Confusing Gear to Play as Learn to Play

One thing you will often hear in the world of MMOs in general and gaming at large is the term, learn to play. Now this can often be abbreviated many ways and many of you have probably seen the various ways it can be spelled, abbreviated and other ways such as L2P, lrn2ply, learn2play and quite possibly many more out there that I don’t know or have tuned out not to even bother remembering them. In a previous blog, I stated in the context of the phrase, learn to play, it is generally used as an insult by some people to denote how much better they are than some people. But in the reality that the actual phrase falls in, learning to play like those players denote, generally doesn’t mean what they think that phrase means.

Let me clarify a bit; in past games, your actual skill and ability determined a lot of your playing power in various games long ago. However, in this day and age your skills and abilities have relatively been replaced by automated systems, assistance programs or even the lowest of the low, what is known as pay2win type deals that actually give a significant boost to your character’s actual growth or abilities. In these type of systems there is really no learning curve so the term Learn to Play doesn’t even remotely apply. This is what is not as well-known as a term called Gear to Play.

Now gearing to play takes many forms in games these days, the most common of which is obviously in the title of the description; getting gear for your character to increase their relative power or give them more damage in their attacks or more useful abilities. This is an obvious point of that statement but there is an additional layer to this, one that is becoming more prevalent in games in general but has been a staple of MMOs for a long time, which is the leveling up system which provides increases to the characters relative power in itself, but when these two types of systems are combined the general concept of learning to play as many would present it is completely thrown out the window.

Now in gear based progression systems, gear is very powerful. In many cases they make up a huge chunk of the character development. The level based progression generally uses levels as a sort of small benchmark for this, with increasing power on a relative curve system, with the curve generally spiking higher the higher level a character goes. But even in games where levels just only unlock things like new combos or new guns, levels are still important because access to those new types of gear are important to the overall growth of the character, and in many cases some of the powers, combinations or gear items are so powerful that progression through the game otherwise would be monumentally difficult at best, to near impossible at worst.

While “learning to play” does have a small part in these types of systems, over all in the longevity of the game, they play a very small part and at the end of the day what determines your overall ability will be your level and your gear/abilities you are given to that character. This presents the issue that skill is less important to the overall play experience and more emphasis on your time investment to find items.

Now is this solely the fault of developers with these types of systems in play? Not really, again this stems back to the whiney, self-entitled lot that we gamers actually are. Gamers are highly competitive, no matter what they claim, and many out there can’t handle the fact that someone could actually be better than they are by default, so they’ve demanded that developers put in overt handicaps into the system at large to give a leg up for players that either refuse to or just can’t improve themselves to get better. Is it a bad system? No, not in the least, but sometimes things just go too far.

Now, of course, when you take a step back and look at everything as a whole, you realize the entire system blew up in the faces of the whining mass of gamers, because instead of it being a learning system where you utilize placement, timing and such to their fullest, now it’s a time based system of investment and those that have more time will be ahead of those that don’t. The end result, the playing field is now even wider a part as the skilled players now has the handicaps on top of their own skills to give them an even greater boost. The result, gamers inadvertently, through our own petulant demands (and we were rude about it on many occasions, which makes me wonder how devs could stand it) have created the gaming world at large where it isn’t a matter of just learning the system anymore it’s also a matter of putting in the time to get the gear to play.

In short, gamers and developers need to take a large step back. Learning curves have been replaced by easy hand outs and gearing systems that try to replace the need of skill with either easy lock on targeting, insane power boosting systems, or just giving out insane weapons that completely replace any need for relative skill anymore. In short, learn to play practically doesn’t even exist anymore especially in most MMOs. It’s gear to play or go home. Skill hasn’t really been a part of such systems for a long time as gear progression systems continuously replace the need of learning skills and abilities to actually improve yourself.

Being Casual is no Excuse for Being Incompetent

You know, it’s a growing thing I’ve been seeing lately. I have nothing against casual players. In fact I actively encourage people to play at their own time and put life before a game, in so much that I think the guilds I form in games have the most lax rules concerning actual attendance and so forth. However, there is an ever growing group of people that trumpet this casual banner and use it as an excuse to be utterly stupid or incompetent. These people aren’t exactly what I call casuals, so much as people using the casual banner to try and explain away their own ineptness or incompetence and try to make believe that the things they hate (that tend to expose their incompetence) is what other casual players hate. This is where I’ve come up with my latest saying of being casual is no excuse to be incompetent.

Really, I would rather say stupid, but I am being somewhat nice about it. But there is a lot of people lately that are using the casual banner as an excuse to be absolutely incompetent players, and they try to disguise this excuse behind things of such as “I don’t have time to learn everything about a game” or “It’s unfair I have to spend so much time doing these things” or “It’s my time and money, I can play however I like.” So we will examine some of these excuses.

Now, one of the biggest trumpets I’ve seen from these type of people that hide under the casual banner are the ones that play MMOs and multiplayer geared games and don’t like to interact with people or team. This is absolutely stupid. No, you can’t argue it. These are MMOs. They are designed to bring you to interact with other people. There are plethoras of single player games that do the exact thing you are looking for. If you ride the excuse that you hate interacting with other people in a mass media experience, then really, MMOs are not for you and you are already demonstrating the key malfunction of your argument.

But then people trumpet my money and time is my own, and thus you can’t tell me how to spend it. This is true, but then, so is the money and time of the people you are joining with and showing your utter incompetence towards. I don’t give two shits how you spend your time and screw up your character in the game. But when you join a team and start ruining everyone else’s time, no you are not helping. You are demonstrating that you are incompetent and you don’t deserve to do the content that those people are working towards. You are the reason people sit there and tell you to learn2play. It isn’t there fault you refuse to work as a team player. If you are so inconsiderate of other people’s time and energy they are devoting to what they enjoy, then why should they consider yours? Don’t complain when you refuse to be a team player in a team based activity and people don’t respect you when you are not respecting them. And don’t complain that you can’t get the new hotness because you refuse to be a team player.

Another common excuse is that they say they don’t have time to learn these things. This is so many ways of retarded and stupid I don’t know where to begin. Basic common sense doesn’t require time and much effort to apply. Secondly, it doesn’t take much to learn that 2 and 2 equals 4. Developers have made the games they create so easy to understand these days that it can feel insulting on many levels because they are catering to people that shouldn’t be catered to. If you can’t take the 2 minutes to look at read the description and understand the basics of your characters abilities and class and so forth, then no, it isn’t lack of time, it’s you’re being lazy. If you want to be in game activities that require teaming and being a team player, then take the time to learn your character, role and abilities.

Another common excuse is, I don’t want to play this way. Then why the hell did you play the class to begin with? There are classes obviously better suited to the role you wanted. Don’t sit there and try to pin excuses of game mechanics or flavor or any other non-sense on your ineptness to actually picking the class and role you wanted. This goes doubly so when you go in saying you will do something but aren’t. You are really wasting people’s times doing that.

Some people of course try to say that it's unfair they can't get the best stuff without needing a group. These are lazy people. In short they want everything handed to them instead of actually just going out and playing the game or learning to be a team player. Honestly, these are the type of people that MMOs just aren't for, and for whatever reason they keep playing them. It baffles me.

But really, there are a ton of excuses these days that people try to hide behind for their reason being incompetent. Some don’t even want to communicate; they stand there like a timid little mouse and act like everyone else is supposed to magically do things for them. And people that try to use the term casual to hide their own incompetence really irks me, because it insults the actual casual players that enjoy playing, and I know are damn good at playing when they can play. I don’t ever accept people telling me that just because they are casual means they are a bad player. No, you are a bad player because you refuse to actually improve yourself, so stop trying to hide behind being a casual and insulting people for it.

So in the end, I will say it this way. Being casual is no excuse for being incompetent or stupid. There are many people out there that are casual that are truly good despite limited time to play. So don’t even try to lump yourself in that group of casual. Most casuals actually take time to learn, but the few who don’t tend to give the casual group a bad name.