The issue isn’t sensitivity, but rather accuracy. I’d challenge anyone to come up with a meaningful and well-constructed study that could actually measure the overall intelligence of one generation over another. Even the concept of a generation is flawed enough that there isn’t a meaningful way to analyze it. And don’t even get me started on what intelligence is.
How we feel, subjectively, about an abstract concept, is something we’re all entitled to. It’s when we lose the ability to distinguish between our feelings – which can’t be proven or disproven – and external facts – which require a pretty rigorous system of examination to establish – that things break down.
I suppose that if I’m sensitive to anything, it’s sloppy thinking.
Like I said, smart isn’t the right word, but just to add to your point: not everything is decidable in a scientific study. It all comes down to how good the sampling was (you can NEVER know), the boundaries of the research scope and even the used definitions.
To clarify, use intelligence here as: “the ability to rapidly acquire more knowledge”.
Also integrated with wisdom: “the ability to use previous knowledge effectively”.
Current gens, anecdotally, are less intelligent/wise, according to the above definition, due to how they were taught and the environment they were raised in.
Yeah I said in my post that there is a time where outside research to chase challenge is acceptable. It becomes depth and complexity that is good for the game. The internet can offer a better information stream because there are hundreds of thousands of us, and a few hundred developers with time constraints. Of course they outsource the top end junk to the community and those passionate about it.
OPs point was specifically for new players - which I disagree with. I find the new player experience inadequate and hectic.
You kinda demonstrated the point I wanted to get across with this. Yes, to learn something you have to actually do it. The question is where is the starting line and that line is a whole lot more blurred than “just do it.”
Gaming literacy is a real subject. I highly recommend reading up on it. Because most likely the folks struggling the most are the ones who not only try first, but also research and look things up. Which might actually also be part of the problem.
Remember that folks who started out with WoW had access to sites like Thottbot, an absolutely horrendous site with really, REALLY poor information and optimization. Youtube was barely becoming a thing when WoW launched.
Now in the media information landscape we live in, not only is Youtube a real thing, so is Google. So is the general principle that all information we can want is at our fingertips. Note that I said “want”, not “need.” Because sometimes we know what we want and we look for it relentlessly but we miss out on the thing we need to find in order to know what it is we are looking for.
Forums, Reddit, YouTube, social media in general become excellent tools to ask these questions but they also provide contradicting answers to a lot of the questions we want to know or questions that we want to ask but don’t know enough to properly ask the right things yet.
Two examples would be “what is threat and how does it work” as well as “where can I find a NPC or a vendor using this currency that I have.” Threat is a weird thing in WoW but it is crucial to understand the concept of tanking which is required for group content, but for general gameplay if a vendor is found in multiple places at different times then that’s also going to become an issue. See this thread here:
These questions aren’t as simple just because we know what the answers are and where we should look to find the answers to things we don’t know. That’s part of gaming literacy, and especially as more and more games have to keep in mind that search engines and just video clips (not guides) are more and more relevant and prevalent for younger audiences.
Better question for you. Why do you care? If you’re so intelligent that you grasped everything the first time it appeared in front of you in wow then that means you don’t need anyone else or you have hand picked your crew of high IQ individuals and don’t need the lowly peons and their dumbness. Oh great one please teach us the ways. /s
I remember wow launch. I also remember running to the 2nd town as a NElf and seeing the giant tree guardian. I failed to see his name was green. I freaked out. Logged out of the NElf and said nope to all that. I went horde and didn’t look back until Cataclysm. Was I dumb? Sure. But much like those gamers you think are dumb and won’t look things up or aren’t putting in effort. You have zero clue how their brain works. What maybe simple for you may be a puzzle for others. Myself I have ADHD, and most likely autistic. To much going on around me and I can simply not see a big flashing message in front of my screen until my brain gets to that section of thought.
When WoW came out it was garbage, and necessitated sites like thotbot existing. Now it isn’t and it doesn’t.
The rest of the premise is simply nonsense; we weren’t any better when games first started coming out and becoming mainstream, games were just, in general, a LOT simpler.
You’ve used all the hallmarks of a “back in my day” argument then tried to claim that’s not what you’re doing… but it’s exactly what you did. Having a game teach you its mechanics inside the game is, typically, a good thing. Exile’s Reach may or may not fail at that goal, but it doesn’t make it a worse goal than original wow’s ridiculous “random garbage everywhere” approach.
Games that don’t “hold your hand” generate a never-ending torrent of youtube videos in the place of ascii files and gamefaqs, and those videos get millions and millions of views. Check on some of the popular Elden Ring videos. You call it spoon feeding, but a craptonne of people don’t like walking around games aimlessly looking for the point.
We grew up in the days of the nascent internet and the new generation grew up with the internet a big part of their lives.
I am not saying this to illustrate a difference in attention span (I have ADHD, so that’d be rich of me) but to point out that gamers these days do have a GIANT WEALTH of information they can access at any time for guidance and sometimes it just makes more sense to put waypoints in a game instead of letting everyone figure it out.
Some single-player games still dig their heels in, though. Dragon’s Dogma/2 does not have waypoints or even convenient fast travel. You are going to hoof it and run into gryphons and like it (or not like it much at all).
WASD, that wasn’t even a thing when I started to play video games, it was always the arrow keys or num-pad. To this day I still only use the arrow keys for movement. As far as camera angles, I hate dungeons, especially hallways because my camera angle is constantly getting blocked/reset by obstacles.
As far as big flashy lights etc., it really depends on the players settings and if they are using the standard or a modified UI because some guide told them to. I know the UI I use doesn’t allow me to see things that normally would be flashing on the standard UI.
Also depends on if they choose to play the classic or new starter island as one will teach you basic controls while the other is for more experienced players. Now grouping with me, you might at times think I have an ID 10 T issue, but I also can’t play at peak performance anymore because of amputated fingers.
One thing I do dislike about Blizzard is they tell you to go to a Fan website or watch a Twitcher/YouTuber for information about their game. It used to be Game Masters or other players would help you in game, but now it’s crickets from both. So yes, I can see why sometimes a person that just starting might have a harder time.
I can copy/paste a reasonably optimal build, I have lists of BiS items to target, add-ons that feed me a rotation, and any achievement I want to target has a convenient guide.
Who doesn’t have their hand held in this game? It’s honestly the people that know about these resources that have their hands held the most. Not new players.
You hit level 70 now and there are so many quests to take in Valdraken that you could easily waste weeks doing quests that give you useless gear, and barely any help figuring out what you actually need to do.
Then they throw you into dungeons with experienced players who trivialize all of the content so hard that you can’t learn anything… and you’re 100% useless compared to anyone with gear.
Then you do LFR and it’s the same thing.
Then with your new found completely unwarranted confidence you go to try a Mythic 0 and nobody will invite you to their group. So you make your own group and end up inviting a bunch of scrubs who don’t even belong in heroics dungeons and the Mythic 0 dungeon rips your head off and crams it in your out hole.
Then you realize you can download addons, and the addons make you realize you are 1.) useless and 2.) terrible… and you can’t even fathom why the game lets you even play without them.
Lord have mercy on you if you try to PvP.
I say this as someone who has been playing since 2005, and having witnessed many friends first experiences. This game doesn’t hold your hand. It looks like it’s holding your hand, but it’s actually just setting you up to fail miserably… then it insults you with simultaneously extremely complex progression requiring literal sims to improve… with insultingly stupid talent tree options and the false security of how easy LFD/LFR is.
New players COULD look things up more, but there isn’t any fun to be had in playing a video game if you cheat by looking up all the answers before you play.
The real problem is that Blizzard made a game that doesn’t actually teach players how to play effectively – for that matter the default UI literally does not display the actual information you need to play well in a useable manner… Also other players have zero patience for anyone who isn’t playing exactly like their favorite streamer.
tell me the last time you waited for the tank to hit the boss with 3 sunders before opening up on it as dps.
the game has changed since then. like, a LOT. obv…
some specs are relatively straightforward and some have 20+ ability openers. no one intrinsically knows that.
the original talent trees were pretty straightforward, although super expensive to respec.
with TWW, we will have a class tree, a spec tree, and hero talents. how is a new person supposed to go node by node to figure out what to do?
even deciding what to play has gotten more complicated. DK, monk, evoker, DH. all added since launch. each are very different classes than any of the original classes/specs.
gearing systems are more complicated with multiple resources needed to upgrade gear. crafted gear isn’t part of the upgrade track system.
secondary stats have expanded.
the encounters themselves have gotten way more complicated.
usually If Im re-trying a spec I havent messed with since all these changes, I’ll use that default build as a base and go from there.
I think any new player could do the same and once they start toying around with the talent trees they’ll find what they prefer.
Exactly.
This game is huge. Nothing wrong with helping new players out.
people really ruin the concept of MASSIVELY MULTI PLAYER as far as new gamers coming into WoW.
Whining that they need help with this HUGE game. All while the OP and everyone in this thread agreeing with him are using addon ‘helps’ themselves lol
Yep. Everyone wants to imagine themselves as the guy that did it all on their own when in reality they all had a hand somewhere (usually many places) along the way.
When WoW first came out, leveling was part of the overall experience and endgame content was limited to only a handful of people. So I suspect leveling content - quests mostly - had to be more immersive and engaging (e.g. go hunt for X at Y location without help from map markers).
Over time, WoW’s endgame became more accessible and leveling was what you had to do to get to the “good stuff”, so Blizzard gave us markers and other visual aids to help the process go by quicker.