Originally Posted by
Ferthcott
There were cases with people who were putting significant effort to participate in Special Olympics even though their disability had little to do with performance in specific field - something like hiding behind letter of the law, while pissing on its spirit. So yeah, they were winning with relative ease - at least compared to the alternative they should be pursuing. Since it is "just the game", we could call other participants, who were often fuming, unreasonable - but should we? I am not a fan of modern "sportainment", which is why I see such analogies differently. Medals are indeed handed out "equally", but they are hardly a reward in current model - think of them as "27 silver" and 50k IXP pill from a raid chest. Real reward = real money (unless we treat modern sport with pink glasses on), it is distributed on "who is entertaining" basis - it has nothing to do with difficulty or overcoming obstacles. It has little to do with "obsolete" definition of sport - just as handing out same rewards with no regard to difficulty has little to do with a definition of a game (challenge as a component). As long as we already compare sports, what would you want from a chess tournament?
#1 - dividing players based on some "be considerate" criteria (age for example), but it's ability to climb the challenge ladder that is rewarded the most (ie. winning against objectively harder opponents or, if we go with age groups, winning in "adult" competition)
#2 - alternative paths - traditional one and the same reward for winning against a computer on Very Easy mode, 120 times in a row; oh and you can reset the game anytime. Yes, this is what LOTRO offers as "solo equivalent".
People argue they can't or they won't do specific content and give entire pile of reasons and yet most of "I want" I see on these forums relies on #2 version of tournament above. Then I usually hear (and I agree) we can have challenging content in solo LOTRO, we can have gradual difficulty upgrade etc. So how about we talk loot when we actually have those? Why effectively dismantle existing tournament, no matter how you hate its rules, if there is no alternative? Oh, right, Hytbold. See #2.
I know, challenge is not fun for everyone, difficult is not everything you want from a game. We can even switch to more convenient definition of a game, one that does not include challenge as a basic component, then add some vague analysis how "audience changes" - as if that meant change was independent from content designed and should be only be supported by devs. Why? We all saw devs can also easily induce changes in audiences' behavior (Durchest t1). Doesn't that tell you how silly being a slave to (conveniently murky) ideas about "casualisation" is?
Many games, related even slightly to wRPG core, rely on very simple, very basic rules, built partially on "common fantasy sense", partially on decades-long tradition: stronger monsters = shinier loot, stronger monster = fight is more complex, complexity = one of difficulty components. There were always games that were replacing difficulty with a grind or cheap skillspam - they sometimes had nothing else to offer - you could forgive baby VG industry, but it was rarely forgiven if we talked about eg. D&D. If a game does not promote challenge ladder to climb on, the only change between lv6 and lv76 character relies on placing more skill buttons on a toolbar and even that is neutered by "improved skills" later on. There is "I am new to MMO", then "I am new to RPG", then some class and loot rules and then it basically dies. Some people cheer, no idea why :/
It's like saying to your GM: "dude, I can't play for 3 hours straight any longer - just give us loot and xp for making pictures on our character sheet while at work". How about Mario rescuing princess via repeating lv1 120 times? If childish "rescuing princess" is not a goal for me (psh, let elitist Luigi do that), I can always do... um... something I like doing with Mario, probably involving jumping and spitting, de gustibus and all that. But poof! Audience changes and suddenly it is reasonable to demand princess after I play that way... long enough. How come this kind of demand feels absurd while demanding to dilute existing challenge ladder is not?
I have nothing against asking that specific game offers an opportunity to play the way I want. I have everything against asking for specific results, while disregarding existing structure and providing only some pathetic mockery of it in return.
