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<blockquote data-quote="Savage Wombat" data-source="post: 5839246" data-attributes="member: 1932">So over on the other half of WotC's site I read this article about two principles of a fun play experience: Flow and fiero.<a href="http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/184" target="_blank">Sculpting Flow and Fiero : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering</a>One of the principles, flow, seems to be (if I understand correctly) that the challenge of a particular activity should just keep ahead of your mastery of the game.&nbsp; The game gets harder just at the point where you've gotten good enough to play it that well.&nbsp; If it's too easy, you get bored.&nbsp; If it's too hard, you get frustrated.Now, 3e and 4e encounter balance seems to be based on that theory.&nbsp; That a given encounter with monsters should be just hard enough to be challenging, but not hard enough that you lose.&nbsp; In order to maintain that sense of flow.But I'm starting to feel that, to a lot of gamers, this kind of thing isn't actually the kind of flow that they want.&nbsp; If the encounters are balanced against your party at 1st level, and balanced against your party at 20th level, the game isn't actually getting more difficult as you play, is it?Maybe the needs of flow are better served by having the monsters get proportionally tougher, compared to PCs, as the game goes on.&nbsp; That a CR 1 encounter against a level 1 party is an auto-win, but a CR 20 encounter against a CR 20 party is a deathmatch.&nbsp; Or maybe the game should suggest that the longer you run a game, the harder it should get.&nbsp; By the time your party is level 20, they should be regularly fighting CR 24 encounters.Is flow better achieved by having the monsters challenge the party, or by having the game challenge the players?Or am I just off base here?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Savage Wombat, post: 5839246, member: 1932"] So over on the other half of WotC's site I read this article about two principles of a fun play experience: Flow and [I]fiero[/I]. [url=http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ld/184]Sculpting Flow and Fiero : Daily MTG : Magic: The Gathering[/url] One of the principles, flow, seems to be (if I understand correctly) that the challenge of a particular activity should just keep ahead of your mastery of the game. The game gets harder just at the point where you've gotten good enough to play it that well. If it's too easy, you get bored. If it's too hard, you get frustrated. Now, 3e and 4e encounter balance seems to be based on that theory. That a given encounter with monsters should be just hard enough to be challenging, but not hard enough that you lose. In order to maintain that sense of flow. But I'm starting to feel that, to a lot of gamers, this kind of thing isn't actually the kind of flow that they want. If the encounters are balanced against your party at 1st level, and balanced against your party at 20th level, the game isn't actually getting more difficult as you play, is it? Maybe the needs of flow are better served by having the monsters get proportionally tougher, compared to PCs, as the game goes on. That a CR 1 encounter against a level 1 party is an auto-win, but a CR 20 encounter against a CR 20 party is a deathmatch. Or maybe the game should suggest that the longer you run a game, the harder it should get. By the time your party is level 20, they should be regularly fighting CR 24 encounters. Is flow better achieved by having the monsters challenge the party, or by having the [I]game[/I] challenge the [I]players?[/I] Or am I just off base here? [/QUOTE]

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