[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Psychology of skill in MMORPG's

[cruise]

I've just found this quote on the City of Heroes boards (from
Arcanaville, for those that know/care), and thought it raised an
interesting point:

"I've often said that if you don't have the courage to stick up for
defense, which means sticking up for missing, you have no business
making a defense set, or Defense itself, at all: you're simply
unqualified. But its worth noting that this frustration with not hitting
seems to be confined to MMOs, and perhaps even just this game alone. In
FPS games, there is a presumption that you're going to miss most of the
shots you take, because its presumed that a good player is going to be
trying very hard to make you miss. I've seen FPS tournaments where it
appears the average number of shots that land is about one in ten, or
less. In effect, the targets are eluded. This is not a simple matter of
people not wanting to miss, this is a more complex psychology of people
believing that the opponent has no right to make them miss and I believe
that is a more complex psychological issue related to how players
perceive how skill affects the game. Someone that is applying
significant skill to make you miss is somehow acceptable: someone who
pushed a button to make you miss is intolerable. That's not a simple
problem to solve. I'm not sure I would even want to solve it in the
general case: I'm not sure this points to an irreconcilable schism
between players who can accept the strictures of MMO combat in a
simplified system like CoH, and ones who cannot, and therefore will
not."

In an online game where skills are learnt and improved based on numbers
in the game (and not actual player skill), is there an inherent
expectation on behalf of players that they should be able to use them?

Using simplified CoH mechanics momentarily to illustrate the point:

Player A has an attack power, "Flares". Player B has a defense power,
"Deflection Bubble".

Everytime player A adds an accuracy enhancement to his attack, he
expects to miss less. Everytime player B adds a defence enhancement to
her power, she expects to be missed more.

If they both upgrade roughly in tandem, neither will notice a change in
their powers' performance. Whose expectation, if either, should win out?
Is this a problem created by the escalating power current grind-based
games are based on? Is it restricted to abilities where player skill is
not involved, as the quote suggests?