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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vaalingrade" data-source="post: 9396170" data-attributes="member: 82524">Okay, so while we're accusing those evil, shifty players fo 'not wanting a challenge' and 'wanting to steamroll everything', allow me to play college professor and make a request:Define Your TermsWhat are we saying when we say 'challenge' because there's actual challenge where there is a skill involved that is learned as part of play, and there is 'artificial difficulty' and 'risk mechanics'. They are not the same thing.As much as I absolutely hate Dark Souls and what it has done to the adventure game genre, it is a game with challenge. You have to master timing and positioning and read opponents' patterns. You WILL die as punishment until you learn, then there will be something new to kill you until you stop dying.HOWEVER.Dark Souls also doesn't irrevocably destroy your character and make them start over at level 1 as part of this learning process. It assumes you learned up to this point and lets you proceed with the relevant lesson.Let's look at arguably the most famous game at the moment: Minecraft. Minecraft has both a challenge option and a risk mechanics option. As a challenge, you can choose Hard Mode where enemies have more HP, deal more damage and will knock down basic doors. Things are harder, but again, you don't get busted down to zero as punishment. You just have to do a corpse run and continue.None of these sound like 'challenging' D&D as were being presented at the moment does it? Well...Then Minecraft has Hardcore mode and it is not about being challenging, it is about imposing a risk to make it more thrilling to people who like risk. Nothing actually changes in hardcore mode. You can even play it in peaceful mode, IIRC.HOWEVERIf you die in hardcore, you lose everything. Potentially years of progress down the drain with no reward but bragging rights that you were super brave to play a game that punishes you for failure.Sound familiar?What about if I add that Minecraft also has inifnite dragons to unfairness you to dearth with. For example, the Creeper. This mob is utterly silent until 2-3 seconds before it explodes next to you, capable of killing characters if they aren't fully armored.Oh, and that warning can come as they leap 30 meters down onto your head while you're minding your business. There is an element of 'play with care, manage your hearts', but you can die through no fault of your own with utterly no control.And that's fine for the people who like to play that way. Hell, Youtubers make bank on the implicit risk of 'I played 100 days in an increasingly deadly and or frustratingly hard world' type videos because the implication is one of losing a week's or two's worth of work if they fail.However it's not for everyone. People like 100 days Hardcore, but people also like the chill shenanigans of Hermitcraft, of the social and PVP aspects of 100 players in a setting content as well. The game is designed to slide up and down the scales of difficulty and risk without the community devolving into insulting people who don't like the high risk settings.But back to the topic: the gripes compiled here have nothing to do will challenge.Taking healing back to 5.0e for example doesn't make the game more difficult; it just brings back the problem of healing not being worth using unless an ally is downed. This isn't adding challenge, this is removing tactical depth and options.But of course there's the other 'solutions' to 'pop-up healing'; mostly punishments and death spirals. Which again isn't challenge if you're just setting characters up to die more often due to no fault of their own.Same goes for potions being bonus actions. Take that away and there's no boost in challenge. Potions go back to pre-buffs and raising downed allies. Less tactics, less actual challenge.</blockquote>

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