Nachtfischer

The review of Rock, Paper, Shotgun is really good. It shows a surprising amount of honesty and clarity about what makes games unique and what "good quality" means for an interactive medium. Here's the verdict: The first paragraph is also really nice, not only in regards to Watch_Dogs, but also 90 % of "sandbox games" and, in fact, most modern day video games: In general, there seem to be two types of stances on the game: a) The technology is great, but the gameplay is flawed, flat and uninteresting. b) The technology is great! *drool* Go figure.

No. Not in the context of the system itself. And that's what I am looking at. Not something you made up as a player yourself. If you build a lego tower and fail at building it as high as you had planned, you have "lost" your personal challenge. But have you "lost lego"? Who would claim that? Similarly you don't lose any other sandbox system. Yeah, sure. You claim that again and again without showing me one solid example of it. I could just as easily accuse you of the same thing by the way, only that you don't even address my points specifically. And I would not do it, because it's a very ill-mannered way of discussing things.

I think it's quite obvious, but you seem to have a hard time grasping it, so I'll help you some more. 1. "Challenge = A task or situation that tests someone's abilities." 2. For a situation to be testing something, there needs to be a loss condition defined. Else you can never fail the test. Therefore it is not even a test. It's simply a task, you'll achieve or you'll decide to walk away from. 3. "I've played plenty of games with easy respawning that were challenging." Now, "easy respawning" implies that there is indeed no loss condition in these systems, so according to the definition you gave (1.) it's not a challenge. Obviously you used yet another wishy-washy term: easy. I mean, you could call the respawning in a Unreal Tournament death match "easy respawning". But I don't think that's what you meant at all, or did you? (A UT death match is obviously a challenge you can lose, by the way.) Oh, and if you're really referring to this (which I find hard to believe): Nobody but the voice inside your head even argued with that point.

Now that it's finally starting to make some sense, you want to derail it? What a terrible attitude to take!

I love the theme! Concerning the game: You don't know what the buyable upgrades do until you actually buy them. I guess tool-tips would be cool!I assume the background is work-in-progress. It somehow confused me and made me think this is some lane-based game for five seconds. Is it ever viable to NOT be shooting constantly? If not, then just let the tank auto-shoot all the time, because the game is actually about positioning and dodging (and hopefully not pressing shift as often and regularly as you can). In any case: Allow the fire button to be held down instead of it having to be pressed again and again.Interesting thing that the enemies bump from the edges and the game board loops for your tank. That gives you a neat edge while battling them.I think the first waves a a bit dull since the enemies just shoot randomly (I think). You can't really do much dodging or anything. It's all about driving around targeting semi-well and pressing shift all the time. Things got much more interesting when the potatoes with glasses came in! Although these frantic fast ones made it kind of impossible to react to them in any reasonable way beyond "move as fast as you can, in any direction you can, all the time". The level where I only faced the ones with glasses was by far the most interesting to me!Yeah, just some first impressions and thoughts. Keep it up!

It has to have a win condition and a game-end condition (together they define a loss condition). Here's a neat article on the topic. Elder Scrolls: These systems are kind of a weird blend of a sandbox and an actual game. Anyways, yes, you can win, but not lose the system. The fixed and defined end of an Elder Scrolls game sees you winning, "beating" the game. There's no other possibility. And there's a reason for it: You're the hero! How could you ever lose? You can maybe "lose" a single battle, but not really even that because you'll just reload. It's like if we're playing Chess and anytime you put me into checkmate I go: "Well, then I'll roll back 10 moves!" or something. And this reloading is part of the game. And it has to be, because it's actually a story-heavy sandbox, in which it makes no sense for it to just "end". The strengths of the Elder Scrolls game do clearly not lie in imposing any sort of "challenge" upon the player or in being contests of decision-making. And everybody actually knows that. (Because everybody will jump to the premature conclusion: That does not say that they're bad systems. Something not being a "game", a decision-contest, a "challenge" or whatever is not a value judgement.) Yeah, freedom about which move to make next does not mean you can't lose. Although thinking about it, technically Fallout 1 lets you reload anytime, too. It's more aware of its gamey-ness than Elder Scrolls, though. Oh, you're not! Your posts are by far the most reasonable reactions to the whole topic yet. Yes. But most games implicitly do so. Some have a rather lose winning condition going on, like you can put your name on a "top ten list" if you beat any score in the top ten. But if you don't, then you don't. It just "muddies up" the winning condition a bit, but it's still the implicit goal and therefore a challenge. Another well-fitting article. Some are. The thing is, if there is a score, then that implies that it has meaning. Well, it should have. Obviously there are some games making really bad use of score (like Super Mario Bros. where it's just a vestigial "Well, we have to have a score in a videogame, don't we?" thing) and that are actually about completion (Mario explicitly tells you that at least, you have to go through all the levels to save the princess... which makes it even weirder to have a score inside it, but it basically says: "Ignore it!"... so it's kind of a non-issue and just adds a little useless noise to the system). EDIT: Replying to your edit above. Don't Starve is somewhere between a game and a toy. It allows for exploration of the system's inherent rules. That's explicitly meant to be a part of it. Then however, it does have challenge. You're even given a score (although nobody really knows if it's important, I guess). There's also some ultimate winning condition. And you can die permanently. It's basically just full of fundamentally different things and wants to be kind of a "one size fits all" system. A problem that many modern videogames have. They sort of fit everybody, but they don't really fit anybody.

Ah, finally a real answer! But that's exactly what an inherent challenge would have to provide. I mean, how can you find the combat challenging in our sense of the word here, if you don't even know (i.e. the system does not explicitly/inherently tell you) if you have to win the combat? In a true sandbox you can pose a challenge upon yourself called "I have to lose 50 fights in 10 minutes!" And the point is: This challenge is as good as any other in the context of the sandbox. Because it is a sandbox. It does not value your interaction with it. There are no "good" or "bad" moves in such a system. As far as I know, Dark Soul explicitly wants you to beat the game. There's a well-defined ending point (there are even multiple ones, I think). Obviously you can sit around all the time, but that does not help you in reaching the implicit goal of the game. EDIT: Oh, and concerning the "unfairness". I never said sandboxes would lack challenge. I think they do not have it. And if they have it, there's an inherent conflict going on in the system. It's not at all a critique of a sandbox system to say that it has no challenge. It's a plus. EDIT 2: It is a shame we attribute "permadeath" specifically to roguelikes anyways. Tetris has permadeath. Pacman has permadeath. Monopoly has permadeath (and 99 % of all board games out there). We have to look at specific systems, though. Continues don't automatically remove challenge. In some arcade brawler, you might be able to continue after death, but you'll usually lose your score up to that point. So you'll probably (maybe) fail the inherent challenge of beating the highscore. In the end it's still a challenge you can absolutely lose!

What the hell? I never even gave a definition! Rathlord provided ONE possible definition of "challenge" for us to have a basis on which to discuss objectively. If you fail to understand that I can not help you. 1) I assume you're talking about games in the colloquial sense in the sense of "videogames" in general. And as I repeatedly stated: Of course they should not all have permanent failure or even challenge. 2) Again, you're then not using the definition of challenge you gave yourself, lol. 3) Oh, so now we're talking WoW and not GTA? Of course raids and dungeons in WoW are a challenge you can lose. Your "logical" conclusions you claim to draw from anything I said are totally ridiculous. 1) Cut the trolling, will you? 2) They are not. Show me a specific contradiction and I'll show you it isn't one. You simply didn't understand. I did never "backpeddle" the tiniest bit throughout this whole thread. There's really no reason to.

No, I explicitly don't. Read the rest of the thread please... *sigh*

But I have yet to see a counter-argument using the same definition of challenge. Oh the irony ... So, you didn't read the first part of my post? Cool!

What? A definition is by definition (lol!) objective. You can easily define "challenge = apple" and work from there. I just don't think anyone would use that definition in his everyday life! The one in this thread though is quite reasonable and commonly used, I think. To me PZ isn't based on exploring rules as much, it's more about the exploration of the generated space, about the experience. I thought Don't Starve was rather boring after I saw everything there was to see. The exploration of the world was not as interesting as the exploration of the mechanics (i.e. what can I build, what can I research etc.). I've seen lots of people agree with that sentiment actually. By the way, I don't strongly dislike Don't Starve. I just think it could have been better (and it's just the same with GTA). Only if I believe they are. Which holds true for anything I've said about GTA in connection to the definition of "challenge" used in this thread (again, that's objective as long as we're all using this specific definition). I can still be wrong, though. But I have yet to see a counter-argument using the same definition of challenge.

That was just a side note, I do not whish to explore further (at least not yet, until we have resolved open misunderstandings or disagreements). By the way, you are being the very opposite of constructive with your posts here.

So you want an objective discussion about an (as you said yourself) subjective topic such as challenge? You didn't understand. I wanted "challenge" defined, because people implicitly assume different definitions of such a word. When it's defined however, we enter the realm of objectivity in the context of this definition. Do you assume, I'd want the player to lose everything in GTA? Or Skyrim? Or Minecraft? Or Diablo? Or whatever persistent 1000 hour system there is? Obviously not, that's ridiculous. In fact, the opposite is true! These systems need persistence. A toy with permadeath ends up utterly broken. Something like Don't Starve heavily suffered from that inherent conflict: You explore the system as a player, but as your character (permanently) dies, you have to "re-explore" (which is inherently boring). Your character has forgotten everything, but you still know it. It's clearly a conflict of wanting to be a game and a toy at the same time, and it ends up being a highly inefficient game and a toy becoming boring rather quickly. EDIT: If you disagree with the statement that there's no challenge in GTA, then you simply disagree with the given definition of "challenge" in this thread. I'm not saying that's wrong, but to have an objective discussion, we have to assume a common definition (or change it now and start a new discussion!). In fact, I think you could (reasonably!) re-define "challenge" for GTA to have it. And I'd likely think that's a bad thing.

What I'm trying to say is: It can't be inherently challenging, because a sandbox has no inherent goals. That's the whole point of a sandbox. It provides constrained interaction without a specific goal. You make up your goals. You create your own challenge. It's however NOT part of the rules of the system. I mean, an apple is not "challenging" in itself, just because you can make a challenge out of throwing it as far as you can. Challenge as defined for this thread is a "test". A test requires being able to fail. Failing at a test is losing. Losing is starting all over again (see below). You can't fail. The system does not tell you "you lose". It's not built into the rules. You can just "walk away". I don't think so. But maybe you did? I mean, I explicitly stated it's not about something being "fun" or not on the first page... 1. I come up with them from seriously thinking about interactive systems for several years now. (No, that's not an argument, but since you asked...) 2. "Suddenly"? I never said it should have challenge. In fact, I repeatedly stated how I think it should embrace its sandbox nature even more! 3. Yes! Immersion, that's it. That's what these systems I call "toys" or "fantasy simulations" are meant to do! And I definitely see GTA's strengths in this sector (by the way, I think that's even largely agreed upon). To elaborate on 3.: I strongly believe there are different interactive machines, that have a very specific value to the human mind. On a fundamental level I call them toys (bare interactive systems, "sandboxes", "simulations" --> allow exploration of the inherent rules), puzzles (a specific goal, one or multiple pre-defined solutions, a binary solution state --> allows pure mental problem-solving), contests (comparison of the physical or mental degree of perfection of multiple participants --> allow a measurement of this degree), games (contests of ambiguous decision-making --> create understanding).

I don't even know what you're trying to say here?