Difficulty and Punishment
" If you have nothing to lose, then it is purely mechanic challenge, which can be fun too, but ARPG games, at least this one, are more about exploring, and exploring without risk is not really interesting. At least for me, it is very fun to feel tension at each step, knowing there is can be some deadly danger after next door. If I can't lose anything, there can't be anything dangerous apriory. Last edited by Suchka_777#4336 on Dec 14, 2024, 6:52:42 PM
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" Exactly, my job is pretty challenging on the daily. But the last thing I want to do is come home and fire up some mind-numbingly dumb/simple game. Hence why D4 died for me long ago :P |
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" This post made me think about it a bit more. Maybe they could do something like a rarity reduction penalty per death? So you get -33% reduced rarity per death and then the map effectively 'soft bricks' after 3 attempts or some other arbitrary number. Just a thought. |
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" It not binary. It is about degrees. If you already lose the map, items and possibly a pathway to other content you were chasing, why ALSO make us lose hours of XP? If you want us to lose hours of XP on death, why ALSO make us lose maps, items and pathways? It seems like the double dip in punishment is what is being argued against, not the concept of punishment as such. |
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" Most likely. A rare breed as far as i can tell. " I think everyone enjoys overcoming challenges. What you mean, i think, is that there are people that enjoy facing challenges and those that dont. And on that point, yes i would agree. And while that line of argument wasnt mine to begin with, it is interesting to explore. My point was if it is a crucial part of something being challenging to be (serverly) punishing. And while there has to be consequences for failure (in order to be more meaningful on a negative-incentive dimension, besides the positve one), i dont think that punishment is the essential part of challenges. There can be competition and pride in achieving difficult things without further punishment for not achieving. Since you guys made some reasonable points: what is it with the part of punishment in regards to challenging games? Last edited by Alopex81#5818 on Dec 14, 2024, 9:15:46 PM
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" I guess it depends on your "Circle". I find what you say extremely uncommon, in my world/circle lol Then again, my circle are all engineers who happen to nerd out on the POE stats. Me? Im the anomaly of an "IT guy" who is also a "jock" ;P Last edited by NARK0SIS#0911 on Dec 14, 2024, 9:23:26 PM
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" We had 6 portals before. When juicing, if you ended up with some unforeseen circumstances or some absurd mod combo rolled on something in the map that basically turned it into an instakill monster that rivals any pinnacle boss, this was considered enough. The game is more rippy now and we are down to 1 attempt, what is the point of that? I mean fundamentally. What point does it serve? Because for me its not exciting to keep losing progress when the cause of it is most often going to come down to randomness or technical failure (I am no stranger to losing very expensive progress to dc's and lag). Why should anyone give any of their precious free time to entertainment that does not respect it, made by people who openly and proudly think wasting your time is a virtue. The devs have gone on record stating that they do not want to introduce quality of life features into the game because that will make it easier. This shows that there is a systemic failure in their company about balancing time investment with rewards and what difficulty means for their product. These have been a struggle for them every single league where they need to fine tune these properties after scathing feedback from the community and they never learn the lessons. At some point it becomes just exhausting and crystal clear that they are having their hand forced by the market. I am not young and I am so over the concept of having my progress stolen from me because the devs want to relive some weird, fetishized vision of what they thought Diablo was when they played it all day in their youth. What this does do, as I am realizing after typing it out, is reach the logical extreme of their design philosophy, where they design content meant to be done by their real players. Those being streamers and others who organize group play, abuse the meta to the extreme, often funneling massive amounts of resources to themselves through market manipulation and simps who farm for them. It has already been an issue for ages that for the majority of players it is more effective to liquidate their means to access this end game content to these people than to experience it themselves. Which is super sad and those who defend this kind of arrangement always pump their chest and go 'Well not everything in the game is meant to be done by everyone!', but that's bullshit. Everything in the game can be done by most people if they have access to it and learn how to do it. The key to succeeding in PoE is learning how to gatekeep this knowledge and resources from the greater part of the community. The people who consider themselves elites have gotten really good at it over time and it doesn't hurt that the devs actively design in scarcity to prop them up even further. Its really gross. " Death/failure in most games introduces threat and threat serves to heighten whatever you experience. The important thing is to balance threat with the actual reward for success to create the best experience, which is another dimension where PoE almost never gets it right. There also has to be time for the player to wind down, you can't just have tension in the game at all times, that desensitizes the player to it and just turns it into fatigue. You can have super rippy monster and dangerous gameplay, but you need to then shorten the iteration time for the player so they can reengage with the threat and overcome it, but this is currently in direct opposition to the design philosophy of the game that focuses on artificial scarcity and gatekeeping. The whole exp penalty and limited tries for maps are literally antique concepts from the ye olden days of gaming from which most other games have evolved away from, because they don't do anything good for the experience, for most people not succeeding at something and losing time trying is punishment enough, you don't need to double and triple dip on that. Lastly you need to empower the player to learn from the mistake they made, so they understand why their character went from alive to dead in less time than it is humanely possible to react to. People have been asking for a death recap for years and GGG has been ignoring them, but something like that could be immensely helpful in teaching new players and helping diagnose bugs with mobs and game mechanics. ~ I am Wreaclast middle class and proud of it! ~ Poor investment =/= entitlement to compensation. ~ Build smart, build S-mart! Last edited by Ageless_Emperion#2844 on Dec 14, 2024, 11:27:11 PM
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" For me, potential death transforms gameplay into adventure. You are going to search for the treasures, being ready to face very dangerous things in your journey. Without that risk, it would feel different, much more trivial. I just love that feeling of being in the dangerous journey. With that feeling, speed of clearing maps is something very irrelevant, if you completed map without dying — it's a victory anyway. It's preventing content from being trivialized and becoming boring. I can totally enjoy challenges without punishment part, but in different types of games, not in the fantasy adventure. Such adventure just can't be separated from the danger, if you remove danger or make it too small — you remove feeling of adventure with it. Last edited by Suchka_777#4336 on Dec 15, 2024, 1:18:02 AM
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" Personally, I despise XP penalties on death. That's a holdover from Everquest and similar games. It leads to players always going back to easier content they can safely clear to grind up a buffer of XP or regain the lost XP before going back to the good stuff. |
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I dunno, but I feel like failure should be penalized. Without penalty there is far less incentive to learn the fights, maps should deplete and bosses should reset... maybe during the campaign they shouldn't reset zones, but in end game, i feel it should.
I got the sauce.
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