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Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Challenging vs. Punishing - Where do you draw the line?
ADDIS0N
Posts: 1,018 ★★★★
This is a pretty subjective question, so I would expect the answers to vary quite a lot, but I'm curious ... where do you draw the line between content that feels like punishment vs. content that feels like a reasonable challenge?
I'll give you my example:
I'm currently exploring Cavalier difficulty. When I explore content, I usually work my way backward after initial completion. Unlike a few people I've seen on the forums, I do not find Cavalier too easy - I find most of it challenging and pushes the limits of my skill and my roster. I usually throw on a boost and there are a few lanes that require other items like health potions or revives.
To me, this is challenging - most of the content is difficult enough for me and I expect to use a few items here and there, but I don't feel defeated or beaten down by the time I get through the boss.
I feel different about the Encroaching Stun lanes in 3.1, however. To me, they move past the point of being a challenge into the zone of being punishing - and there are several reasons why.
Where do you draw the line?
Why is certain content challenging and fun for you, but other content is punishing and not worth it?
I'll give you my example:
I'm currently exploring Cavalier difficulty. When I explore content, I usually work my way backward after initial completion. Unlike a few people I've seen on the forums, I do not find Cavalier too easy - I find most of it challenging and pushes the limits of my skill and my roster. I usually throw on a boost and there are a few lanes that require other items like health potions or revives.
To me, this is challenging - most of the content is difficult enough for me and I expect to use a few items here and there, but I don't feel defeated or beaten down by the time I get through the boss.
I feel different about the Encroaching Stun lanes in 3.1, however. To me, they move past the point of being a challenge into the zone of being punishing - and there are several reasons why.
- Encroaching Stun is a challenge enough on its own - grouping it with Biohazard really narrows down attacker options, but then adding Specialist-2 on top of it all makes the fights unnecessarily long and painful.
- I don't feel like encroaching stun was designed well in the first place. I feel like the opponent's special attack should also count on your behalf and they don't. Seeing the defender turtle up and throw their special attack the moment you try to launch yours is not fun at all.
- Specific defenders with really long special attacks and glancing abilities were purposely chosen for these paths and that added an additional level of difficulty that was not necessary.
- Lastly, Seeing Red is a ridiculous node and does nothing to help mutant champs that bleed. You're still forced to bring bleed immune or heavily bleed-resistant champs, and there are few mutants that fit that category well.
Where do you draw the line?
Why is certain content challenging and fun for you, but other content is punishing and not worth it?
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Comments
And it's not just her that's affected, almost every other immune champ is reliant to some extent on their specials. I would have hated to use Ghost and Claire without suicides for the entire thing, but now I probably have no choice. Gonna be some long fights 😓
Things like that just kill any joy that I might have otherwise had in a quest.
When y = bleed/poison and defender = Sentinel/Warlock, I'm forced to take shock or whatever. And there's heal block so rip willpower.
Now, this is relative. I'm not saying the fight is necessarily *intrinsically* punishing. It is punishing for me, because I am not someone with full control over the Mojo fight now, so encroaching stun is overwhelming for me. But maybe in a year or two it won't be. Where you draw the line depends as much on what kind of player you're assuming should be a reasonable match for the content difficulty. But for me, that's qualitatively where I tend to draw the line. If I can separate the components of the fight and overcome them, that's more rewarding than punishing. If not, it is more punishing than rewarding.
The Infinity Thanos fight is another good example of the principle. That fight hits you with all sorts of challenges that not every player is good at: reverse controls, intercepting, learning the specials. But when he appeared he did so on a map with just him. So you could try to get better fighting through his phases with practice. without a lot of extraneous cost and effort. You could work your way up to defeating him. Encroaching Stun Mojo is not as easy to do that with, which adds more friction to the experience. No one wants to exit and reenter a path and work their way up to a troublesome fight repeatedly, and the costs in energy are higher to do so. So while Thanos hits you with a lot of stuff, its stuff you can take apart piece by piece and try to get better at overcoming, because there's an inexpensive avenue to practicing the fight.
Thanos is harder. But Mojo is more annoying. Neither is *super* punishing, but I believe Thanos is well within the rewarding side, while Mojo is a step and a half over the line into more punishing and less rewarding. For me.
A lot of the nodes in there aren’t awful in and of themselves but combined with the global, champion gates and that disgrace of a node on Mordo you’ve got a quest that so far has cost me the same as all of 6.3 on its own.
There’s usually one path in a quest where you kind of assume that the designer has just had an argument with their other half and taken it out on you. 6.2.5 is the time they got divorced and lost 70% of the house and custody of the kids.
This is one of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen Kabam make in recent node design. Nodes like “does 50% less damage if x” still make the fight more challenging as it makes the twice as long if you don’t bring the right counter and gives you more time to mess up in long fights such as Act 6. However, nodes like “90% less damage” or “100% less damage” just make the fight restrictive. If you don’t bring the right counter then it’s either impossible or you’re going to be absolutely miserable.
I’ve never understood why they decided to take that route and why they continue to
Of course there are more and less creative ways to do this, but the bottom line is that nodes that reduce your damage unless X are the most straight forward way to satisfy the two objectives of making different champs more valuable, and making the content more difficult without simply cranking up the defender's stats. So it happens a lot, and actually over time it happens more and more often, as a replacement for just handing the AI +700% attack. And to be frank, I'll take diss track over just cranking up the defender's attack rating to the point that all their attacks might as well be unblockable.
90% or 100% less damage just limits the number of champs you can actually use where as 50% less damage makes the best out both worlds. It certainly makes champs more valuable because with health pools already getting bigger, making it twice as long is challenging. However, it doesn’t restrict you to use only a select few champs to even have a chance. Also, suppose you chose to takes the 50% less damage and just power through you are choosing to make the fight longer than needed. If it’s 100% less damage you have no option. Use the correct champs or you won’t get by