Karmapowered
Augur
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2010
- Messages
- 512
Where do you set your EASY mode in games ? Should any quest-markers be perma-banned, even in video-games in which they absolutely make sense, like WoW, because absolutely no one fucking cares about the WoW lore, or talking to its NPCs for more time than needed to get the daily ? Should someone be labelled as "mongoloid" by their game because they had never played a cRPG before in their life, and suddenly wanted to give it a go in easy mode, which is like, a sensible thing to do for most ?
Where do you set your HARDCORE mode in games ? Oblivion-like HARDCORE (EDIT : this has me chuckling), where monsters get level-scaled and buffed with 2/3/5x health and skills, but have such a terrible AI anyway that one still can sneak-kill them from miles away, provided one knew how to proceed/abuse the system ? Fallout HARDCORE (IIRC), where with the increased difficulty, you get more encounters, and hence potentially level up faster ?
While I can concur with the general sentiment that dumbed down games are BAD, and that we have more than enough of the "I want Life to be easy" people in our population (it's a great strip by the way, thank you, saved for future references), I laugh at anyone pretending that there is a real challenge to be found in a single-player cRPG to date, whatever it is.
Challenge in a Blizzard guaranteed online ironman-mode game ? Maybe, sure.
Challenge in a PvP-enabled MMORPG with perma-death (or at least some sort of equipment loss) ? Yes, definitely.
Challenge in chess games against a proficient AI, since they do exist now ? Now we're talking.
Any other challenge/game, and I can see most of the so-called hardcore players running to the first gamefaqs site to look for ways to lessen, or completely avoid the challenge (EDIT : also see the recent Age of Decadence turmoil about challenging fights, and how much even seemingly RPG vets in general liked them). Rightfully so I even would say, since 9 times out of 10, the challenge in modern games is just pure *frustration* to start with. Challenge should NOT necessarily = to frustration.
If the frustration induced by a challenge leads you to a stronger desire to overcome said challenge, and generally improve yourself, then it's a good frustration/challenge. Playing against a skilled oppponent in chess makes me want to learn better strategies. Getting my ass beat by a human player in PvP, and pay the price for it, makes me want to revise my techniques, and improve my dexterity in the future. One can hardly claim that most devices that generate frustration in modern cRPGs are of such a sort however, or we just don't play the same games.
Also, I don't get why people start moaning about games which offer more options, to lessen the effects of some overly inventive game-designers in matters of needlessly frustrating gameplay. If some people keep finding their challenge in drawing maps of their antiquated dungeons with a pen and paper, or relish in spending hours fighting invisible and respawning encounters every other step, so be it, but please do give me a fucking option to enable my auto-map, with visible encounters (preferably after checking that the tracking skill of the ranger in my party is up to par). In any case, more options are GOOD to have, since players can switch them on or off at their own discretion, at leisure. How could that be popamole bad ? We're all adults, who know how they want to play their games, right ? RIGHT ?
If the true goal was to increase the challenge of our games, instead of the self-centered raving and bitching that has been going on for quite some pages, we would do well to start clamoring for much improved AIs in our cRPGs, for NPCs that have a deeper background, more human-like complex characters and agendas to them than the usual "Fear me because I am da EVIL sitting with 10000 hp in the last area of the last dungeon in the game!", or "Fetch me this, or that, then I'll be happy with ya".
Now that would be a real step towards the INCLINE, and that is something that Devs (looking at ya, Obsidian) can, and should provide challenge-craving players with.
Where do you set your HARDCORE mode in games ? Oblivion-like HARDCORE (EDIT : this has me chuckling), where monsters get level-scaled and buffed with 2/3/5x health and skills, but have such a terrible AI anyway that one still can sneak-kill them from miles away, provided one knew how to proceed/abuse the system ? Fallout HARDCORE (IIRC), where with the increased difficulty, you get more encounters, and hence potentially level up faster ?
While I can concur with the general sentiment that dumbed down games are BAD, and that we have more than enough of the "I want Life to be easy" people in our population (it's a great strip by the way, thank you, saved for future references), I laugh at anyone pretending that there is a real challenge to be found in a single-player cRPG to date, whatever it is.
Challenge in a Blizzard guaranteed online ironman-mode game ? Maybe, sure.
Challenge in a PvP-enabled MMORPG with perma-death (or at least some sort of equipment loss) ? Yes, definitely.
Challenge in chess games against a proficient AI, since they do exist now ? Now we're talking.
Any other challenge/game, and I can see most of the so-called hardcore players running to the first gamefaqs site to look for ways to lessen, or completely avoid the challenge (EDIT : also see the recent Age of Decadence turmoil about challenging fights, and how much even seemingly RPG vets in general liked them). Rightfully so I even would say, since 9 times out of 10, the challenge in modern games is just pure *frustration* to start with. Challenge should NOT necessarily = to frustration.
If the frustration induced by a challenge leads you to a stronger desire to overcome said challenge, and generally improve yourself, then it's a good frustration/challenge. Playing against a skilled oppponent in chess makes me want to learn better strategies. Getting my ass beat by a human player in PvP, and pay the price for it, makes me want to revise my techniques, and improve my dexterity in the future. One can hardly claim that most devices that generate frustration in modern cRPGs are of such a sort however, or we just don't play the same games.
Also, I don't get why people start moaning about games which offer more options, to lessen the effects of some overly inventive game-designers in matters of needlessly frustrating gameplay. If some people keep finding their challenge in drawing maps of their antiquated dungeons with a pen and paper, or relish in spending hours fighting invisible and respawning encounters every other step, so be it, but please do give me a fucking option to enable my auto-map, with visible encounters (preferably after checking that the tracking skill of the ranger in my party is up to par). In any case, more options are GOOD to have, since players can switch them on or off at their own discretion, at leisure. How could that be popamole bad ? We're all adults, who know how they want to play their games, right ? RIGHT ?
If the true goal was to increase the challenge of our games, instead of the self-centered raving and bitching that has been going on for quite some pages, we would do well to start clamoring for much improved AIs in our cRPGs, for NPCs that have a deeper background, more human-like complex characters and agendas to them than the usual "Fear me because I am da EVIL sitting with 10000 hp in the last area of the last dungeon in the game!", or "Fetch me this, or that, then I'll be happy with ya".
Now that would be a real step towards the INCLINE, and that is something that Devs (looking at ya, Obsidian) can, and should provide challenge-craving players with.
