Post by Morreion on Mar 13, 2010 8:23:40 GMT -5
Challenge and Risk (MMOCrunch)
The author goes on to make some good observations about how varying levels of risk and challenge affect the player.
If a game is both low risk and low challenge, I don't see much point in playing it.
Often players say time is a big factor in whether they enjoy challenging games, i.e. they don't have the time to do a lot of things. The author responds in the comment section:
Agreed!
The main thing I have discovered is that most players and game devs tend to jam the concepts of challenge and risk together and call that “risk”. If an encounter is hard, a player is likely to die and they want to avoid dying and so that constitutes a high degree of risk. I think challenge and risk are two separate concepts that might be coupled, but are certainly not the same. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to define these terms like this:
Challenge = The chance you have to fail at a task or encounter. This could mean dying, party wiping, not meeting your goals or quest requirements depending on the situation.
Risk = The consequences you suffer as a result of failing at a task or encounter. This might be item loss, having to make a corpse run, a loss of experience or the accrual of “debt”.
Challenge = The chance you have to fail at a task or encounter. This could mean dying, party wiping, not meeting your goals or quest requirements depending on the situation.
Risk = The consequences you suffer as a result of failing at a task or encounter. This might be item loss, having to make a corpse run, a loss of experience or the accrual of “debt”.
The author goes on to make some good observations about how varying levels of risk and challenge affect the player.
...those most averse to the risk of loss almost always mentioned how they would hate to have to grind to get their lost stuff (items, experience) back. I got the impression that for these players, MMOs were not about “doing cool stuff”, but were about “getting cool stuff.” New items, new powers and unlocking new areas were the main point of the game… in some cases even at the expense of enjoying the game play. A couple of my CoX buddies are like this. They don’t mind if a particular mission is boring; they will farm it as long as it is easy xp or drops.
If a game is both low risk and low challenge, I don't see much point in playing it.
Often players say time is a big factor in whether they enjoy challenging games, i.e. they don't have the time to do a lot of things. The author responds in the comment section:
...I don’t think the “My time is valuable” argument works. My time is pretty darn valuable as well, which is why I want to have fun when I spend it and to me, a game that involves risk is more fun than a game which offers none.
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But I get it. When you spend your time, you want to feel as though you have “progressed” and thus a game with significant setbacks is out. My take is that, though I do enjoy those games, I am feeling more and more like the progress they offer is meaningless and unfufilling because of the lack of potential setbacks.
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But I get it. When you spend your time, you want to feel as though you have “progressed” and thus a game with significant setbacks is out. My take is that, though I do enjoy those games, I am feeling more and more like the progress they offer is meaningless and unfufilling because of the lack of potential setbacks.
Agreed!
