NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 8624928" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yeah. It's a "competition" that occurs between people who are cooperating to achieve victory. In something like League of Legends or other MOBA games, it's the competition to land the "last hit" on enemies, and thus get all the fat lewts, trick out your champion, and consequently steamroll the enemy. Getting a pentakill (that is, landing the final blow against every single person on the enemy team before any of them can revive) feels really good, and is a form of soft "competition" between explicit allies.But I think calling it "challengist" play is a bit off too, [USER=71699]@clearstream[/USER] , because it really is important to draw the distinction between "challenges," which I think can be loosely summarized as specific obstacles within the gameplay space (e.g. "an encounter" is a "challenge," but likewise "a negotiation" is a challenge, they just use different rules), and "step-on-up," which is...more to do with how one prepares for and understands (or, more specifically, evaluates) that "challenge." Narrative and Simulation don't invoke "step-on-up," because strategizing and achievement, in the sense of "I bested that situation"/"we came out on top"/"WAHOO WE DID IT" are not really relevant to those things. "Narrative" (if I have understood it correctly) is about answering value-questions, while Simulation is either about exploring a milieu ("genre" Sim/what I called "emulation") or about exploring a world treated very rigorously as a world and what logical consequences derive from that ("process" Sim). You can't really "come out on top" if the goal is "collectively produce experiences that evoke comic book characters," because...there is no judgment standard (no "step on up") and the "challenge" is just the fictional situation of the story, lacking the "you must overcome it" aspect that "challenge" implies.There's also the problem that Narrativism, again if I have understood it, can also be parsed as challenging things, but in an extremely different sense: challenging a person to make a decision, to fall on one side or another (or to fall away, having refused to decide, etc.) These are challenges to the values and beliefs of the character and/or player. But such challenges cannot be bested, generally speaking; one does not speak of having defeated anything by choosing to go with one's gut even when the evidence says otherwise, or the like. Instead, these are challenges that are simply responded to. One responds in some way (including the option of not responding, sometimes).Now, it's fair to say "it's confusing to call it anything related to 'game,' since we call ALL of these things 'games'!" But I do think that trying to be reductive about it down to just "challenge" swings the other direction--it excludes the implicit scoring system of "step on up."Even if you aren't competing AT ALL, even if you have a full and unbroken commitment to "all for one and one for all," "Gamist" play very much includes the concept of being "scored" against something. Even if that "something" is an abstract ideal or the like, or "push the number as high as it can go," or whatever. E.g., using 4e as a starting point, you want your character to be effective at their role in combat. That's "step on up." The natural result of seeking effectiveness in that role is that, barring bad luck, you will succeed more often in combat situations--which are "challenges." But if we consider a particular role, the judgment standard for "step on up" is subtle and multi-layered, which is part of what makes it interesting as a Gamist thing (games where it's too easy and simple are generally not well-liked, and it's hard to make simple-yet-deep games.)A 4e Defender, for example, needs to find the right balance point between "stickiness" (keeping enemies where you want them to be), damage output (how threatening you are), and defenses (how difficult you are to hurt). If you're too sticky but have weak defenses, you're making yourself a sitting duck. If you can dish out lots of damage and take lots of damage, but have no way to keep enemies near you, they'll just avoid you when they can. If your damage output is just generally low, then your enemies won't care about ignoring you; but if it's too high, then conversely you'll take too many hits and the party's effectiveness will sag because all the damage is getting piled on only one group member. Thus, you have several different "scores" (some of them not strictly measured by numbers, e.g. how "sticky" you are) that don't just go from low=bad to high=good, but which have variable and shifting sweet spots you want to aim for.If you hit those sweet spots, whatever they may be for a given context, but fumble using your tools during the actual challenge, then you're still not getting the desired Gamist experience. You've Stepped On Up, but you haven't actually Achieved. Likewise, if you somehow stumble into success without the "step on up" side, you'll have Challenge, but you won't have any metric of success--you're just bumbling around and getting lucky (or being mollycoddled). You've (sort of) Achieved, but you failed to Step On Up. Both components seem pretty necessary to me.</blockquote>

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