Celebrim, I would response to your response to my last post, but I hate line-by-line quoting, since that causes the important details to quickly be lost amidst quibbling over minutia. Overall though, I don't think you really said anything of substance in response to my comments.
As it stands, you have yet to prove in any way that "ego gamers" you are talking about even exist, or that there is any trend in game design that is designed to appease them. Until you produce an example of a game that caters to these players, there really isn't anything meaningful to talk about in this thread.
However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.
Success in a game like D&D is not based on round by round results; success comes at the end of the encounter if the party is still alive and the enemy party is defeated. A single die roll isn't sufficient to give a feeling of accomplishment on its own. All the die roll can do is contribute to a general sense of dread or excitement.
Furthermore, even if a game system was designed such that every attack a character made hit 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that the game is easy or built for instant gratification. Take the videogame Final Fantasy IV for example. Just about every physical attack your characters make will hit for consistent damage, and magic is guaranteed to work. However, Final Fantasy IV is a notoriously hard game (especially in its DS remake). The player's party can easily have two characters die in a battle against mooks, and boss fights can be frustrating experiences that involve numerous retries. Just landing a hit in combat won't evoke Fiero, particularly in prolonged fights where one hit's success isn't significant.
If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.
As it stands, you have yet to prove in any way that "ego gamers" you are talking about even exist, or that there is any trend in game design that is designed to appease them. Until you produce an example of a game that caters to these players, there really isn't anything meaningful to talk about in this thread.
However, I get the general impression that you are talking about 4E and its general design decision that the majority of attacks and skill checks performed by players should succeed. If that is the case, then that is a terrible example for your argument.
Success in a game like D&D is not based on round by round results; success comes at the end of the encounter if the party is still alive and the enemy party is defeated. A single die roll isn't sufficient to give a feeling of accomplishment on its own. All the die roll can do is contribute to a general sense of dread or excitement.
Furthermore, even if a game system was designed such that every attack a character made hit 100% of the time, that doesn't mean that the game is easy or built for instant gratification. Take the videogame Final Fantasy IV for example. Just about every physical attack your characters make will hit for consistent damage, and magic is guaranteed to work. However, Final Fantasy IV is a notoriously hard game (especially in its DS remake). The player's party can easily have two characters die in a battle against mooks, and boss fights can be frustrating experiences that involve numerous retries. Just landing a hit in combat won't evoke Fiero, particularly in prolonged fights where one hit's success isn't significant.
If you want to make the case that game design is leading towards instant gratification and easy success, you need to prove that there is a game system where it is consistently the case that the players will always easily win every fight, regardless of variables. I don't think that is the case for 4E D&D or any other modern RPG.