Watching content before actually doing it?

[Zfz]

I think it's a result of the modern fast-food gaming design. Every action you do in a game is more or less directly tied to some reward.

Those trash packs before bosses? There's no point. Bad design just to waste people's time. We want only bosses. New content that gives lower item level? There's no point. Devs must be out of their minds to expect us to have fun without rewards!

And as game companies bow to players' wishes, now players demand even more. Bosses should be one-shot, or you're wasting time! And this time round, we point our guns at each other, not at the game companies anymore. Stop wasting my time! We exclaim. Hence RNG is taken out of encounters.

Gaming isn't about the process anymore, it's all about the tangible reward at the end.

That is also why we go for the simplest, easiest tactics all the time. Rush tactics. Skipping trash. Enrage tactics. To us, the game consists of just that coffer with the piece of shiny loot. Be damned if you make me move even an inch more than I absolutely have to, to get to open that coffer. Be damned if you waste my time! I wish all of you can be replaced by NPCs who bow to my every wish!

If you want to waste my time, you go back and play your single player games! Multi-player means doing your best to serve my interests!



....sorry, ran out of steam. It's hard to write anything meaningful with an empty stomach it seems.

[Nabiri]

Gaming isn't about the process anymore, it's all about the tangible reward at the end.

That is also why we go for the simplest, easiest tactics all the time. Rush tactics. Skipping trash. Enrage tactics. To us, the game consists of just that coffer with the piece of shiny loot. Be damned if you make me move even an inch more than I absolutely have to, to get to open that coffer. Be damned if you waste my time! I wish all of you can be replaced by NPCs who bow to my every wish!

If you want to waste my time, you go back and play your single player games! Multi-player means doing your best to serve my interests!

I'm still unaccustomed to the selfish/rush-mentality of this game.
Very few people seem to have time to offer even a minute of advice.

I came from FFXI, and I'm used to a community where people help each other and want to improve together.
If someone was new we gave them a few tips. If we failed we tried again and offered more advice, until we succeeded - together. We wanted the whole team to win. Communication was important, (unlike XIV where people seem quiet and expectant that everyone knows everything).
In 8 years of playing don't remember ever being in a group where someone was kicked because they didn't know what they were doing - it was unheard of.
It was all about having fun together, not only with linkshells, but among strangers.. It wasn't all "ME! ME! ME! HURRY! YOU'RE WASTING MY TIME!" I never really worried about a reward because I was always enjoying myself.
I must say, I miss the camaraderie and team work of 'the good old days.'

-

I can't say I blame the selfish/rush-mentality on the players alone though. I believe that the game was designed in such a way that it was bound to happen.. If people have to do dungeons 10s or 100s of times to get the gear that they want, it's an environment that will breed impatience.
(Not to mention, the reason I hate dungeons..)

[Dark-Saviour]

Those trash packs before bosses? There's no point. Bad design just to waste people's time. We want only bosses. New content that gives lower item level? There's no point. Devs must be out of their minds to expect us to have fun without rewards!

This is one of the things that kind of irks me.

In my experience, there's always this subset of the community that will point at the hardest content and call it babby-mode while demanding more and more of a 'challenge' since too high a percentage of the player-base has become capable of doing everything.
If you make the claim that they only want something harder with new rewards because they like to ensure that others don't have what they do, they'll repeatedly insist that it's not about the rewards and they solely want something more challenging.
If the developer then puts out harder content without any new reward, the response suddenly becomes, "WTF? That's retarded! Why would I suffer through something so hard if I don't get anything for it?"

:-/

That said, as for the main issue being discussed in this topic, the biggest issue in my eyes is the game design. When you have this whole 'carrot-on-a-stick' style of linear progression with all the rewards back-loaded, and then make the content such that it requires other players to do well, it just invites the mentaility that they're nothing but tools (and a 'necessary evil') for each person to accomplish their goals.
It's partially why I prefer the whole idea of little vertical progression, 'rewards' being distributed throughout the content, and levels/encounters that encourage 'playing alongside others' rather than completely relying on them. :-\

Edit: Also... I'm not fond of how pervasive wikis and video sites have become for these games in general. The fact that devs can now just assume you can just go find the info out of the game tends to lend itself towards lazy design with things being poorly implemented or described in-game. It hasn't been much of an issue here so far, but for other MMOs I've played, it's become a major annoyance...