Especially because doing so tends to make the confused debater believe that his preference is somehow morally superior to all these wimps who want it "easy."
This is not about believing that a preference is superior, nor is it about saying that those who want "easy" games are wimps. It's about providing enough challenge as to give a sense of accomplishment for winning, not being so easy that players feel like they couldn't have lost and therefore don't feel accomplishment for victory. As I've mentioned (and as many other 5E testers have pointed out in varioius threads), my players in the current 5E playtest have stated that this is exactly how they felt and that they wished that encounters were more challenging.
It's about not watering down the risk vs. reward in order to appeal to more casual players. Appeal to them by making the rules easy to understand, but by keeping a sense of accomplishment by being able to win challenging battles, not super easy ones.
First, the section you quoted was not directed particularly at you. Plenty of other people on these forums do believe their preference for high lethality is superior, and that those who don't want high lethality are wimps, and have said so repeatedly, and if they actually understood that challenge and lethality are completely distinct they would stop believing it. But let me quote you back:
One thing that comes to mind is the "hide and heal" aspect of a lot of modern video games. This is the "feature" where in a game, if you are about to die, you don't have to find health or be careful during battles, you just do as much damage as you can, then hide while your character auto-heals for 5 or ten seconds. Or, as in Resident Evil 6, if you have almost no health left, just go ahead and die, and you restart the game close to where you left off with full health and no setback for being killed. There is not much sense of risk or danger, so it makes those games less exciting. I'm not saying there is no excitement, but with no risk, the excitement and risk vs. reward is far less than it could be.
Hide and heal and frequent auto-saves are not about reducing challenge. Challenge is about the probability of failure, and you can have as high or higher probability of failure with regenerating health and frequent auto-saves as you can without them. Those features are about reducing the cost of failure, because you don't have to replay a large chunk of the game when you die or when your health gets so low that you're better of trying again than pushing forward. In fact, I would argue that you can actually make a game more challenging when you reduce the cost of failure, both because you can afford to make failure more frequent when it's less annoying without frustrating your players and because you have a better idea of what a player's resources will be at a given stage and therefore can tailor the challenge level to where he actually is instead of an inevitably low-balled estimate of where he probably is in terms of his HP level.
The point is that "risk" and "sense of accomplishment" come from both challenge and lethality. By conflating the two, you miss that you can have more challenge and less lethality and still produce the same risk and the same sense of accomplishment. By conflating the two, you confuse the debate over whether less lethality might be more accessible to new players who want to be heroes from day one instead of waiting until a half dozen characters have been sacrificed on the altar of their growing system mastery, even if you still provided risk and accomplishment through challenge. A certain amount of lethality is important, and everyone's idea of how much is the right amount is different. But thinking that reducing the lethality is the same thing as reducing the challenge is just plain wrong, and misinterpreting the other side's argument, and confusing the debate, and obfuscating the real issues and the real goals. 5e has insufficient challenge with the math and XP budgets as written, I will freely grant you that. But it might simultaneously have too much lethality for the typical new player, particularly if the DM isn't aware of the issues and if the player chooses a small HD class. Wanting more challenge is great. Suggesting that even new players should face more challenge is great. Wanting more lethality for your games is great too. Suggesting that reduced lethality is somehow inconsistent with more challenge, or that the appropriate way to provide greater challenge is to increase lethality, without understanding the distinction? That's less great.
So no, "It's [not] about not watering down the risk vs reward." It "is about believing that a preference [for risk of death] is superior" to a preference for risk of failure. That, or about failing to recognize that the second kind of risk exists (it's not even clear to me that you particularly are arguing for more lethality, your complaint vs 5e is a challenge complaint while your complaint vs video games are lethality complaints). I'm not saying that one preference is superior to another preference. I'm not even saying that I'm necessarily right about which preferences are better for new players (although I would argue that I am, I recognize that I cannot prove it). I'm saying that the debate should consider the full range of options instead of wrongly assuming that there is only one kind of risk and that reducing the probability of character death necessarily makes the game easier. Do we want more risk in the game is a different question from whether we want more risk of character death, and if we really want to debate either point we should recognize that they are in fact different and can be answered differently by the same person or the same system.
I appreciate the thought you put into your post, but you're overanalyzing and overcomplicating what is essentially a simple concept. I won't restate it again, as I have explained it multiple times, but look at the links to other posts I included in one of my previous posts to show that a lot of people are discussing a lack of challenge and finding things boring. This is the crux of the issue.
And you are incorrect to state that someone stating their preference automatically thinks their preference is superior. If we can't state preferences to discuss and provide feedback on, this forum might as well not exist. I can share my preference with you, with other forum members, and with WotC without it meaning that someone who feels differently is wrong or inferior.
My reference to video games was to show oneway that developers are making things easy to appeal to more casual players. There may be a difference between lethality and challenge, but that's besides the point and sounds just like arguing for the sake of arguing. Although I still disagree about regenerating health. No matter what else is going on, I just have to hide for awhile, then go back to just shooting stuff. I don't have to learn the skill of offense or the skill of defense because I can simply hide without much fear of dying, and then go back to shooting without having learned skillful ways of doing so. We're going to disagree on this, and you know what, that's OK.
I actually addressed that in a reply already, regarding video games. I was speaking of the tendency of modern vg developers, not a lack of availability of a hard mode, and I explained that further a few posts back.
So actually the "tendency" is pretty much non-existant since you can tweak the difficulty to suit your needs, isn't it?
I could also go on with a lot of other examples to prove my point... "Like these here..."Show
A few more: - Sword of the Stars - Left 4 Dead - Portal - World in Conflict - Elven Legacy - Orcs Must Die - Legend of Grimrock - Metro 2033 - Prince of Persia - King Arthur - And many more!
So let me pose you a question in return, regarding this topic. Why is a game bad or not so good when it's easier? I mean, sure, some challenge is definitely nice, but why not leave the difficulty up the user? Why does this make a game bad?
Let's take Call of Duty for example, since it's so well known. Modern Warfare 1, to be precise. The game is - admittedly - not really that hard on the median difficulty levels. That's good, it's supposed to tell a story. If you wanted to, you could just as well jack up the difficulty and thus gain additional challenges. Is that really a bad thing?
I fail to understand the demonization of this non-existant trend...
Look at Mass Effect 2, where all you have to do is hide behind cover and wait for your health to regenerate, the AI won't even try to flush you out or press the attack, it'll just sit there and ineffectually shoot a wall. Look at Mass Effect 3, same thing. Gears of War. Halo. Saint's Row. It's even worming it's way into Project Eternity where they have a regenerating health bar called "Stamina" which performs the exact same function. The trend is strongly in favor of auto-regenerating health so that people don't have to be bothered with healing, or being careful, just shooting things.
Then we have games like Bioshock and many others, where if you die, you respawn a few feet away from where you were with virtually no penalty for death. To the point where dieing is actually a strategy in some games, like Resident Evil. "Let such and such kill you just before the boss, and then respawn and you can fight the boss with full health". Something is *really* wrong when failing is a strategy to win.
Most game's "Hard" mode is just the enemy gets 2x or 3x health and your weapon does half damage. "Hard" is pretty much never "The AI is going to use advanced strategies to defeat you". Which becomes laughable because of the above, just hide behind that wall for a few seconds longer, or a few extra times, because the "Hard" AI still isn't terribly interested in killing you.
Then look at Dark Souls, a game celebrated because you can actually die and have a penalty for it. The Industry is so deeply invested in making games safety-scissored that we're actually celebrating a game just because it's possible to fail and doing so has a penalty!
Those are excellent examples of games that do the very thing I'm talking about. I also found it odd that Dark Souls was such a big deal because it had a higher than normal difficulty. It stands out because so many other games have been developed to be easier by comparison.
Look at Mass Effect 2, [...] Mass Effect 3, [...] Gears of War [...] Halo [...] Saint's Row.
Not all games are supposed to be hard. Saint's Row for example is chiefly an empowerment fantasy int he form of a game. Laser Tanks and Laser/Energy Torpedo VTOL's anyone?
Then we have games like Bioshock and many others, where if you die, you respawn a few feet away from where you were with virtually no penalty for death. To the point where dieing is actually a strategy in some games, like Resident Evil. "Let such and such kill you just before the boss, and then respawn and you can fight the boss with full health". Something is *really* wrong when failing is a strategy to win.
You may notice that I never said all games are hard or challenging or good. Was never part of my argument.
Also, what are you doing when you die in games that do not respawn you? [BLEEP!]-ING RELOAD!
So what exactly is the problem? Is "Oh my god I died, I have to respawn five rooms away!" worse than "Oh my god I died, I have to reload my save from five rooms ago!" ? Seriously, is reloading more HARDC0R3 GAM1NG than respawning? It makes - most of the time - zero difference.
Then look at Dark Souls, a game celebrated because you can actually die and have a penalty for it. The Industry is so deeply invested in making games safety-scissored that we're actually celebrating a game just because it's possible to fail and doing so has a penalty!
I for one can't stand darksouls. I watched it extensively and find the argument "when you die you know why!" to be utter BS.
I also enjoy games like Dredmore, which is quite a funny roguelike. Thing is, if you want a game to challenge you, turn up the difficulty. Most games are capable of challenging you. Admittedly there is some bad AI in there, it's the main reasons I no longer like the Total War franchise.
Again, I never argued that all games are flawless pieces of art. Quite on the contrary, I am a harsh critic of games myself. But to say that "games today are way too easy" is a bullshit argument. It's the same argument used by people who shout "GET OFF MY LAWN". Games back in the day were hard for several reasons, a major one being to get more money out of your pockets and not being properly trained in balancing the experience of games.
Seriously, the whole argument about games being way too easy is crap. There are enough games out there that can and will challenge you, and putting Saint's Row or similar games as part of your argument means you failed to understand the game...
If you have questions about 4th Edition - don't hesitate to ask me via PMs.
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I take all of those games and raise you the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.
Ever played Elven Legacy?
If you have questions about 4th Edition - don't hesitate to ask me via PMs.
Join the Community Monster Manual Group and help to collect a mass of monsters which will make your life as DM easier, and your life as Player pure hell!
I am a cartographer. You can find some of my maps in my profile, free for non-commercial use. Also, if you happen to like maps or make them yourselves, join into the Cartographers Group!
Especially because doing so tends to make the confused debater believe that his preference is somehow morally superior to all these wimps who want it "easy."
This is not about believing that a preference is superior, nor is it about saying that those who want "easy" games are wimps. It's about providing enough challenge as to give a sense of accomplishment for winning, not being so easy that players feel like they couldn't have lost and therefore don't feel accomplishment for victory. As I've mentioned (and as many other 5E testers have pointed out in varioius threads), my players in the current 5E playtest have stated that this is exactly how they felt and that they wished that encounters were more challenging.
It's about not watering down the risk vs. reward in order to appeal to more casual players. Appeal to them by making the rules easy to understand, but by keeping a sense of accomplishment by being able to win challenging battles, not super easy ones.
First, the section you quoted was not directed particularly at you. Plenty of other people on these forums do believe their preference for high lethality is superior, and that those who don't want high lethality are wimps, and have said so repeatedly, and if they actually understood that challenge and lethality are completely distinct they would stop believing it. But let me quote you back:
One thing that comes to mind is the "hide and heal" aspect of a lot of modern video games. This is the "feature" where in a game, if you are about to die, you don't have to find health or be careful during battles, you just do as much damage as you can, then hide while your character auto-heals for 5 or ten seconds. Or, as in Resident Evil 6, if you have almost no health left, just go ahead and die, and you restart the game close to where you left off with full health and no setback for being killed. There is not much sense of risk or danger, so it makes those games less exciting. I'm not saying there is no excitement, but with no risk, the excitement and risk vs. reward is far less than it could be.
Hide and heal and frequent auto-saves are not about reducing challenge. Challenge is about the probability of failure, and you can have as high or higher probability of failure with regenerating health and frequent auto-saves as you can without them. Those features are about reducing the cost of failure, because you don't have to replay a large chunk of the game when you die or when your health gets so low that you're better of trying again than pushing forward. In fact, I would argue that you can actually make a game more challenging when you reduce the cost of failure, both because you can afford to make failure more frequent when it's less annoying without frustrating your players and because you have a better idea of what a player's resources will be at a given stage and therefore can tailor the challenge level to where he actually is instead of an inevitably low-balled estimate of where he probably is in terms of his HP level.
The point is that "risk" and "sense of accomplishment" come from both challenge and lethality. By conflating the two, you miss that you can have more challenge and less lethality and still produce the same risk and the same sense of accomplishment. By conflating the two, you confuse the debate over whether less lethality might be more accessible to new players who want to be heroes from day one instead of waiting until a half dozen characters have been sacrificed on the altar of their growing system mastery, even if you still provided risk and accomplishment through challenge. A certain amount of lethality is important, and everyone's idea of how much is the right amount is different. But thinking that reducing the lethality is the same thing as reducing the challenge is just plain wrong, and misinterpreting the other side's argument, and confusing the debate, and obfuscating the real issues and the real goals. 5e has insufficient challenge with the math and XP budgets as written, I will freely grant you that. But it might simultaneously have too much lethality for the typical new player, particularly if the DM isn't aware of the issues and if the player chooses a small HD class. Wanting more challenge is great. Suggesting that even new players should face more challenge is great. Wanting more lethality for your games is great too. Suggesting that reduced lethality is somehow inconsistent with more challenge, or that the appropriate way to provide greater challenge is to increase lethality, without understanding the distinction? That's less great.
So no, "It's [not] about not watering down the risk vs reward." It "is about believing that a preference [for risk of death] is superior" to a preference for risk of failure. That, or about failing to recognize that the second kind of risk exists (it's not even clear to me that you particularly are arguing for more lethality, your complaint vs 5e is a challenge complaint while your complaint vs video games are lethality complaints). I'm not saying that one preference is superior to another preference. I'm not even saying that I'm necessarily right about which preferences are better for new players (although I would argue that I am, I recognize that I cannot prove it). I'm saying that the debate should consider the full range of options instead of wrongly assuming that there is only one kind of risk and that reducing the probability of character death necessarily makes the game easier. Do we want more risk in the game is a different question from whether we want more risk of character death, and if we really want to debate either point we should recognize that they are in fact different and can be answered differently by the same person or the same system.
This is nice and all, but I do not understand how I am to make a challenging game without lethality. Am I to save my players everytime they would have fatally failed? Nobody enjoys a deus ex machina. Are they to flee the combat, only to come back later for their objective? We don't have the time to repeat a combat. Is every combat supposed to employ a lose condition other than death?
Video games get to employ mechanics such as re-spawning to diminish the cost of failure, mechanics that we'd rather do without at our table.
Do we want more risk in the game is a different question from whether we want more risk of character death, and if we really want to debate either point we should recognize that they are in fact different and can be answered differently by the same person or the same system.
Well it's not just death that's been reduced. If that were the case, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's any kind of long-lasting consequences at all.
Even something simple as having your character removed from a battle is basically nonexistent now. Combat healing is such that a healer can return a character to combat without even wasting thier action to do so, using nothing more than a cantrip that they can infinitely cast.
Monsters never inflict long lasting status conditions on you, like energy drain, debilitating diseases or ability damage. The game has adopted the philosophy where everything is cured by a simple night's rest. So not only is it hard to die, but you also never suffer any long-lasting consequences from combat either.
It's really not just about how easy it is for characters to die, it's a combination of a lot of things. Risk as a whole has really went downhill with each new edition.
I actually addressed that in a reply already, regarding video games. I was speaking of the tendency of modern vg developers, not a lack of availability of a hard mode, and I explained that further a few posts back.
So actually the "tendency" is pretty much non-existant since you can tweak the difficulty to suit your needs, isn't it?
How long have you been gaming? I'm curious. I have been since the 70s and there is a noticeable difference in the difficulty of modern games. Yes, there are difficulty adjustments, and I use them, but again, things have shifted so that the default is overly easy with an option for more difficult, instead of the default being challenging with an option for easy.
I could also go on with a lot of other examples to prove my point... "Like these here..."Show
A few more: - Sword of the Stars - Left 4 Dead - Portal - World in Conflict - Elven Legacy - Orcs Must Die - Legend of Grimrock - Metro 2033 - Prince of Persia - King Arthur - And many more!
So let me pose you a question in return, regarding this topic. Why is a game bad or not so good when it's easier? I mean, sure, some challenge is definitely nice, but why not leave the difficulty up the user? Why does this make a game bad?
Because if something is too easy, it becomes boring. The "casual" audience might enjoy it and be more apt to play because of the lower difficulty, but the lack of challenge leads to boredom. Here are some threads in this very forum to illustrate:
Those are just a few I found really quickly. Lot's of discussion about how encounters are too easy and how people are getting bored because of a lack of challenge.
The whole point of this forum is to provide feedback about your play experiences. This topic came about because of some of my (and my players) concerns with the playtest. And from the posts I pointed out above, we are obviously not alone.
Leichenreiter, we can agree to disagree, but since this is the place for feedback, this is some of mine. Just because you don't like my feedback, it doesn't mean that it isn't relevant. If you don't like or agree with my feedback, great, start a topic to provide yours.
What's your point? Are you having an issue that someone else can play a game on a difficulty that you may not? That's preposterous. Who cares what the default is if you can the difficulty you want? Who cares if its the "default"?
Do we want more risk in the game is a different question from whether we want more risk of character death, and if we really want to debate either point we should recognize that they are in fact different and can be answered differently by the same person or the same system.
Well it's not just death that's been reduced. If that were the case, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's any kind of long-lasting consequences at all.
Even something simple as having your character removed from a battle is basically nonexistent now. Combat healing is such that a healer can return a character to combat without even wasting thier action to do so, using nothing more than a cantrip that they can infinitely cast.
Monsters never inflict long lasting status conditions on you, like energy drain, debilitating diseases or ability damage. The game has adopted the philosophy where everything is cured by a simple night's rest. So not only is it hard to die, but you also never suffer any long-lasting consequences from combat either.
It's really not just about how easy it is for characters to die, it's a combination of a lot of things. Risk as a whole has really went downhill with each new edition.
In every edition of D&D there was always a counter to any "permenant" effect. Raise dead and Ressurect for death, Restoration for level drain, Cure Disease for disease etc. What matters is how well or bad did you do for the plot/quest? Those are the consequences that sort of matter.
What's your point? Are you having an issue that someone else can play a game on a difficulty that you may not? That's preposterous. Who cares what the default is if you can the difficulty you want? Who cares if its the "default"?
Nope, not at all, and you've obviously missed the point entirely.
