Yes I'm not asking if you like FPS or RTS or RPG, my question is, do you like to win easily at the game (kill monsters and stuff, and steam roll everything in sight)
OR do you like the game to be challenging and even sometimes frustratingly difficult!!??
Do you like complex stories and puzzles to be mixed in with your action experience, do you find hard monsters and challenging dungeons to be more fun?

thats my humble question.

Personally I love games to be difficult, even insanely difficult (that's why I play almost all games on hard/insane difficulty), would love to see a much more challenging ES 5, wouldn't you? And I actually thought that Morrowind was much more fun (at first before you became god mod) because every potion counted and every failed stealth meant life or death, even going into a tomb unprepared was like suicide.
That is not saying I did not enjoy oblivion because I did, but I did not feel in danger as much, and challenges were rare, like do u remember that dream thingy quest that was fun because one mistake meant death.

It really depends on the game. I've modded Fallout 3 to a very hardcoe survival orientated game, but I have done nothing like that for Morrowind. In Morrowind I value exploration more, and I'm not using many mods that alter difficulty.

I generally prefer a challenge though. Won't play Left4Dead under Advanced, and prefer Expert difficulty when I have a decent team. I added more difficulty enhancing mods to Oblivion than I did to Morrowind.

Difficult, but not overwhelmingly so. I'd rather the game be challenging in terms of strategic depth, better AI, or be intellectually stimulating (puzzles, riddles and the like) than having every dungeon be a war of attrition over who has the better Restore Health spell readied.

Hmm... I have two Oblivion characters. One is an omni-God that can kill anyone and anything on sight (Slider bar on easiest) and the other is an alchemist, struggling for survival (Slider bar on the hardest) while my only Morrowind character is on medium. So, I like a bit of everything really. Sometimes I want to kill millions of Dremora with out losing any of my health and feel like the biggest badass EVAR, and sometimes, I want to get killed by a wolf repetitively, making me load a save game 13 times over and over and over...

ya I too loath Left4dead on normal difficulty, its just not that thrilling.

and of course by a challenging game I don't mean crazy unbeatable, but just a difficulty that forces you to make hard choices and be better prepared if the area is too much for your level/skills/equipment.

sometimes losing is a good thing.

I'd like a challenge, a ACTUAL one however, not just "you die easily, enemies take forever to kill.

I very much agree. When I mentioned Fallout, I didn't mean I simply changed the difficulty to 'very hard'. That just turns enemies into bullet sponges, that's no fun. Instead I'm playing on Normal with some gameplay changing mods.

Ya that's my point exactly, like in Mass effect 2 if you crank up the difficulty your enemies just get more HP more shield and armor and more damage, and that's just lame, they should instead become "smarter", use more abilities, increase in number, come form different directions...etc.

Killing a goblin warlord for 10 minutes isn't a challenge, it's a freaking chore.

Hiding behind cover because 10 raiders are on your tail, flanking, and sniping is a challenge. Even though they can be defeated easy on a 1v1 scale, having a squad of them pin you down requires some thought on how to survive as you are not that much of a bullet sponge either and a well placed sniper shot and grenade can end you.

As for me, difficult at times. There are enemies that are going to be quite dumb and weak, and times when the enemy is strong and smart.

Difficult at times I dont mind a challenge but i was reluctant to vote Challenging since constant game-overs isn't my kind of fun either. If the choise stands between that and too easy, i would definitely chose the last. This is also the reason i haven't brought Demon Soul yet. It looks promising but i fear i would just hate it because of the insane dificulty level.

"difficult at times" I took as games that have a few hard parts here and there. Generally straightforward, but now and then you'll get stumped on a puzzle or stuck on a really hard boss fight.

I prefer a game that's consistently hard or that goes up in difficulty over sporadic brain busters. I actually really prefer something you have to get the hang of. A game that you lose constantly in the beginning, but can eventually master.

I don't think that's really what "challenging" means, but it's closest so that's what I voted.

I'd say "challenging" is a game that's always tough on you, which is fun at times, but I prefer a learning experience. Something I can conquer eventually.

The challenge is exactly one thing why I opened the thread about realism, to have a realistic challenge where you'd say "Yea, I can see why that would be difficult even now" and not "DAMN, a level 500 rat, I'm so dead".

I like Daggerfall's difficulty, you know, how it lures you into a false sense of security before spawning a lich to blow your face off?

after playing I wanna be the guy, I have a very weird view on the word "challenging"...
I certainly don't want a game where you have to reload constantly^^
I want a game with difficult decisions and a lot of factions, working against each other, something, morrowind made right.

Challenging = SNES punchout
Difficult at times = Ninja Gaiden
Flat (everything is your level all the time) = Oblivion
Easy (almost always win) = Oblivion
Mind numbing (press a botton many times = win) = Splinter Cell Conviction

My vote goes for Challenging.

challenging, but not all the time.

I really don't get why people say Oblivion is too easy. Whenever I put the difficulty slider on 100, I struggle to win any fights unless I use dirty tactics (invisibility, chameleon etc.) or abusing the pathfinding skills of the npcs

I think a game needs the right number of challenging and encouraging passages, but that's just my opinion.

"Challenging without being Capcom-Stupid-Hard-Challenging."

I'm with Daniel on this one. There is a distinct difference between actual challenge and the enemies just having billions of HP and hitting for fifty times your HP.

Voted challenging.

Games with a very high difficulty level just appeal to me more. Even if the difficulty is brutal and frustrating, if it can be overcome by improving my character or my mastery of the controls/combos, I'll be back for more. A game that anyone can complete without trouble is of no interest to me.

A victory against all odds just gives the greatest level of satisfaction.

voted challanging

why give you time to learn the basics thats too forgiving i like it in arena or dagerfall that you must die7 times just to get through the privateers stronghold now thats what i call a good game and by the way capcom and sega are my two favorite japanese game developers the others bleah in elder scrlools five i would like to see super hard enemies that dont take forever to kill that is not challange that is cheap but enemies that pull you straight to a random oblivion realm in the middle of dugeons you try to complete thats just epic bliviongate:


for the random realm idea use the hunting running from were bunny would be so cool

was remembering a good example of a beautifully challenging game and I remembered Gothic 1,2,3 those games were so hard and so much fun its unbelievable, I want that kind of difficulty in ES 5 hard until u master ur skills then its hard but you can win if u use ur head .

I remember how rewarding each victory was, how beating a black troll made u happier than a kitty on a diet of sweat meats, how finding a pirate cave made you want to go in then you get killed and then have to come back later when ur a little better at ur skills (warrior, mage, ranger...) and even then u can not run in and press mouse 1 and win, u could still get killed at level 40 if u made too many mistakes (get surrounded, don't maneuver, low magic resistance...etc)

Difficult at times, primarily because challenging could mean frustrating. I'm not a big fan of having to perfrom niggling micromanagement tasks to advance in the game

As for combat, I think that should be much more challenging. If both you and the enemy take 170 hits to floor, it's not challenging, it's monotonous and dull. If both you and the enemy take 2 or 3 hits to floor, it's challenging as you have to actually think about combat rather than just swinging your weapon and knowing that your superior stats will probably prevail

Give everything less health and make them do more damage. Including the player

A tough game isn't fun because the mobs have millions of HP, it's fun because it's complex and requires you to think.
That's what I want TES:V to be. I want to think, and enjoy it. I don't want to always know what to, but if I think about it for a while, I'll eventually figure it out.

Questing in Oblivion was just like "LOL HERE YOU GO BRO" and questing in Morrowind was like "I want you to go find me this item inside a dwemer ruin (which I have no idea where said ruin is) and kill this vampire (which I have no idea where the vampire is) and then get this magical item (which I have no idea what the item actually is) and then come back to me. But I wont be here."
I'll take Morrowind, so, I voted challenging.

Uhh challenging I guess.

I'd like to see less reliance on health potions and spells to survive. In both Morrowind and Oblivion you could almost defeat any enemy that didn't 2 shot you as long as you had enough health potions.


Lol, and hide yo kids and hide yo wives and hide yo husbands

Normal. (but for whom?)

I find it hard to justify the achievements in the end with the challenge I have to fight generally. It is popular to make very hard games. I only play the ones I'm interested. It must be only 1-2 games.

Difficult at times is frustrated. I still try to forget Farcry's ending.

Always win, no.

"press a botton many times", noooooooooooooo.

http://aigamedev.com/open/reviews/halo-ai/


I don't agree obviously. I think it's the only factor.

I installed this mod today:
http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=31120

Just by this mod, Oblivion is no longer flat. People are underestimating the power of dice-rolls. It simulates critical strikes and failures. Also makes the gameplay unique each time. It is nice to kill a goblin with one blow with a noob character. A well placed hit. Then you go into a lengthy combat with the other. You can try to simulate this without dice-rolls or try to script it but this simple dice-roll mechanism does it better. Let chaos prevail. It is also nice to see how Morrowind would look like if it had physics.