@Seppli said:
I simply find the whole "I'm in it for the fun." excuse for being a bad player absolutely void. Developing skills is always part of the fun of pretty much everything in life.It's great expectations that are to the detriment of my enjoyment. The moment I expect my fellow man to be as good as me - I'll be disappointed. The moment I expect to be better than everybody else - I'll be disappointed. The trick is to keep expectations at bay and maintain high levels of attention and care and thought throughout.
I full well know I'm not 'the best', but I certainly strife to do my best and get better. As soon as I lose that pursuit of excellence, I have to move on. Sloppy gameplay is a clear indication of fatigue. In the case of an MMO like SW:TOR, I'll google my class and read a guide or two and some forum posts. If I'm actually raiding in a high-end PvE guild, I'd do a lot more of that. Nobody expects more than basic understanding of core mechanics and plain common sense in a PUG environment. Hell - I can stand stupid people in PUGs for the brief time I spend with them. I can't stand being in a steady raidgroup with complete failures though.
Hence, for higher end gameplay, be it PvE or PvP, find a guild which takes the 'weeding out' seriously enough to keep certain personnel standards. Usually competent and reliable players are good people too.
What you say about expectations is true. That's why I think people should find like-minded people to play with. Games that focus on co-operative multiplayer, should, in my opinion, provide an easy way to do this. Different servers to suit different ambitions, for example.
Developing skills isn't necessarily a part of the fun. Not for me, anyway. Sure, if you aim to be good at something further down the line, then yes, you need to learn stuff. If I want to work in a specific profession, I have to get a degree in it, or work my way up the ladder. If I want to be a ninja, I have to start working on my martial arts skills. But stuff like that takes months, years, even decades to learn. I'll play a game for a few days, usually. If it's an mmo, a few weeks, probably. After that I'll forget about it. Well, about the mechanics, anyway. If the game is good, the experience will stay with me.
Games shouldn't require you to read shit on message boards just so you can enjoy the experience. Other forms of entertainment don't ask this of me, why should games be any different? Maybe there's just a fundamental difference in how I approach the medium to that of yours. I don't look at them like I would, say, a sport. For me a game is more like a book than a sport -- if I have to study literary theory to understand what the author is trying to say in their novel, then I view the novel as a failure. Knowledge is rarely a bad thing to have, but to expect "casuals" to be fully invested in every spare time activity they partake in, is simply too much to ask.
It's the equivalent of expecting someone who takes a couple of fitness boxing classes a week, in order to get into shape, to be a good boxer.
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