Modern gamer psychology and how I hope it does not influence the future development of Planetside 2.

Some points are actually the result of the advancement of the game genres and the reasons are obvious.

1) We played to have fun

I dont see exactly about what kind of game generation you are talking about and about what type of games. So there is still a difference here but I would just talk about games since around 2000.

In general people play for fun nowadays aswell but the overall games itself and the view from gamers about the game content did probably change. In mmofps like Planetside 1 and ww2online/Battleground Europe which is 10-12 years ago since release were already discussions about balance, there were discussions about weapon balance in counterstrike and shouts for nerfing planes in Battlefield 1942. There were balance discussions in mmorpgs aswell like Anarchy Online, DAOC and so on. I dont see a difference here and the words overpowered were very well known except hacking was not so wide spread like nowadays, but I see the influence of certain game content since the more massive online gaming did start in the end of the 90ies.

2) influence of game content

Most gamers in this time actually did come from FPS games with the success of Half Life and their modifications i.e. Day of Deafeat, Counterstrike and so on. There were of course already mmorpgs around like Ultima Online and later Everquest, Anarchy Online and so on....but the masses did not play them, mmorpgs were not that popular like nowadays. Most were actually playing FPS and they did connect with modems at the end of the 90ies without any flatrate, which was actually expensive, and only a short time later with ISDN and the upcomming flatrate options.

The massive success of mmorpgs which did start in the early 2000´s and reached a highlight with world of warcraft did actually influence a lot of the games we see nowadays. A lot of players nowadays are much more influenced by mmorpg gameplay content than some years ago. FPS games like the Battlefield series, Call of Duty were a high success with the years for the mass market. You have these two big streams in the mass market and they influence a lot of the games we have on the market currently. The other genres like simulation games, tactical shooters got more and more displaced even they were a lot successfull, some got the game of the year award, and more played i.e. Operation Flashpoint, Delta Force, SWAT series. There were more games around but they are probably forgotten.

Companies jumped on the bandwagon and joined the genres who actually made the most profits, and the time of try end error the more diversification of games and genres got reduced.

Hacking wasnt that huge of a problem, but the hacking communities got more or less industrialized with clever marketing and distribution.

Mmmorpgs gameplay is actually based on GREED for items and concentrated more on the character itself instead of the surrounding community. By the way the free to play (f2p) marketing is targeting the greed in players and gameplay around it, with quiete a success but in my eyes only when it comes to profit and the gameplay quality suffers more aswell the communities gets weaken.

Since mmorpg games had such a strong influence, you will see a lot of games with character development even in nowadays FPS genre. This does not mean it did not exist some years ago, Planetside is a good example. But I have the feeling that these game features are a lot more important to players in new games and this influences the gameplay and the interaction with other players. In mmorpgs the items and gear, the level of your character, the gain of XP is more important than skill actually. So of course their gameplay is more fixed on gaining these things instead freely playing to have fun. Iam not saying people dont have fun, but the gameplay is just influnced by these game features and every more effort outside of this strategy is neglected.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well ******* said OP. My hat off to you.

The latest patch is a perfect example, isn't it?

Pre-patch: "jesus ESF is op omg do something why is AA worthless?"
Post-patch: "wow wtf why did u buff already op AA seriously ESF have always been too weak!"

Actually, if you look in the past 3 pages of threads here, you will find contradicting posts on each page.
One claims that ESF are OP. One claims that ESF are UP. Whaddayagonnado?

It's like.... I imagine the developers clawing their hair out, if they intend to stick on this path of listening to each and every complaint on the forums. It will turn into the EVE Online syndrome, where each patch changes the balance back and forth, like a pendulum that never stops swinging, that never finds the sweet spot. Because you can not please everyone at the same time.
Now, some of it is valid. The game most certainly is not perfectly balanced. But the point is that even if it would be perfectly balanced you'd still have forum posts claiming that things are OP. Because if you get killed by something, it is OP.
The only way to reach perfect harmoneous balance and player acceptance of said balance, is if nobody can ever be killed by anything.

It would be interesting if the devs actually made all 3 factions exactly equal for a week without mentioning it (infantry), just to see the forum posts that results from it. I guarantee there would still be dozens of threads regarding X faction being easymode, despite the ingame math proving them to be equal.


For the record, if it matters, I've played all 3 factions.
I personally (note, as in my opinion, it is not fact, it is how i perceive it from my own experience) do not see any balance issues at all between the factions.

TR weapons are great to use, wonderful rate of fire, easy recoil to handle. The Prowler is fast and quick to turn, the turret turns fast too, no problem keeping up with Magriders.
NC weapons have a great sense of pure power to them, each burst fired feels like an adrenaline rush. The recoil isn't hard to control at all, for me. I barely noticed any difference from TR or VS, very slight difference. The stopping power of each shot is a great feeling. The Vanguard is slow as heck, but has such a strong cannon that makes it all worth it. Hitting targets is no problem yet again, since all 3 faction MBT's share the same gravity drop and projectile speed (as far as i can tell, and as far as the ingame stats reveal).

I had alot of practice with my Magrider, and this practice directly translated into the Prowler and Vanguard, surprisingly. Had no problem what so ever using either of those two tanks.
Tried the Mosquito, and Reaver. Didn't really notice much difference either.
Had no further problem using them compared to the Scythe. Not harder to get kills, not harde to evade, not harder to fly.

I really scratch my head everytime i read yet another "faction x is op" thread. Well, i don't read them anymore.
To me it is the same sort of drivel that comes out of The History Channel these days.
X happened therefor Y must be the only explanation.

To be fair there wasn't even remotly as many gamers as there are today. Communitys back in 2000-2005 were alot cleaner and much less violent than they are today. Large parts of those gamers did strive to learn the game and become good at them rather than whining about this and that being op. Hardcore gamers wich in fact were the early gamers are the ones that dominate the gaming scene as well as understand the games to their full extent. They are also the ones that are making moste of the really hardcore indie games. How many CoD players and BF3 players do you even see as pro gamers? There are none. Since those games are so heavily unbalanced and offer limited ammount of skill usage. Not to mention that games that offer nothing in the way of competition and moding die fast today. Every year a CoD game dies. Next year BF3 will be gone from the minds of people. Diablo 3 only has a fraction left playing. All this because they cater to the ****iest type of gamer in the world.

The problem isn't with the games, it's with the "competitive" crowd that plays them. These community issues absolutely exploded around the time pro gaming, competitive gaming leagues, and tournaments popped up, and follow games with that element almost exclusively.

Just for note, this problem predates 2000 by quite a bit. Street Fighter 2 -- when it was still in the arcade, and not even on consoles -- was the first game I remember as a player that had a strong competitive scene, and guess what the first game was with which I first heard "discussion" about game balance. Hell, I remember as a teen one time watching a fistfight break out in a mall because one kid was fireball/dragon punch corner-whoring as Ryu and the other was...you guessed it, throwing.

Yeah that might be true. In my initial post i did refer to games such as Quake, Unreal Tournament and the very first Command & Conquer. The problem has definetly been around longer than the past 10 years, but with each successive year it becomes more and more visible.

Civ 4 to Civ 5. "management too complex, requires actual thought and learning, must simplify"
AvP to Aliens: Colonial Marines. "too challenging to control aliens in 3d, must make snap-to jumping"
C&C3 to C&C4. "base building interrupts action and requires planning, must only have action"
Operation Flashpoint to Operation Flashpoint: Whatever Red Subtitle. "planning and thinking too unforgiving, must have auto-aim and regenerating health"

It goes on and on.
Mainstream games are becoming cyborgs, with so many artificial player aids that we no longer need any skill or intelligence to play them.
I use the word mainstream because of course there are exceptions, such as indie titles and strategy games that don't sell in the millions. But do remember that the old games were considered mainstream, since they were the "call of duties" of their day in terms of popularity compared to other games on the market.

It's sort of like potty training.
Today gamers aren't taught how to survive and think in the virtual space. They're just offered a carrot, a press Y to revive or press X to watch cutscene of boss being defeated.
We don't know how to use the toilet anymore, we're fitted with diapers.

This is one reason I still play Call of Pripyat. While it does have health regen, mini map radar (based on PDAs) and pretty low TTKs, it was much closer to Arma2. That health regen is only good once the threats are eliminated and even medkits take time, time not present when four Exoskeleton wearing mercs wielding automatic shotguns flushing you out with grenades are attacking. You'll know someone is there, but you won't know what they can do until you actually see their equipment with your own eyes, and each gun had a distinctive look, couldn't confuse a shotgun for an assault rifle like you can here.

I still dream of prone.

Where did you dig this fossil up?

Is this really a four month necro?

Nevermind.

I feel like a relic of the good times, myself. UT99 and Q3A, Tribes 2. My bread and butter.
These are easy to balance. Everyone gets the same stuff, everyone has the same shot.
the maps were the real balancing factor, and it was common to make absolutely symmetrical maps -- see CTF-Facing Worlds, which I am citing as the hands down best CTF map -- that was perfectly symmetrical, down to the angle.
To remain competitive, though, with asymmetrical balance, you need to have maps that are sprawling, with cover for those that favor range, VS. Those that favor CQC, TR, and those that favor brute force approaches, with cover to continue pushing the line, NC.
These maps don't have that.
What we see now are VS and NC able to outsrip TR outside. Understandable, that's what they were made to do.
But then inside, they do the same t hing, because they have access to the same or better weapons across classes.
If we can't balance the weapons correctly without losing faction flavor, you need to balance the maps, every individual territory, so that the GOOD parts of each faction can be capitalized on, and the BAD parts can do the same.
Instead, it's a CQC fest. TR outperforms only because they take much more risk, as evidenced by their larger kill count and death count.
But the numbers also support that NC and VS have superior weapons everywhere else and, with SMGs and shotguns, are able to do the same thing as TR while remaining true to their faction.
There is no possible way otherwise to make everyone happy. Even with all the new toys, the balance adjustments that are sweeping without followup to correct certain inadequacies, people still complain.

Very well written, fully agree.

Thumbs up to the OP. yeah I played ultima online from 1995- 2000 and only quit because I had a kid on the way. Before I left they were starting pvp and nonpvp servers. I had no idea what that meant. I didn't understand how you could separate the person to person battles that were common and everyday.

That was my first glimpse of gamers wanting less challenge and safer gameplay. UO the 2nd age came out and I messed with it an it was just like I remember UO with no need to ask permission to fight someone. Anyway I asked a buddy who was atleast 12yrs younger than me if he wanted to give it a try and what I described scared him to death. "No way man sounds like a game where people just gank you" he was used to the safe WoW type play. That was part of what made WoW the biggest deal around for so long were the generation of safe players. And even in that game when the computer aka npc / bosses were a little too hard for a few people the devs would go ahead and soften it up. If you beat the "king " before they added an easy mode buff to a dungeon and people beat him after the reward was the same. Unless you knew what dates certain things happened.

Anyway it's too late now. Pretty much aside from Eve online that's what we're going to continually see in games. Also the non stop achievement type awards for everything including being able to walk in a straight line for 5 minutes. Jeez

Well I can attest to this much. I played Starcraft when it first came out and brood wars when it dropped. All the time playing on battlenet which was great. So there was this issue with Korean players all being cheaters or hackers of some kind. Well I dunno how you can just limit that to one group of people but I heard it over and over after a loss

I decided to play with the Koreans and even joined and AzN type clan even though I wasn't. Playing with then cleaned up my game alot. I got way more efficient at building and targeting the weaker enemy etc. I did this until blizzard gave in and separated the servers. Well we know now that those same "cheaters" were actually players who not only played with each other day after day but they also sat next to each other in net cafes. Way diff than 3 Americans who never met each other and are playing in 3 diff states.

I can't recall what year that was but there was belly aching to the point of accusing a whole countries players of being cheats aka crying nerf way back then.

Just because something is different does not make it better or worse.
I hate it when people use terms like "casual gamers" and "lone wolfes" like bad words.
seriously, that person just has a life, and doesn't have any friends who play the game.
not that big of a deal, everyone treats people who aren't 12 hour a day nolifers in a 1000+ member outfit playing in a full platoon all 12 hours/day of their playtime like garbage. pretty silly.

That said, I'm one of those nolifers. heh.

I always laugh at "Pro-gamer".

Lol.

I will never understand how the average person today is a hot headed impatient moron.

If I had HALF the attitude or mentality these kids have, I'd missing half my teeth. And rightly so.

Long gone is the era of intelligence. Especially when you have the average teenager that knows his stupid cellphone inside out but can't figure out where the wireless switch is on his laptop.

It's all about 'the easy way'.

To be honest I don't know who deserves the bigger slap across the face, the parents or the idiots they're raising.

This whole concept of buffing and nerfing is a total joke... On one hand it's an excuse for SOE to modify a couple of numbers and call them 'patches' so its easy and profitable and on the other hand you have even cheaters that are calling the game imbalanced because they can't be the prima donna star of the show. Because they suck.

Do you ppl realize that with this mentality, you would not last in a real battlefield for more than 30 seconds? Is it THAT BAD to apply some learning and knowledge just because its a game? Or are we too high and mighty.

To all those that won't stop ********, if you're not good enough to be a lone wolf, THEN STICK WITH A PROPER TEAM. And suddenly everything will appear more 'balanced'.

But when you're charging around like an idiot, and there's 5 ppl aiming at you, EVERYTHING becomes overpowered, when you're the 5 ppl aiming at that 1 guy, doesn't matter what the hell he's using does it?