Have Some People Lost Sight?

[Morsong]

Something has been on my mind for a while, and that something has been popping up more lately while watching PS2 videos and seeing some peoples reviews on PS2 coming out after the NDA dropping.

My question is this: Have some people lost the appreciation of playing an online game? Let me explain.

My first ever online multiplayer pc game was Starcraft. It boggled my mind. Being able to play with 5 other people on my 56k was incredible to me. It added so much depth and so much unpredictability being able to play with other human players. More importantly, it was so much damn fun.

During the years and up until now I have played many, many online games including many MMOs (Planetside one of my first). During this time I have come to notice that many people simply do not grasp or have the level of appreciation of what we once had.

After reading a lot of posts by some people it has made me a bit sad to see that some people have simply forgotten or haven't realized how amazing it is that we finally have this technology where we can have this much fun. Some people are so blinded by the little, scrutinizable things, that they have forgotten to look at the bigger picture.

All those years ago when the first Planetside came out it was amazing not only to me, but to everyone else that we had a virtual playground that large and that players could wreak havoc almost any way they pleased. The technology back then wasn't as good as what we have now, and it was just incredible. Today, it still is incredible to me.

The very fact that while in Planetside 2, that there are hundreds of human beings playing alongside/against you is incredible. The hundreds of bullets flying by you. The mosquito formation flying above your head. The tanks off to the right in warfare. The enemy squad galaxy dropping into your current base. The fact that this is all happening simultaneously and being caused by other human beings is just mind-boggling to me.

It seems to me that people have grown accustomed to todays technology, and rightfully they should. But somewhere during that time I have noticed that fewer people are appreciating how amazing this technology is.

I am not ranting, and I apologize for this wall of text, but I wanted to type this because I feel it is important to appreciate what this game is because it is a reflection on what we can and will accomplish. When you start to realize how amazing the scope of this game is, that alone I think will force people to really look past little things, and see everything as a whole. That alone will make PS2 and life itself, a bit more enjoyable.

So back to what my original question was: Do you see that as time goes on, more and more people are starting to expect things being handed to them, and losing the big picture of just how incredibly freakin amazing it is to play games like these? Or am I just talking out of my goofy little mouth?

[EvilNinjadude]

What you speak is the truth. Few people have seen the world as you once have, and even if I am not one of them, I can say that we should be grateful for what we have, and not desire what we do not.

Now that we have that out of the way, go back and play the game some more. It's fun.

[Crator]

I'm not certain I'm catching your exact point tbh, op. We are currently in closed beta. The fact that many are criticizing the design decisions is a great thing imo. Everyone that does talk about it wants to see the game be the best it can be. Most of the time that stuff is going to sound negative, especially since there's a lot of young people posting whom don't know how to properly write constructively. Coming off a bit harsh.

[Gammit10]

This is why I choose to live without indoor plumbing and electricity. If I didn't, I'm afraid I would stop appreciating them via my daily bowing and chanting rituals.

[Rabaan]

what you say is true, but sadly, as the technology increases, so do peoples standards and expectations

[Notser]

If you sit in awe of accomplishments then you will not have the ability or will to make new ones. This is 2012, we can very easily accomplish a game on a massive scale and have it perform like any other fps on the market. Bigger issue is the current trend of developers and publishers not wanting to take chances, all about the money. Critiquing is necessary to creation.

[Crator]

And yet I believe SOE is taking chances. They're doing to it slowly looks like imo. Being careful to check everything when making changes. Then crafting around them to eventually have a final product that pleases the masses. All us beta testers can do is critically critic everything and hope the devs hear us and make appropriate decisions to get the final product correct. Then they can move forwards with making new additions to an already great game.

[HeatLegend]

I agree 100% with you OP but as a response I'd quote this guy.

what you say is true, but sadly, as the technology increases, so do peoples standards and expectations

It affects most of us- although I'm not the sorta gamer that yells at people calling them noobs and whatever I still don't feel like I appreciate it as much anymore. If you eat Sushi once you'll endorse it to pieces and treasure it in your Taste-Bank, but if you start eating it every day of the week or so often it'll just turn into something you just expect is happening every day, same old same old.

[Boone]

If you sit in awe of accomplishments then you will not have the ability or will to make new ones. This is 2012, we can very easily accomplish a game on a massive scale and have it perform like any other fps on the market. Bigger issue is the current trend of developers and publishers not wanting to take chances, all about the money. Critiquing is necessary to creation.

not a s easy as u think

[Kipper]

You can only really appreciate having something if you can remember the time when you didn't have it. The young 'uns just don't know they're born.

I remember the first time I hooked up a couple of Atari ST's to play co-op in a flight simulator. It was a faff. It required the machines to be in the same room - so someone had to bring one from their house, we linked together by a stretch of what passed for patch cable back then, and fiddled with some not very friendly settings to get them to talk. It wasn't something that you did very often because it was a lot of messing about and it was more of an afterthought than the reason a game existed. Fun nonetheless.

Skip forward a few years and I remember being pretty amazed that I could type and chat real time with people from all over the world. Those were the days when everyone online was reasonably well educated and polite on account of it being mostly university students and early adopters.

Then skip forward again to the first time I logged into an MMO - Ultima Online - and saw the mass of players all around the bank, chatting, swapping items, sadly killing each other needlessly in some cases (and so griefers and trolls were born, it was full on PvP back then and you had no choice about it).

Anyway, yeah, what I'm saying is - at the age of 35, I've grown up as the technology has grown up around it - mobile phones being another example. I didn't get my first one until adulthood and it was a brick that made calls - texting hadn't even taken off. We could play snake. Now, there are kids in junior school with iPhones - way more powerful than most of the computers I ever owned when I was their age and running far more impressive games than the computers could.

Even I don't stop to appreciate the technology though. Think too long about what we have these days - the fact that you can click a button and log into a world populated by living, breathing humans and start the virtual killing etc. Frankly, it blows my mind.

To todays youngsters though, its just normal.

By the time they get to be older, the next technology revolution will have happened. Maybe it won't be mobile phones and internets - maybe they'll look back to a time when you had to drive your own car, or when personal flying machines weren't in everyday usage, or something. Who knows?

I think its great tho :)

[SUBARU]

Planetside 1 was a great game Ps2 ? The book is still open ,but has along way to go

[Syphus]

Planetside 1 was a great game Ps2 ? The book is still open ,but has along way to go

Actually, the consensus is that Planetside was a meh game, but it's scale and strategy made it worth playing.

Someone said that criticizing is what you're supposed to do in beta, but see that's not exactly the problem. The problem isn't that people are giving constructive criticism in an intelligent way that is useful feedback. The problem is that people are whining, throwing hissy fits, and using terms such as "completely broken" and "utterly horrible" and other types of hyperbole while offering nothing of substance.

[Skar]

i am a completly new player and what has drawn me to the game (besides totalbiscuit) was when i first really realised that the all these tanks and aircraft in the videos i saw are actual human beings (for killing and fighting along) and not just deco for me while i walk by to find an objective.

[Hamma]

+1 to the OP and Kipper, great posts. I think about this all the time.