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.

[Keramory]

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.

There should be an middle ground with this. The reward of traveling to a place far off, is it gives a sense of the scale of the world. The danger does indeed give an accomplished feeling. I still joke with FFXI players about the first runs to Juneo to this day, 10 years later...something every FFXI player knows about. Granted it's a small thing, but to talk about 10 years later is quite worth the hassle. It was a JOURNEY. I don't think I'll talk about anything like that with this game sadly.

Honestly that goes with most of FFXI in general as well. Aside from daily grinding, I recall fairly well every event I had in that game, due to its difficulty and reward for completing it. That horrible grind to level really made the missions/cutscenes/completion special to me and others.

[Welsper59]

There should be an middle ground with this. The reward of traveling to a place far off, is it gives a sense of the scale of the world. The danger does indeed give an accomplished feeling. I still joke with FFXI players about the first runs to Juneo to this day, 10 years later...something every FFXI player knows about. Granted it's a small thing, but to talk about 10 years later is quite worth the hassle. It was a JOURNEY. I don't think I'll talk about anything like that with this game sadly.

Honestly that goes with most of FFXI in general as well. Aside from daily grinding, I recall fairly well every event I had in that game, due to its difficulty and reward for completing it. That horrible grind to level really made the missions/cutscenes/completion special to me and others.

Don't forget to credit the fact that the quality of the story and soundtrack together made for a far grander adventure to experience than what we get in modern MMO's (including here). While this game has a great story, it isn't told in the same way. Here, you're just a rather cheesy tool that is intentionally cliched (i.e. The Warrior of Nodding). It's odd to really think about, but the fact that our characters are some important focal point of the story doesn't seem to mesh as well.

I guess the best example I can think of is the fact that we're generally more interested in the other characters than we are with our own. In games like XI and WoW, your character becomes a recognized figure of importance, but still a "normal" person. In light of that, the story doesn't necessarily center around you, but rather the happenings of others. Granted that the finale for XI's story centers around that same concept, it's done in such a finely tuned way that it actually makes some sense... over a decade of story build up can certainly ease a cliche plot into being a lot more memorable. While we do experience that here, the inclusion of the WoL focus from the very beginning is where it results in being cheesy at times and thus, an odd thing to think about.

One other thing to note is that the reward never changed from start to finish (for the most part). XI managed to keep the status quo constant without players really noticing. Because of the inclusion of things like Merit Points and, to a lesser degree, a need to keep a high amount of exp on your capped level so that you don't de-level (yes, that was definitely a thing to anyone who didn't play), your sense of reward was long lasting. Not only did you get gear, you also kept the sense of reward for "leveling" going thanks to Merit Points making your character stronger. In another instance, XIV suffers similar to WoW by comparison, but a far greater way when you hit max level, simply due to the limitations of doing old content (not to mention WoW has over 10 more years of content compared to XIV).

[bass9020]

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

[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.

[Jetstream_Fox]

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.

So you basically want MGS 5.

[Shurrikhan]

So you basically want MGS 5.

Or, quite simply greater mob AI and patrol routes? Doesn't have to be analog to a specific game when doing what any number of them have already, even if that's something XIV has thus far ignored completely in design.

[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.