So I finally got around to listening to the newest VisualWood, and WoodenPotato brings up an interesting point at http://youtu.be/nepPhH8uAck?t=23m38s the lack of failure states in Living World.
The closest we’ve come to a failure state was in the Party Politics episode, where we could fail during the interrogation and would have to start over again. We have quasi-failure states in the Living World but these primarily take the form of the achievements, either you achieve it or do something wrong and don’t forcing us to use the motes to redo it. But I think having explicit failure states in Living World (do this in a specific amount of time, or protect this NPC) would add some variety to the experience and interaction.
I’m guessing failure states simply aren’t implemented in the Living Story or the Personal Story, so this might take time and effort to implement but I think it’s worth it to add variety and challenge to the Living Story.
So yeah, ANet please let me fail
[Suggestion] I want to fail!
But failing leads to crying….. and crying customers don’t buy gems…. and when they don’t buy gems thats bad for business…..
It’s just better for everyone if the content is made so that a quadriplegic can smash their head against the keyboard and win!
Im hoping this will come with HoT, whether it be expansion or large story content update… When players have a chunk of new things to do, challenging content can have suitable distractions from frustration.
I just hope they dont go down this ‘on rails’ bullkitten story in which you might aswell afk every fight other than a boss.
Argh, maybe i dont get it… I am a casualish player, but I havnt struggled with any of the content in quite a while. Even when dying I just res instantly without any kind of reset, so i dont get how some people complain when challenging stuff comes around. Its like some people want to watch a interactive film rather than play a game of skill.
To be fair, I lie.
I did struggle with the shadow dragon fight but it didnt take me long to realise my thief was ultra hard mode without a pot of stability to kitten in.
So what did i do?
I got a grp together to run it and prevailed through cooperation within the community. It is an MMO after all….
Problem with failure is how you deal with it. Do you just reset the encounter, does it branch into some other things ( you know like dynamic events, fail to prevent bandits from poisoning the water , now you deal with poison oozes ). If it’s the first than look at all the people annoyed by the lack of motes for achievements, it would just be a punishing mechanic , not fun at all. I would have loved the second one but is kind of hard to implement it in an MMO, this is more of a single game territory since it can branch out quite fast , quite a lot. Just imagine failing to defend the pact camp, everyone would be wiped , including Trahearne , no more assault on mordy, no more sylvari rebellion , see my point?
Edit: but you can fail achievements, which is nice as a mechanic, especially with motes.