Are we as players afraid of a challenge?

[Jynx]

I'm here to discuss with the forums on a topic we often see discussed. Challenging content, anywhere from the steps of Faith to the most recent wave of savage dungeons we see people complaining about the lack of or the massive spike.


What I really want to talk about though is in the players daily life we lack any sort of real challenge. At no point is any individual player really expected to show anything beyond the most basic of basic abillity to play the game or understand any of it's mechanics. Only at the most bleeding edge of the game are players even required to know what their roll is to accomplish.

Outside most recent raid content there is no challening content available to players.

Crafting
Gathering
Travel
Sightseeing
Questing

None of this extra content in the game bothers to challenge players.

Here is just one of my suggestions on how we can bring some life to the game outside the most recent raids.

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?

-Do we group up with likeminded individuals and battle our way to our treasure?
-Do we observe the monsters and sneak through their ranks by ourselves?

Monsters can fell a solo adventurerer with ease and only through perception or cooperation can we break through. Give us better monster AI so that we could have exciting moments like hiding behind a well placed rock to sneak around a large group of enemies or give us environmental hazards we can use against our foes in group combat (Let's say a tank lures the enemies into a log trap that a DPS or Healer could trigger for a big AOE damage blast or debuff). I think such open world mechanics could lead to amazing encounters not possible to organically create in a instanced environment.

is it just me or wouldn't something open and grand like this be a refreshing take on how we perceive the open world map? make the open world a key part of gameplay instead of locking our content into 4-8 man instances.

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That's just my idea what ideas do you guys think would bring more spice to the game. What can we do to break the dull treadmill of instanced content.

[Windi]

Yeaaaaaaaah no.

Aside from how the dev team would need to overhaul a lot to make your idea work, the general problem with a high-risk open worlds like that is that they are difficult to create a sense of pacing with the difficulty. The quickest way you can turn off new players is to immediately punish them before they get properly adjusted to the game's mechanics; that's why (in my own analysis of this game's design) monsters start out as mostly static.

Also, I'd like to know why you think getting from one town to the next should be that much of a challenge to begin with? Like, if the only real reward or satisfaction you receive is simply "I got to the next town, now I got to do it again for the next!" then what's the point? I really don't think trivial tasks should have any more risk than what's already presented in this game.

[bass9020]

Jynx man I'm totally with you! 100% support from me!

[Rin_Sato]

The part about having to put some amount of effort in to get to a new area sounds like it could be coolio if it only happened like once or max twice per expansion, while I think the trap part would be more bearable in greater frequency and probably would be fine if it would make sense in the game world
The part about overworld mobs I think would fail in this game if the game itself doesn't change, since I think hunts were an attempt at what you are suggesting, and even with better AI, the zerg rush would most likely remove the challenge, or make it impossible
Like with the odin fate, even with a few good players, if the good/bad player ratio is too(I mean really) low, it would become literally impossible(if this is not the case, please prove it using maths, I would like to know)
If you are serious about overworld mobs being challenging, I think you would have to go into extremely great detail about how they would work, or come up with a genius idea, to convince anyone

[Joe_Schmoe]

Are we as players afraid of a challenge?

I'm somewhere in the middle. I like a decent challenge, one where there is a slight margin for error, and not one where one goof = one death/wipe. It's actually other players that can make it a drag. It's kinda like sports. It doesn't build character as much as reveal it, and there's a fair amount of hypocrites out there. Personally, I can do tough challenges all day (crafting lvl 56-57 gear while wearing 52-55 gear, soloing Deep Dungeon if/when I get around to it). It's when I get pitted with other players - especially whiny ones - that can make it dreadful.

[Hasrat]

Problem is not every player equates challenge with fun. Creating challenging general content alienates the players that don't enjoy the challenge. General content (in your example, simply traversing the overworld) should be accessible to all players no matter their type. Your challenging content should be shuffled off to the side, where you can still enjoy yourself, and others can carry on without being forced to do things they don't enjoy.

Always need to keep in mind that fun is a subjective experience (and so is challenge, for that matter). Game needs to keep a balance to appease the audience it hopes to keep.

[Nutz]

Yeah, I'm not sure. I know I hear a lot of people complain that the open world is too easy, but there's not currently any reason for it not to be. If they wanted to move away from instanced content then maybe something like this would make sense.

Just from a balancing standpoint this is a nightmare. On day 1 you can make the monsters incredibly beefy and players will plow through with sheer numbers. A patch or so later and any new comers trying to get through the same area are stranded or have to rely on stealth because everyone else has already moved on.

The way this game is balanced currently, with most classes within the same role being reasonably equal, and definite roles required for most content, 'challenge' as many players see it, is impossible. There's so little going on outside of damage received/ healed/ dealt and dodging that there aren't really any interesting variables. A large portion of the community sees that something is possible and concludes that it's easy. If it weren't possible it wouldn't be reasonable, but there doesn't seem to be room in people's perception for an encounter to be winnable and difficult, largely owing to the fact that people feel like becoming familiar with the encounter should be taken for granted so any difficulty you have before you know exactly what's going to happen at any given moment is moot.

You can argue that that perception arises from the style of game that we're playing, and that might be right, but I don't think that there's any real way around it without making very drastic changes to core aspects of the game.

[Alaltus]

A open world zelda esque sneaking puzzle could be interesting and give an enemy stronghold life. Set enemy spawns along a predetermined path, able to avoid detection simply through patience and timing. Being detected resetting your progress completely/partially probably via death. For parties just pushing through the objective could be to zerg certain enemies before they can raise the alarm and flood the area with reinforcements.

[Bixillarla]

No thank you. I don't want a dangerous outside where you have to have a party to get anywhere. Keep the challenging content in instances for those who want they can do it and those who are casual can avoid it.

[Zumi]

Wouldn't really work due to the sheer number of players who play the game. If you look at open world content hunts for example they die in seconds when they are popular due to so many people wanting the seals. Can't really set up complex mechanics in a lobby environment.