Can Healers Stop Running Ahead in Dungeons

[Shurrikhan]

I'd have to still disagree. Perhaps if the post I quoted said "Most boring in some situation, most high-pressure in others." I would agree; however the way the post was written made them sound simultaneous. "Push the button or everybody dies!" is not simultaneously dull and high-pressure just because pushing a button is dull; it's just high pressure, because even though the action is dull, it's the context which is exciting. Whereas for something to be dull, there usually isn't any excitement at all, context or no.

Which is where I'll go back to the beginning of my post: if he separated the situations, I might have agreed. However, I will hold that a job cannot simultaneously be boring and high-pressure. Especially when that second argument is a weak point as well; I've heard tanks say that tanking is the easiest job in the game, then turn around and say healing is the most taxing and high pressure. Only for healers to disagree and say DPSing is the most high pressure due to managing a long stringed rotation in the middle of a lot of complex mechanics.

Actually, the more I type the more something comes to mind. Everything is dull in dungeon based content, and everything is high pressure in the harder content. Which hearkens back to context is king. So I'll cede that something can be dull in one context, and high pressure in another context entirely. However, in dungeon content, all three roles are just as dull.

I guess we can agree to disagree then.

I don't find min-maxing even leveling dungeons at all dull, once there are tool sufficient for there to be a difference in my gameplay and the total time taken between them. There's opportunity, and roughly proportionate reward, and therefore there is a manageable challenge to it.

The fact that that min-maxing isn't made necessary by fatal punishment doesn't take away from its opportunities for engagement. Inversely, something that provides no challenge to the player beyond the basest means is still going to be dull, no matter the pressure placed upon it. Any duty that, to you, "would be boring if not for the pressure placed upon you" is something I wouldn't start if I knew such was the case, would despise completing, and would leave the moment my actions weren't placing others at risk, never to do it again. It would high pressure, and it would be painfully dull. To me, those two things can be simultaneous. If I have to force myself engaged, rather than the gameplay itself engaging me, that's boring -- no matter how well I might accomplish its job for it. You don't stick 6 players in an empty desert and say that the desert itself wasn't dull just because the players found out they could enjoy talking to each other... in the complete absence of anything else to do.

A competitive match in Overwatch or SC2, etc. can be duller than a non-ranked one if there are fewer opportunities to actually do something, to outplay in macro or micro. Stakes alone do not engagement make. Nor does the possibility of time wasted. That's just an extreme level of sunk cost fallacy at play if one comes to think so.

Again, I'm not saying that tanking in XIV is dull, to me, at least. Neither do I find it particular high-pressure. But no amount of pressure is necessarily going to make it less boring. You can be bored while being frazzled and stressed out. Their not mutual exclusives. So if someone does find XIV tanking to be both dull and too pressured... so be it.