(09-04-2015, 02:18 PM)Warren Castille Wrote: I'm articulating it badly, as I'm not trying to say "Everyone must play the way I deem it!" I just miss when challenge was met with determination and not surrender. I blame FFXI.
Edit: I consider it a personal failing of my own, hence my claiming position as a grognard earlier.
I do have to question: Are you're really playing the right game, though, for what you miss?
Because those games are out there:
You may not believe me, but I do in fact understand what you want. I just don't know if an MMO like FFXIV is the best place to find what you want.
My wariness in this topic is that I have developed a powerful bias against this:
Fake Longevity
These kinds of bosses
These older times you long for, I actually do get, and they go muuuuuuuuuuch farther back than Kingdom Hearts: Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari2600. The Ultima games. Level 255 in Pac Man in the arcades. The difference is that once you got these personal achievements, then.. well, you can be done with the game. Modern gaming has not as much abandoned these sorts of persistence; in fact, it EXPLOITS them by Skinner-esque rewards systems:
Player: I beat SuperDragon EX! I beat SuperDragon EX! WoooooT
(now, in oldschool gaming, you're done! You got that bragging right. You pushed through. But...)
MMO: Yay! Oh, sorry, the drop you wanted didn't land. Come back tomorrow, loser, and try again! Okay, okay, have a few tokens, but.. you'll be back. Rest up, pal, we want you doing it again. We've gotta keep you subbed some way, right?
It's not that people are totally unwilling to meet challenges, but the people who like challenge for challenge's sake are not, by and large, MMO players, and they don't exist in enough numbers to keep one afloat and working - if they did, I might still be RPing as my Wildstar main. They're off playing all the sorts of games I have spoiler-linked up there.
Subscription / Marketplace - supported games wont' be built this way, because people don't pay fees forever for the same old challenge. If I want that rush of overcoming a challenge with determination and built-up skill, and that's my main goal, I know that there isn't an MMO out there that is really gonna scratch that itch forever, and the closest ones to it turn into the nastiest depths of Eve Online, which are what you get when pure determination and drive to defeat things, rather than a community-oriented spirit, get too much power. I played Eve Online for a year, and I don't ever want to go back to that pit (and now I'm sure that a dozen people reading this are thinking, "What's wrong, you couldn't handle it, Carebear Noob?", which is the precise reason I left that nasty place)
I think of that moment in Wreck-it-Ralph when Vanellope finally realizes why that medal is so important to Ralph, and that realization turns rivalry into a future friendship - they both have realized that someone understands why they want something so badly, and are willing to go against the very rules of their own worlds to get it. Silly example, I guess, but we aren't playing a game in which the determination we're discussing is held in anywhere as much value by the developers as it is by certain players. Sometimes, we have to literally find a new world, or make one, if we want those medals that represent our own self-gratification. We wanna work up to Titan, bust him up, and feel good about ourselves, but how valuable can that continue to feel when that same fight is what we're expected to do over and over? Can we not dislike a challenge once we've beaten it? Video Game bragging rights just don't mean quite the same thing as they did in the 80's and 90's, and not in an MMO.
And.. well, I think I rambled, but I'm posting it anyway.
"But in the laugh there was another voice. A clearer laugh, an ironic laugh. A laugh which laughs because it chooses not to weep."
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