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

I find it frustrating that you can't see that YOU are precisely the kind of person that this thread is about.

Exactly what OP said.
All the games i tried last years are a bit hollow, it's almost impossible to lose on single-player games today.
Hell, a mediocre trained ape could play those.
Bad grade in school ... learn or so ?
Nope ... file a lawsuit for the teacher instead :/
Warning signs on almost everything you can buy.
Stella awards.
Some more generations of this and mankind will consist of mostly drooling 1d10ts.
Evolution died.

I miss the timesplitters games, fun and challenging in one package.

If you want to get good at something you need to invest time. It has nothing to do with having a life, it has to do with what you choose to make time for in life.

and I'm sorry but it doesn't take 12 hrs a day to get good at a game.

Crack open a couple of military manuals and you'd be surprised how fast you can learn.

You need to understand something, people tend to get very good at something FAST when their life depends on it. When it doesn't they get too relaxed and make stupid mistakes.

I use the word lone wolf, because that's my playstyle. I like to be outnumbered, and I like it when everyone is looking for me and I need to hide. It takes skill and patience to accomplish that and obviously its not everyone's cup of tea because for some people its boring, I enjoy the hunt

The word casual gamer is also suiting. It's an excuse someone uses to justify why they can't be bothered to learn something effectively.

I can assure you I have a life. Also I'm an infrastructure systems engineer so you can rest assured i"m quite busy as well. Yet I play countless hours like everyone else.

You say everyone treats people who aren't 12 hrs a day players, but what you're not noticing, is that most people DO play for countless hours and still play terribly.

It has nothing to do with skill. it is MENTALITY. as someone that observes enemy movement CONSTANTLY, I can tell you off the bat... people make the same mistakes over and over and over again. So is the problem really dedication? or the ridiculous stubborness a person has to keep trying to force their way through in a situation where proper killing devices have been setup

It has nothing to do with time.
Anyone who knows the basics of the game will do well.
Example: I've put probs 1000 hours or so total into this game, across all of my characters and accounts.
But my SPM is like 105 and my KD is like .9
I know people who have played for maybe 50-100 hours who have a much better score and kd than me. It has to do with being skilled, aiming well, good reflexes, etc, it's not something you can train for.
Of course, time will help, but not by huge amounts like you make it out to be,
If it did I'd be the next BCP, nolife4ever

wow 1000 hours.

See I can already tell by looking at your report card. slow down lol!

You're competing with who's the better shot rather than who has the drop. unfortunately too many people have cyborg-like reflexes so you gotta play with their brains hehehe

While I, in part, agree with most of what the OP says I also think the increased players imput on game balance is due to it being easier and easier to look under the hood of the game, ie, review stats and data. There is also more understanding on coding, and what people think is "fun" varies greatly from whatever gaming experience they have.

Personally, I do not give a damn about graphics. I want every tiny little extra frame per second and fluid gameplay.

I also remember the advent of esports. It was kind of strange, watching several of my friends from CS1.6/Starcraft ending up making money from playing a game. I am sure there were other esports at the time but I'm talking about the events that really brought things into the public view. My brother travelled all over europe playing CS1.6 and he actually signed autographs, and had fans greeting him.

So in this sense I don't think there was a more pure way of having fun "in the good old days", but rather that we remember a time when we didn't know any better. It was all so very exciting, so new and wonderous, and we may very well reach the point where we don't think things are so exciting anymore. That's the real issue, and it isn't a new issue, but we're just on the different side of it. On one side we got a fresh generation of gamers who are enjoying games, and on the other side, there's us. The old cantankerous veterans who want more than just a game. We want depth and a more complex experience.

What I'm saying is, just like with movies the younger generation will always be more excited about fresh releases because they haven't yet seen this or that plot twist on the big screen yet. We have, many times over, and thus we don't go and see it. That's the issue really, it is much much harder to reach "veteran" gamers because we expect more. We will probably understand games much faster than others, thus taking more pleasure in "beaten the game/content" for nothing more than the sake of doing so.

I'm not saying this TEH TRUTH but mostly I think it comes down to the glass is half full/empty analogy, only time is a relative term and thus the longer time pass the larger the glass becomes and the harder it is to fill.

You're reasoning skills are OP and must be nerfed immediately.

But in all seriousness, I completely agree with you.

When I first started Planeside 2, I was one of the worst players of all time. It's not that I can't shoot or fight - far from it! It's just that I played it more like my childhood FPS games such as Halo and Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and not like the game it was. After dieing a massive number of times and accomplishing exactly nothing, instead of crying "unbalanced" and leaving, I reevaluated my playstyle and tactics. I didn't find the game to be at fault, even if it was, and after going through a massive overhaul, I now find myself to be fairly competent at Planetside 2.

The whole point of that story is that a little bit of thinking and drive will get you infinitely farther than bowing down to the admittedly low-standards of modern society where everyone's a winner and gets a medal for trying.

They didn't have talks about stuff like that because they didn't have ONLINE play and you played with 3 friends in the same room.

So if you didn't like a item you just said.

"Ok, No one use odd job in Golden Eye 64 because he is too small and is has an advantage do to small hit boxes and the problem is fixed. THIS IS THE SAME THING WE DO TODAY. It just got sorted about by the 4 people in the room instead of online

If you could have played online people would have been spamming oddjob and you were be saying that it's unfair.

I had a detailed reply ready to go but realised it'd simply anger a lot of Planetside 2 forum users so I'll shorten it to this instead:

I completely agree with you. I feel the same.

I agree with the OP on most points and unfortunately this problem is not confined to video games.

The self esteem movement has helped to create a generation of narcissists who are never at fault and take any form of criticism as disrespect and insults.

Instead of; fail - analyze - adapt - try again.
It's; fail - whine - complain - rage.

If this doesn't change we will be screwed in a few generations.

Anyone read Ender's Game? I can't imagine Ender whining about anything being unfair or imbalanced. One day we may have games that are intentionally unfair or imbalanced. Then we will know we have reached a new level.

I know this is Planetside 2 and it's for entertainment but the OP's topic got me thinking about larger issues.

Agreed.

Over years I have seen way too much of "things were better back in my time" crap. Perhaps, my generation and those close to it should ask themselves how much we contributed to changes in gaming fashion, rather than blame it all on kids and new players.

Also, I do not see how this thread contributes to PS2. Makes me wonder, where are now overzealous moderators who remove wanna-be helpful threads (i.e. Radar, or something along those lines)? Seems like all is good, as long as you do not shed light on PS2 dirty underwear.

While I will agree with the sentiment of the OP that today's community can be a little immature, I would also like to add that criticism of a game that you like is very important as well.

No game is ever perfect, because the humans who created it are not perfect.

Objective criticism is important in order to perfect the game and make it even better and more enjoyable for all.

The only way to improve is to critize yourself, but only in an objective and thoughtful manner(and I will admit, most of the criticism directed at the balance here on this forum is anything but objective),

In most cases it's actually fail - analyze - adapt - fail - complain - rage - buy a shtogun

I feel like I've been on both sides of this.
There was a time when i didn't care about balance and just played to have fun.
Unfortunately that changed over time and i find it hard to play something these days without being bothered by perceived balance issues.
If i could go back to just having fun without analyzing everything I'd do it in an instant.

I'm even not sure why this changed but i can say with some certainty that it did.

Im 44 and part of the "first gen gamers" and yes the new generation are all part of the "every kid gets a trophy" generation. Blame parents of my age for them, they all have been told they are special and that anything that goes wrong is not their fault.
Its not just a problem with gaming.

Yes, people are a little too quick to call BS. Gamers this day are slow to adapt if ever. Take amerish as an example, imo its the best and most balanced continent, cliffs balance air and tanks, and it makes for great infantry battles. But because its a "pain" to move around certain people refuse to play on it. There is a lot of hate for anyone that says L2p, but todays gamer needs to l2p.

As far as up and op though, back in the day (mine as well man) games were single player, in the multiplayer days its a little more important, some stuff is UP and OP, but its often exaggerated.

I 100% agree with this paragraph, very well written.

I'm slightly older than you, yet the words OP and UP exist in my vocabulary. I think pnkdth explained why such things exist in my vocabulary, " The old cantankerous veterans who want more than just a game. We want depth and a more complex experience." When it comes to choosing to play a game I sometimes have unrealistically high expectations. This is why I'm a big advocate of balanced game play, added with a bit of competitive experience in my background. I want to play games that take skill, not games where you choose the most OP weapon in the game to easily kill your opponents with as little skill as possible. I agree with most of your original post, but I reject this idea, as something that only the younger generation of gamers posses as a quality. There are many qualities that the younger generation of gamers have that I dislike very much, but this isn't one of them. There is a big difference between gamers like me, who crunch the numbers do the research and in game testing to determine if something is OP vs. other gamesr who die to a certain weapon once then come onto the forums and claim that its OP.

If you want to defend the flaws of the game by saying that players can't "man up" then you are selling yourself short and allowing game companies to produce sub par content while stealing money out of your wallet (maybe your part of the problem and not the solution with this thinking). Honestly, this is the core reason why many games these days have been lacking in quality. You have to stand up for yourself when you don't agree with something instead of just accept it and roll over. There is a good reason why I took a 2 month break from the game and have only spent $15 bucks on PS2.If you talk to older gamers who played PS1 (like myself) there are really good reasons why they consider it to be much better than PS2 and it isn't just the nostalgic effect. There are actual reasons like more depth, more strategy, mechanics that were tailored for players with higher skill (higher TTK), the uniqueness of loadouts...just to name a few. If you want to say that I need to "man up" and accept the game how it is, I strongly disagree with you.

HEAR. HEAR!

Agree completely. I love Amerish. Esamir is second and Indar last.