alone as the other person just left.

That story carries along with many scenarios that I run into and why I feel I don't fit in. In WoW, this game, and many other MMOs the new generation cannot die, cannot wipe, cannot take anymore then 15 minutes to do a dungeon, cannot be forced to learn anything, cannot teach people new things. What fun is a game if it isn't challenging and doesn't take time to give you a feel of accomplishment? If we look at WoW and how they currently "race" to see who can run a dungeon the fastest what fun is it other then to stroke ones ego?

I guess I'm just getting older and not understanding the new generation of gaming. Although I find myself to be good at gaming and normally crush most other people on dps, etc. and feel I am lost in my own playstyle/ways.

I'm finding its not a generation thing, its just how gamers have become.

They're more than willing to wipe, take the time, and work thru the zone if its a group of guildmates. Where they have no chance of being judged as being 'poor' by other gamers.

As soon as you bring in the PuG aspect, players quickly fall into the type of behavior you described. So much that I know many players that wont tank a zone with an alt till they've first done the zone with someone else tanking and leading the group. I know many players who avoid doing a new zone in general till they've done it with guildies so they don't risk being placed into a situation where they might not have all the answers.

Ego, pride, whatever you want to label this sin, but I too have noticed this paradigm shift with gamers, and its not just the new generation, there are many very old gamers who've been around the block displaying the same tendencies.

Guess I differ there as I enjoy learning and exploring new things. I find that to be a large aspect of MMOs themselves, to be honest. I keep telling my 2 friends I play with that an ultimate fix would be to find 3 other people to consistently game with or at least 2 more then we wouldn't have to bother ourselves with it. This is why cliques aren't always a bad thing lol.

But... isnt that what the new mentality does? Find a group of people to play with regularly, and stick with them, at least at first? Not for nothing, but Im a newish player and definately love how much I learn from my guildies. Its not wrong to want to learn in the relative safety of your friends first, especially when people begin to parse, and any mistake you make not only runs the risk of wiping a group, but it gets thrown out there. Ive seen in chat people get refused group slots because of someone remembering their apparently sub par dps. So I can see why people want to make their learning curve mistakes with guilds, where things are more easily forgiven.

^^ Salty, what is your play schedule? Days of the week, timezone etc?

Pretty much everyday or so in the evening on EST. I'd say primarily 4-8/9 in and out around there.

I think some of it is definitely because the games have evolved and changed, some of it good, some of it...different. I feel the same as you, in a pickup group, everyone seems to think everyone else should already know everything about the dungeon, even if you've never done it before and they give up at the drop of a hat or as soon as anything bad happens.

I think I just played EQ1 for way too long, it was more of an evercamp than a dungeon crawl most of the time, sure you had to get to the area you were camping, but after that, everyone but the puller pretty much sat in one spot until you were ready to leave. Most of the named mobs were simple tank and spank, nothing special, they just hit a little harder and had a few more hp.

Today, dungeons have become crawls and many times mobs don't respawn, bosses have become like mini-raid mobs with special abilities and scripts, making it more challenging, especially if you haven't done it before or your gear is lacking.

I think the people are the same, back then, bad groups formed with bad people, bad things happened and people gave up, that really hasn't changed. Some people still have bad gear, short fuses and don't pay attention or afk when it suits them. I think you just have to have a personality to make things happen, put together your own consistent group of people in your guild that play similar hours that you can depend on. I'm in a small guild, but that is what I intend to do (is there such a thing as a large casual guild anymore?)

I'm at the same point, just got to 90, finished up my 280 aa's and I'm really pretty terrified to join a pickup group in one of the higher level dungeons (I know I need to get to 92 - 95 in a few days with more aa's first) and I'll research as much as I can on the dungeon beforehand, but I'm still anticipating people questioning my ability to play my class even though I've been playing on-line mmorpg's for 15 years and think I'm pretty good at what I do.

I personally flat out refuse to tank for anyone other then friends and guildies, period. And its for one simple reason~~
The general pug attitude that gets put out which I have found generally follows this:
Elitist, no-fail allowed, if I die its your fault (nevermind I just aoe ice comet on the pull and it double-cast), you are now a fail suck tank.
But, its not JUST on tanking, its on any class really, I don't pug with most of my toons simply because I'm not confident enough with them that I know I won't run into this attitude, whether its DPS, heals, utility, etc. I have about 4 toons I'll pug with, because they have the gear, and I can practically AFK dps/utility/etc on them because I know them so well.
The overall mentality of the playerbase has gone from helping each other out, working with you to learn your toon and how to work in a group setting to one where if you aren't virtually god-like, or atleast demi-god-like, then you are fail and must be removed and/or ridiculed, and if its ridicule, then it must be done publicly.

Just going to throw this out there...

Wizardry Online.

^^ GW2, once you pay for it there is no sub

GW2 was fun and really good.. but now so full of spam-bots its untrue. Put me off...I came back to EQ2.. not that I left, just didnt play so much

Community will be the same no matter where you go as far as I've seen. I'm signed up for beta on Wizardry and Dragon's Prophet as I'm an All Access subscriber and hope they are covered.

I've felt that way about many of the PUG gamers for a long while now. I personally will bang at a encounter until I figure it out without write ups if given the opportunity. I love grouping with my guild mates/game friends because I know they will usually do the same if they haven't done the encounter before. PUGs don't tend to want that. They usually want XP or loot NOW, not figuring things out. Once in a blue moon I'd run across at least a couple like minded people in PUGs. However, at this time I don't think I've done a true PUG in more than a year. I've joined people to help them out with something, but not truly PUGed.

I know I don't completely suck on my mystic main, but I shy away from PUGs because I know I'm undergeared and I find I just don't have any patience at all anymore for attitude from people I'm grouping with. I have smart mouthed kids for that.

I don't PUG outside of friends/mates for the same reason, the "ZOMG, L2PLAY N00B" and "WhatTheFrack FAIL GROUP I'M OUT" attitudes.

Too many people looking for flawless "speed runs".

If I had some people to run current content with on a regular basis I wouldn't pug but unfortunately most of my friends have left or are so afraid of PUGS and dealing with all of that they won't level past 80 and run the game from the beginning to that point over and over and over and over again. Pugs are what they are, some are good, some are bad, it was that way in EQ1 things are no different from that perspective.

Me and my partner duo everything. If it can't be duoed, we wait until it can.
That way, I get to see a zone at my own leisurly pace, and am never bothered by other players' needs to get in and out asap.
I don't care about loot, I don't care about other players and what they want out of the game or how they want to play it. Anything other people do is fine by me and never impacts my enjoyment.

I'm glad that things like mercs have been put in game to help out smaller groups - I just wish the devs would remember us when it comes to writing scripts, I would like to be able to do stuff while it's still green! Encounters that are impossible with fewer people are not fun. I have no issues with challenging content, but impossible is another matter

I'll keep playing EQ2 while it remains fun for us.

Been like this since TSO.

It's been like this since RoK when players who can't function in raids got the ability to buy raid loot.

People have been paying raid guilds to deck them out pretty much always.

Really? No one on my server sold loot until late RoK. /shrugs