Are we as players afraid of a challenge?

[Nicobo]

...What I really want to talk about though is in the players daily life we lack any sort of real challenge....

Talk about challenge, I think pug with random is the real challenge that a lot of ppl afraid of it. ^^;

[Furiea]

Yokai Watch event is a challenge.. Even wandering minstrel personally congratulates players upon completion..
But somehow, by saying this i feel like a troll in this thread..

Yokai watch is more like waste of time rather than challenge. you gonna call going to a park and pick up a rock mindlessly 800+ times a "challenge"? AFTER you been doing it for 3 years.

[Zojha]

Yokai watch is more like waste of time rather than challenge. you gonna call going to a park and pick up a rock mindlessly 800+ times a "challenge"? AFTER you been doing it for 3 years.

Watching an entire Anime series in one session without falling asleep can be considered a challenge so /huh

[Jetstream_Fox]

snip

Destiny could have been great but they released the lead writer and scraped the story into what it is now, because you know, Activision. But what I mentioned about The Taken King, yes it's an invasion, he invades our solar system because well, kinda killed his son. BUT Bungie released that this DLC was built on revenge, so they made the general areas become more violent when the Taken come, it makes the world seem more alive and give us a sense that the things we do carry consequences. In FF14 there is nothing like this, when we were wanted in Uldah, why were there no Brass Blades looking for us? We could just pop in the city and do whatever. We entered a war between human and dragon, why weren't there dragon raiders looking for us? Now in 4.0 we look to be going to Ala Mhigo, which I'm understanding is under control of the Emperor, why wouldn't he send his best units to track us down and kill us? Adding the element of being hunted by a strong pack at random gives off a very high level of danger, you're not meant to kill this pack, but you must deal with it, which leads to matter of stealth.

Stealth is NOT the answer in regards to making things more challenging, I've played enough of Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid and believe me when I say, adding patterns to AI that we learn are not a good method in open world content. It simply doesn't work. It didn't work in MGS 5, all you had to do was get a tranquilizer sniper and you beat the game. If you didnt go stealth the game became frantic and fun, but the concepts of stealth and run and gun don't mix in a open world. Splinter Cell used environmental stealth in it's design, that also wouldn't work in a open areas that 14 has, simply because of the design of 14. 14 has a head on battle system, which SE has yet to comment on if they're going to change our battle system at all. If we didn't need the trinity we could get away with this, but we have a out dated battle system, heading a game that is asking for more modern elements.

So challenge must be built within the confines of what we already have, meaning making mobs more violent, increasing the number per area, allowing them to actively hunt us instead of stand still and look around, and actually have a mean streak are the only real things SE can do with making the world a more serious matter. Otherwise, the use of ideas that are not fully developed being implemented will further hurt the feel of the game, and we don't need a open world that is worse overall then any of the side content that flopped like TT, LoV, Diadem, or PotD.

[Shurrikhan]

In FF14 there is nothing like this, when we were wanted in Uldah, why were there no Brass Blades looking for us? We could just pop in the city and do whatever. We entered a war between human and dragon, why weren't there dragon raiders looking for us? Now in 4.0 we look to be going to Ala Mhigo, which I'm understanding is under control of the Emperor, why wouldn't he send his best units to track us down and kill us?

Hell, when I first went into the Beta, and then again going into ARR live on legacy characters, I went through the first fetch quests thinking... am I ever going to talk to any of these people ever again, apart from my guild master up to level 30 when my class becomes a wasted relic of a concept? Is there going to be a single thing worth knowing about the world map that a quest wouldn't have directed me towards anyways at the only time that area is useful? And I didn't, and there wasn't.

Speaking of open world instancing, or 'phasing', yeah, that would have been a great opportunity to throw in some danger on that escape by having phased interactions with the environment, even if that really did mean that we couldn't get back into Ulduh until finding some way to disguise ourselves. Instead, we stepped out of the cutscene, free to walk freely about the place rife with our (inexistant) pursuers. But instead we got 12 consecutive minutes of cutscenes. Granted, since that period of transition to Ishgard and the events and settings of Heavensward was short anyways—and any longer would more than try the patience of anyone just trying to get to Ishgard—I'm okay with that. But the sheer nothingness throughout the world, or how we have to stand about a destination every time just to trigger instanced events whose spawns just look awkward to anyone else, the complete lack of quests noting whether in a party (and why should they, when there's no reason or scaling for that party), or worse, force you out of them... *shiver*

You have guilds, yet you seem to be the only player in them. You have campaigns, yet they explicitly hinge on you and you alone, the solo (+3/+7/+23) player. I get that we want to feel like the main character, but that can be done while still making mention of the things going on through your various class guilds, GCs, and so on, connecting you with other players, and having some actual effects of your interactions out there... I'd best stop there, for now...

I'm pretty open to whatever concepts could increase interactions available with the open world to make it feel vivid and coherent. I just, seeing what we do have, have no faith in SE's taking a similar barebones concept such as an Invasion (already had two of those in 1.x) and making something interesting out of it. They seem too willing to take in skeletons of design and present them as a meaty dish. /rant

Stealth is NOT the answer in regards to making things more challenging, I've played enough of Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid and believe me when I say, adding patterns to AI that we learn are not a good method in open world content. It simply doesn't work. It didn't work in MGS 5, all you had to do was get a tranquilizer sniper and you beat the game. If you didn't go stealth the game became frantic and fun, but the concepts of stealth and run and gun don't mix in a open world. Splinter Cell used environmental stealth in it's design, that also wouldn't work in a open areas that 14 has, simply because of the design of 14. 14 has a head on battle system, which SE has yet to comment on if they're going to change our battle system at all. If we didn't need the trinity we could get away with this, but we have an outdated battle system heading a game that is asking for more modern elements.

I respectfully have to disagree here. While I've played Splinter Cell and other stealth centric games and would have to agree that the bursty frantic deviations away from stealth are often more fun than the stealth itself, I have had tremendous fun, more so than in stealth-centric games, with open world stealth. Ever tried to sneak an entire raid into an enemy player city, cutting through canyons, scouting with less conspicuous players, and potentially baiting enemy resistance away? That's technically open world stealth. As for the PvE side, there are things like diverse mob detection patterns that allow you to bait mobs away, potentially into enemy players, or have you seek cover as the thick clouds that had been blanketing your approach from the moonlight finish passing by and suddenly all those mobs you'd been cutting past can see you. It's got some pretty fun interactions to work with.

But again, I never suggested stealth as a primary solution wasn't a primary solution. In my first post I was just using the example of stealth in order to show how changes in travel speed can create different player paradigms, making adjustments to whatever system of risks and rewards based on travel or pathing seem all the more interesting and seem to better reward progression and discovery.

So challenge must be built within the confines of what we already have, meaning making mobs more violent, increasing the number per area, allowing them to actively hunt us instead of stand still and look around, and actually have a mean streak are the only real things SE can do with making the world a more serious matter. Otherwise, the use of ideas that are not fully developed being implemented will further hurt the feel of the game, and we don't need a open world that is worse overall then any of the side content that flopped like TT, LoV, Diadem, or PotD.

I'd say if you build just about anything strictly within the confines of what we have, which is mechanically next to nothing, the effort is basically fruitless anyways. Of course, every example you've given thereafter are things that we don't currently have, unless you mean to simply increase mob detection range across the board. They have spawn areas, in which they where they spawn randomly or at specific nodes, each have a domain range around the spawn, and are scripted to wonder a portion of that range's radius, while detecting up to x yalms (reduced by superior player level), and chasing to the edge of the domain. That's all we've got. That said, more than half of all mobs do already attack on sight. The issue is simply the difference in player level, but without the player being synced to make a fight out of one-shot-able mobs chasing you, removing that detection immunity would only serve to annoy people crossing on land mounts via Heavy. And I doubt that simply expanding or lifting their domain ranges and giving them acquisition scripts with the goal of finding and killing players within the zone is going to seem more challenge than annoyance. Without anything specifically implemented to give the player something to work with or avoid, you just end up with, effectively, death by RNG, or extra and nonmanipulable work based on RNG. You either saw the beast well ahead of time and were locked out of using the area, saw it and killed it just to access the area, or got lucky and it didn't decide to continue in your direction as you landed and started doing whatever within 100 yalms of it.

[Jynx]

Allot of people think I'm asking for just high hp mobs and that's not really the case...

[Lokier]

Watching an entire Anime series in one session without falling asleep can be considered a challenge so /huh

You've not been watching the right anime. :P

[Cakekizyy]

You've not been watching the right anime. :P

If it takes 2 or 3 days, be challenge to stay awake no matter how interesting it is.

[DPZ2]

Imagine 4.0 wherever we go doesn't matter. We start our new journey in a new town and our first over-arching goal is to get to the next town, this in itself should be a challenge. We should walk outside the gates of the town and quake in our boots at what lay before us. Monsters lurk off the beaten path waiting to devour any foolish enough to stray, but great treasures and glory lay beyond things we need to get into the next area.

What do we do?

We open up our favorite search engine in our favorite web browser and carefully follow the instructions given to us by people who have played this before, never thinking about what we are doing, only being assured that if we do this thing we will survive to get to the next town.

If it becomes a hassle to enough people, the devs will nerf the heck out of the area or the game will become yet another F2P niche MMO with a somewhat interesting take on Open World game play.

If you really want that level of excitement (without the graphics) find a really good story-teller [aka Dungeon Master] and play a game that utilizes that best of all game resources -- your imagination.

As someone who bought the first revision of D&D at San Diego Comic Con back before either became popular, nothing beats the human imagination with the aid of a few rules and some dice.

[Zojha]

If it takes 2 or 3 days, be challenge to stay awake no matter how interesting it is.

^
I was referring to this

Challenges can be all kinds of things - it can be about patience, it can be about perseverance, it can be about courage, it can be about intelligence, it can be about strength, it can be about finesse, it can be about speed, it can be about social interactions...or combinations of those things! Even as little as staying nice in the presence of a brat for prolonged periods of time can be a challenge if you don't have a natural propensity to such behaviour.

Long grinds are most definitely challenging in the patience department, while no video game is considerably challenging in the strength department. Puzzles can be challenging in the intellectual departments and stuff like Savage heavily tests your memorization skills. There are different kinds of challenges was the point I was making.