Not answering the poll, because as others have pointed out, it's biased. Even the alleged "no risk" method is value laden language.

To the question: No.

Because games are better and more versatile now, and the idea that they "dared to be challenging" is just nostalgia. Most games were just unfair, or impenetrable, because that was the simplest way to achieve replayability / get you to put more coins in the machine.

With regard to ESO, it 'dares' to release DLC dungeons of ever-increasing difficulty which most players maybe run a couple of times and then ignore. Just look at the number of threads discussing dungeon difficulty, or asking for DLC dungeons to be left out of randoms (because they're too hard for pugs).

So no, I don't miss a time which didn't exist, and I think the "no risk" approach is fallacious, and fundamentally misrepresents what ESO is doing.

If I can reload a previous save and do it over again, I don't mind failing a quest because I did not achieve an objective or made the wrong dialog choice. In a game like this where the quest goes on no matter what, it is preferred that success is assured, or at least the ability to maintain zone or quest progression is assured.

In fact, that would be the way to bring back the "ability to fail" to real times games. No matter what choices we make or what objectives we accomplish (within reason of course), we can proceed to the next quest in the line. The consequence would be we would not get a certain shiney or gear item. That would be a nice Risk Reward tradeoff that would keep most people happy. Except of course those who think they should get everything just because they log in.

And, they could also do what they have now for some quests, where you fail, but all you have to do is start over.

Massively loaded question.

Define "challenge". Because I'd wager many of the dungeons and trials in ESO on veteran hard mode are insanely challenging. As is VMA for solo play (I'd love more solo arenas in future expansions while we're at it, ZOS). As is taking Cyrodiil for your alliance due to the nature of PVP.

It's not that there's a lack of challenge in the game. And I'm not convinced adding that level of challenge to all aspects of ESO would make it a better game.

rfennell_ESO wrote: »

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

Do you miss the time when games dared to let players fail, or do you prefere the "no risk" method?

Overall, it was WOW that changed the game model. WOW showed that making death a non factor was the successful model for mmo's and no one has moved back from it.

Early Everquest was a punishing leveling grind with a penalty (of xp) for death. Compounding the hardcore leveling (and penalty for dying) was the fact that you "corpse" was left with your equipment on it and you were respawned at your bind location. So... on challenging (or even non challenging) content, you face the possibility of respawning naked a 30+ minute run to get back to your corpse. In Dungeons it was compounded by the fact that the deeper you were in it... the harder it was going to be to get back to your corpse. Many corpse runs in EQ required other players helping you. P.S. you could delevel from dying... matter of fact you could die so much that you no longer met the level requirements for a zone to enter it and your corpse and gear would be lost.

I don't see any MMO going back to punishing failure due to WOW's success.

I agree.

Also, while the punishing issues in EQ did provide a challenge, and a considerable sense of achievement on completing something as basic as leveling that I've never matched in any other MMO since, it also had the drawback of encouraging you to tackle "safe" content rather than pushing yourself with a tougher challenge because the penalty for failure was so high.

These games still exist, ESO just isn't one of them. Monster Hunter World is great and has a lot of longevity. Sekiro is incredibly fun, and we have Nioh 2 and Code Vein coming up. There are a lot of games out there catered to players that like to earn victory and not have it handed to them. Unfortunately ESO is catered to a participation trophy community.

This is why the only thing I find enjoyable is the PvP which has gotten pretty stale with the overperformance of tanks.

I remember a puzzle game; before google and the internet when you relied on the gamer magazine to publish help.

You are in an ally way and there is washing on a line blocking your progress.
You look for alternative routes to avoid the washing.
You talk to the person who has hung out the washing, no she will not take it in until it is dry.

I gave up.

The solution? Build a time machine, go back in time and release a butterfly that through causality created a rainy day on the day you wanted to use the ally and so no washing on the line. Simple.....

I put the "game" in the bin.

So no we do not need "old school" mechanics thank you

Society in general is moving towards the mentality that mediocrity is good. Not surprised it’s found it’s way into video games too.

Ignored the poll, but at some level I agree...at least bosses should be a tiny bit of a challenge. The molag bal fight from the main story is such a cakewalk it's embarrassing. I get it, you shouldn't need to be a pro to complete the quests, but if the only way you can possibly wipe on the end boss is to go afk for 10 minutes, something is wrong.

mann9753b16_ESO wrote: »

msalvia wrote: »

Ignored the poll, but at some level I agree...at least bosses should be a tiny bit of a challenge. The molag bal fight from the main story is such a cakewalk it's embarrassing. I get it, you shouldn't need to be a pro to complete the quests, but if the only way you can possibly wipe on the end boss is to go afk for 10 minutes, something is wrong.

Yeah, most times I have these "Wait... that was the boss?" moments...

I came to the realization, playing TERA (with it's BAMs/mini-bosses-as-farmable-mobs) & Dragon's Dogma (with all those big monsters), that I just don't enjoy standard videogame Big Elaborate Boss Fights. They're long, tedious, and annoying. At the end of them, I don't feel accomplishment, just "thank god that's over, now I can get back to rest of the game". Which is part of the reason that I skipped on Boss Fight: The Game Monster Hunter World. And a factor into why I'm not interested in running dungeons/trials/raids (which are all about the boss fights).

Knightpanther wrote: »

Biased pole with a lame second option.

I don't want easy success but what I do want is a non stressful gaming experience, lets face it if you want a challenge you play stuff like Everquest.

be safe

So the poll isn't biased at all. You're getting defensive because you're embarrassed of the fact that you do prefer when mobs just fall over and die as you walk by.

I personally would like it, if the overworld was dangerous enough that players would consider to group up with random strangers from time to time. For example, in a delve or a cave with a lot of enemies. I would also appreciate more challenging end bosses of quest chains/delves (or to phrase it differently: The bosses should have a chance to play out their mechanics).

This could be achieved by drastically lowering the power creep introduced by CP in overworld, without touching it in Dungeons/Trials. For example: CP boni could be reduced to 25-50% in overworld. You would still get stronger over time, but the effects would be not be as drastic. Furthermore, this would not necessitate a total revamp of game difficulty, since difficulty is already on a good level for players without CP. The same goes for veteran content (e.g. vet dungeons, trials), since CP scaling would be turned off here.
HOWEVER, many people might not appreciate to lose their accumulated power. So these changes would be hard to promote to the common player, who's now used to faceroll enemies in overworld.

In the following paragraph I toss around some ideas for a more cooperative gameplay design (ignore if you don't care):
Why are there no quest regions where the players have to work together to achieve something. Not like world bosses, but a zone where 2 or 3 factions (not the alliances) are present that are hostile towards each other. The players can decide to join one faction and can support their faction capital by doing quests (collect/spend materials or sabotage enemy holdings or kill their NPC troopers --> but not PvP, if this wouldn't be a specific PvP zone). One faction could rise to glory over time by the efforts of its players. But mainting this status would be difficult and the underdog faction would get buffs to compensate the power difference. Moreover, faction progress can deteriorate over time. So there would be a constant up and down of different factions, which unlocks certain skills/passives and items to the players (some are semi-permenant unlocks like guild skill lines, other are dependent on the state of the faction like items/recipes). In addition, a player should be able to easily see the progess of the factions by looking at the status of main settlements (e.g. looks good or crumbling) and outposts. Players can also change their faction, but lose all their effort and rewards (guild skill line of the left faction would be reset and locked again) by doing such a turning traitor quest (leave one faction to join another one).

Sorry for my ramblings...

There's big on-going thread about this. But people who want faceroll easy are the majority and those who want bit of challenge need to get naked, remove CP, stand in all bad just auto attacking or find a new game because we are the minority.