At any rate, I drifted through a couple of missions then suddenly the difficulty spiked. The enemy wizard was dropping fire spells on my village which burned down my market. Then a werewolf wandered into the town and killed almost all of the adventurers who had come there. Without a market I had no income with which to entice more adventurers to come to town and with no adventurers there was no one to protect they peasants so they couldn’t rebuild anything. I was getting more and more frustrated, more-so when I remembered that I had started playing a “light” game to relax in the first place.<\/p>\n

So I decided to just crank the difficulty down to minimum (since I was just playing as a distraction anyway) only to find that the game no difficulty setting. And then I got really<\/em> frustrated.<\/p>\n

Why do games continue to do this? People play games for many reasons. Some are looking to challenge themselves. Others just want to relax. (I’ll let you guess which category I fall into.) But games seem to be determined that you have to prove your worth to them before you can enjoy yourself. I’ve heard this described as “you have to earn the right to have fun”.<\/p>\n

But why? I can enjoy music without understanding the intricacies of melody or harmony. I can enjoy a movie without knowing anything about cinematography or directing. Why should I have to prove my skill at directing a bunch of easily distracted AI characters before I can enjoy the game I’m playing?<\/p>\n

As I’ve said before, I play games so I can experience the story from the inside as opposed to being a passive observer on the outside. That’s it. I don’t care about my position on a leaderboard or what my gamerscore or achivements list looks like. I just want to enjoy the story from the inside.<\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before. “Learn 2 play noob!” or “Just go watch the ending on YouTube if you can’t handle it!”. Well, I ask why anyone cares how I want to play my game. If I want to be able to set the game to the “Just Let Me Win” level because it’s Sunday night and I’m on my third beer and I just want to relax for a bit, why not? How does that dimish anyone else’s enjoyment of the game?<\/p>\n

And for the record I did<\/em> finish the level, on my third try. So I did finish the level, I just wasn’t very relaxed when I did.<\/p>\n

But what do I know; I’m just a Paleogamer.<\/emhad><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I was looking to kill a few hours and so went into my Steam games list looking for something light to pass the time. I really didn’t want to get into anything serious so I pulled up Majesty 2. Majesty 2 calls itself a “fantasy kingdom sim” but it really is more of an RTS. You build guild halls (and other buildings) to encourage adventurers to move to your kingdom then set quests for them to perform. It’s kind of the reverse of your normal fantasy game in that you’re the one assigning the quests instead of the one doing them. Yeah, that isn’t looking so good At any rate, I drifted through a couple of missions then suddenly the difficulty spiked. The enemy wizard was dropping fire spells on my village which burned down my market. Then a werewolf wandered into the town and killed almost all of the adventurers who had come there. Without a market I had no income with which to entice more adventurers to come to town and with no adventurers there was no one to protect they peasants so they couldn’t rebuild anything. I was getting more and more frustrated, more-so when I remembered that I had started playing a “light” game to relax in the first place. So I decided to just crank the difficulty down to minimum (since I was just playing as a distraction anyway) only to find that the game<\/p>\n[Read More...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,15],"tags":[87,85,35,84,86],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75pr8-fX","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1038,"url":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/random-thoughts\/whos-the-boss\/","url_meta":{"origin":989,"position":0},"title":"Who’s the Boss?","author":"tanstaafl","date":"August 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, so last time I was talking about Hydrophobia Prophecy and how much it annoyed me when it suddenly broke my suspension of disbelief by suddenly throwing in elements of what was essentially \"magic\" into what had been a science fiction thriller. Well, I'm not through beating the dead horse\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Random Thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"Random Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/category\/random-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1604,"url":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/walkthroughs\/the-paleogamer-plays-aura-fate-of-the-ages-part-5\/","url_meta":{"origin":989,"position":1},"title":"The Paleogamer Plays – Aura: Fate of the Ages – Part 5","author":"tanstaafl","date":"January 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In this episode of Aura: Fate of the Ages, Umang visits the two remaining worlds of Na-Tiexu. Along the way, he finally finds a world where there aren't narrow walkways with no handrails, but everyone there is trying to kill him anyway. He also finds two orphans more interested in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Walkthroughs"","block_context":{"text":"Walkthroughs","link":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/category\/walkthroughs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1026,"url":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/random-thoughts\/on-the-level\/","url_meta":{"origin":989,"position":2},"title":"On the Level","author":"tanstaafl","date":"November 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"So Skyrim, the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series, is coming out next week. I'm looking forward to it, mainly because Morrowind, the third game in the series, is one of my favorite games of all time, as are Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, both also done by\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Random Thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"Random Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/category\/random-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":666,"url":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/random-thoughts\/the-illusion-of-choice\/","url_meta":{"origin":989,"position":3},"title":"The Illusion of Choice","author":"tanstaafl","date":"June 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In my last few posts I have been talking about stories in games and how the best games have stories that follow the classic, epic pattern of the Hero's Journey. The downside to this is that, despite being the \"hero\" of the story, as players we aren't really telling our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Random Thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"Random Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/category\/random-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1792,"url":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/walkthroughs\/the-paleogamer-plays-the-longest-journey-part-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":989,"position":4},"title":"The PaleoGamer Plays: The Longest Journey – Part 1","author":"tanstaafl","date":"March 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Art student April Ryan wakes up to find herself in a postcard perfect wilderness and having to deal with a grumpy tree (that totally isn't an Ent), a matronly dragon and a roiling chaos cloud. Then things get weird. It's the first step on The Longest Journey!","rel":"","context":"In "Walkthroughs"","block_context":{"text":"Walkthroughs","link":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/category\/walkthroughs\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1782,"url":"https:\/\/14kofginafpd.com\/posts\/walkthroughs\/the-paleogamer-plays-the-amerzone-part-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":989,"position":5},"title":"The PaleoGamer Plays: The Amerzone – Part 3","author":"tanstaafl","date":"March 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Having reached the Amerzonian village, the unnamed journalist prepares the egg with the help of a woman who may or may not be there. He then rides an aquatic giraffe and goes hang gliding, but only after DESTROYING THE HYDROFLOT! Then a dictator has a conveniently-timed heart attack. 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