Self Limitations to Increase Difficulty

Dauntis

Why must a game alter it's settings to increase difficulty, if only a small amount of it's players want an increased difficulty? (I am looking at you my beloved WoW). Why can't we as players limit ourselves? Here are a few things we can do to increase difficulty for ourselves without kicking all the softies in the face. I have actually tried most of this in WoW and find those characters to be fun when I want an uphill battle.

Never use heirloom gear or special xp up gear or potions of any kind

Wear only non-magical armor

Delete your character on death, your own imposed perma-death penalty

Use only items you have crafted yourself

Do no quests, only grind mobs

Find like minded self limiters to run dungeons with so the overall difficulty is increased

Become an unarmed master and never use weapons

No healers allowed

 

I just think there are plenty of ways to increase your challenge and avoid the path of least resistance all on your own.

Kaijin2k3

For some of us, self-enforced challenges become boring after a while. 

In my case, I've done (and completed) many of them: such as a Superhuman+Ironman+NoPsionics XCom run, NoHeadshot+NoSkirmishes+NoOrders Valkyria Chronicles, and so forth.

But while it was interesting, ultimately it felt artificial as I knew I was purposefully manipulating the game to be harder; honestly, I didn't really feel satisfied with it.

Strangely for the games that allow it, I feel much better modding the game to be harder than to play with tying a hand behind my back.

Mileage varies and whatnot.

Homitu

Some players like to do this, but I personally never could because the concept is completely contrary to another major reason we player these games: to progress and improve.  

Most of these games set players on a quest for ever greater power, as if we're all characters in Dragonball Z.  You reach the next level so you can take on stronger enemies in the next zone.  You earn better gear so you can do that harder dungeon.  You unlock traits/masteries/skills so you can perform your roll more effectively, both solo and in groups.  Moreover, this stuff is immensely satisfying to obtain.  These are some of the most compelling rewards in the game.  These rewards are what drive players to continue onward.  To just ask players to ignore them in order to arbitrarily manufacture faux difficulty doesn't work for many players. 

Kaijin2k3

To add to what Homitu said and expand on my previous post, a large part of the satisfaction comes from really giving it your best attempt; to use your knowledge to come up with what you need to do to overcome the challenges, and further improve in the game.

When you encounter something that's difficult, it takes a bit to really come up with an effective way to overcome it. Whether it is formulating a plan or figuring out where you went wrong and how to fix it. You may not have any immediate answer, or you're really going to have to focus on bettering yourself in order to beat it (such as learning and mastering the more nuanced way of approaching things in a game such as Demons' or Dark Souls)

But in the challenges you propose, in the back of your head you already know the answer to beating it. You already know precisely what you can do to overcome it. And it's more a case of, "Well, no I won't do that because... well, just because." It's almost akin to not trying, and it's just not satisfying for some of us.

centkin

I actually made it to the level cap in lotro without dying.  It was back when the game released and when I hit the level 20 title for not dying, I kept it up in case there was another special title.  There wasn't. 

 

The only actual funny thing was getting the tutorial on death in the ettinmoors from a PvP kill.  What was funny was it happened so quickly upon entering the ettinmoors it was not funny.

 

What the PVE couldn't do over the entire game, a full sqaudron of players could do the first step out your door.

Vrika

A very important part of the game is losing to others. Whether it's getting killed in PvP situation, or failing to beat a challenge that others have beaten, in MMO you're more or less comparing yourself to others and trying to match them or beat them. If you can't do it now, you'll try to do better in the future.

If you start setting self-limitations that really affect gameplay, you'll lose that competition. You still want to win as much as you used to, but now you realize that because of your rules there's no way to do that. Instead of trying harder you'll start hating yourself for setting those rules. It's not fun.

I'm all for a difficulty setting if the games would allow players to choose difficulty settings. But in MMO it should be coded to the game mechanisms, or at least a server-wide ruleset.

Homitu

Originally posted by Kaijin2k3

To add to what Homitu said and expand on my previous post, a large part of the satisfaction comes from really giving it your best attempt; to use your knowledge to come up with what you need to do to overcome the challenges, and further improve in the game.

When you encounter something that's difficult, it takes a bit to really come up with an effective way to overcome it. Whether it is formulating a plan or figuring out where you went wrong and how to fix it. You may not have any immediate answer, or you're really going to have to focus on bettering yourself in order to beat it (such as learning and mastering the more nuanced way of approaching things in a game such as Demons' or Dark Souls)

But in the challenges you propose, in the back of your head you already know the answer to beating it. You already know precisely what you can do to overcome it. And it's more a case of, "Well, no I won't do that because... well, just because." It's almost akin to not trying, and it's just not satisfying for some of us.

Yeah exactly.  Part of the fun of overcoming the most difficult challenges in any game involves strategically building your character to its maximum potential in order to meet the demands of a particular fight. 

I would perhaps contest the second half of your post to an extent, however.  You can already know how to beat a fight and it can still be extraordinarily challenging.  This is usually the case with any raid encounter nowadays.  Guilds research fights well in advance to ensure every member is well versed in the encounter's mechanics.  Yet they may still struggle to beat the encounter for days or even weeks - partly because it requires absolute precise execution, partly because they may need to do a bit more min/maxing of their collective builds. 

I think this is the kind of abitrary difficulty the OP seeks to manufacture, except it intentionally excludes the min/max strategizing.  If you severely handicap yourself or your group - you may know how to beat the encounter, you may even have done it in the past with a more complete build - but now without that build, you will be forced to execute more precisely, hopefully creating more compelling, fun gameplay. 

But for all the reasons you and I have already given, I could never be satisfied with such a handicapped encounter, for half of the "fun" of any encounter for me lies in that strategizing and min/maxing phase, and then seeing those strategies come to fruition.