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<blockquote data-quote="Antithetist" data-source="post: 5142673" data-attributes="member: 88443">Final Fantasy was never exactly hard, because you always had the (aforementioned) option of going away to grind boars in the forest until you were such a high level that all the plot encounters were rendered trivial. &nbsp;I'm not sure if CRPGs have got easier; the Japanese kind have always enabled grinding (at least, as far back as I know anything about them), and as for the Western sort, I'm too young to have braved the horrors of Rogue and whatnot, so I can't really say. I think it's true, though, that in general there are more easy games around; a wider market means a lower common denominator, so the games that are pitching to that level will be easier. Similarly, the really hardcore and punishing stuff tends to get pushed to the wayside since it's now only a small subset of serious hardcore gamers who have any interest in that. What's more, many of the 'hardcore' types have moved on to internet multiplayer stuff, leaving less market share again for hardcore single-player games.&nbsp;Back on topic, surely the idea of numbers changing (they could as easily go down, as in pre-3E, but that's less intuitive) is what keeps the illusion of game balance alive? If numbers don't get bigger as the PCs grow in power, if arbitrary easy/moderate/hard target numbers for die rolls are simply set by the DM, then you're basically playing freeform. Having a set of numbers to manage and cultivate is, surely, the very essence of the players' engagement with the mechanical side of the game?&nbsp;It's possible to imagine a different way of doing things, in which character abilities are rated in a non-numerical manner, but if your system is any more complex than the most elementary rules-lite framework then numbers are rapidly going to become the only feasible way to track things.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Antithetist, post: 5142673, member: 88443"] Final Fantasy was never exactly hard, because you always had the (aforementioned) option of going away to grind boars in the forest until you were such a high level that all the plot encounters were rendered trivial. I'm not sure if CRPGs have got easier; the Japanese kind have always enabled grinding (at least, as far back as I know anything about them), and as for the Western sort, I'm too young to have braved the horrors of Rogue and whatnot, so I can't really say. I think it's true, though, that in general there are more easy games around; a wider market means a lower common denominator, so the games that are pitching to that level will be easier. Similarly, the really hardcore and punishing stuff tends to get pushed to the wayside since it's now only a small subset of serious hardcore gamers who have any interest in that. What's more, many of the 'hardcore' types have moved on to internet multiplayer stuff, leaving less market share again for hardcore single-player games. Back on topic, surely the idea of numbers changing (they could as easily go down, as in pre-3E, but that's less intuitive) is what keeps the illusion of game balance alive? If numbers don't get bigger as the PCs grow in power, if arbitrary easy/moderate/hard target numbers for die rolls are simply set by the DM, then you're basically playing freeform. Having a set of numbers to manage and cultivate is, surely, the very essence of the players' engagement with the mechanical side of the game? It's possible to imagine a different way of doing things, in which character abilities are rated in a non-numerical manner, but if your system is any more complex than the most elementary rules-lite framework then numbers are rapidly going to become the only feasible way to track things. [/QUOTE]

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