Also I think games, in the sense of campaigns, tend to be shorter—I believe in the episode I mentioned Adventure Paths for Pathfingder, and each one is a substantial series of adventures, but it has a definite end to it and the assumption is clearly that you’ll start a new AP with different characters.
Which in turn means less pressure to port a character, because maybe you’ve moved to a new town or whatever but you don’t have to worry about everyone else having a character they’ve played for ten years while you’re the only new PC. (I remember arguments about whether PCs should ever be allowed to start above first level, and the grognards were firmly in favour of “no, let them be spectators and gain lots of XP by watching the old hands at work”.)
Considering this it may also just be a side-effect of reducing barriers to entry.
The hobby feels like it’s moved quite a way from “skilled play” as a wargaming relic.
There may be an element back to adversarial GMing in this as well. If the play is adversarial then the rules need to be clear and exhaustive and players have pressure to be familiar quickly.
Yes; it’s one of my niggles about GURPS that designing an effective character is a skill which can be learned. I remember D&D3 players saying you had to lay our all your planned advances at character gen time. Etc.