Do you prefer it when the enemy is weaker, stronger or on equal ground with you?

[Aerosteam]

So I've been playing Fire Emblem: Awakening a lot lately and I've realized that in every single story mission, during the preparation phase, I take a look at the enemy troops and go: Fuuuck...

In other words, I always think the enemy will beat me because they are larger in numbers, higher in level and better in weapons. Yet I manage to win in the end. It is a good feeling.

I've mainly played FPSs during my time with video games (don't hit me) so the enjoyment of feeling powerful and mowing down hundreds of baddies is something I'm used to, something which isn't present in games like Fire Emblem or XCOM.

There is the enjoyment of feeling like you're a badass and another where you feel like you're not going to win, yet you get enjoyment from the challenge which you face.

There are rare occurrences when both you and the enemy have the same odds to win, but I can't really think of any where it's not against a "dark" or "evil" version of the character you're playing.

The forums ate the poll. Damn it.

 

[tippy2k2]

I usually prefer equal or slightly stronger than you.

Two examples (why I don't like stronger):
Fight Night Champion; I got FNC for $5 with the Xbox Christmas sale and I thought the story mode was absolutely excellent. A really nice feature to the usually spartan efforts of sport games. Then you get to the "end boss". The end guy is so stupidly powerful that it absolutely kills everything the game built. For the majority of the fight, you just have to run away and not get punched in the face, which strangely is very boring

XCOM Enemy Within; I do a "Let's Play" for XCOM here on the Escapist. I do it blind because it's more fun that way so when I ran into the Sectoid Giant Robot....yeah....that didn't go well. Every person could hit it with their shot (which they won't because the RNG God's hate the player) and it will still get at least one turn to turn someone into paste (which it will). It was so powerful that there was nothing we could do about it. We took it down but it was the very definition of a Pyrrhic Victory since it decimated my squad before it dropped.

Being too easy can be just as boring since no challenge and no threat is a yawner to me. It's not so bad in games like Call of Duty where there's a LOT of them (so the challenge is like the zombie hoard in that they just overrun you with men) but games like Skyrim I just walked through everyone because of how brokenly easy the stealth + arrow mechanic was.

 

[krazykidd]

Stronger. I like a challenge and love being the underdog. I pride myself in using underused/unpopular charcters/equipment/strategies in games. Especially if the game is of the competitive nature.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Depends on what kind of game it is. In open world sandboxes like Skyrim they should ideally be weaker than the player avatar in most cases, in order to encourage exploration and risk taking. For most games I like the challenge of equal opposition but there are also games like XCom where the challenge of facing a much better enemy is integral to the experience.

 

[ceasefires]

I generally prefer enemies to be much stronger than me, but with two caveats.

First, the enemy should be difficult to defeat but also fair. I'm thinking something like Dark Souls. The enemies are crushingly difficult but they can all be handled by playing efficiently. Let's contrast this idea with a game that artificially increases difficulty by giving enemies enormous amounts of hit points or arbitrarily huge attacks. This is a less rewarding style of difficulty than one that balances difficulty with the player's ability to mitigate the challenges presented to them.

Second, as Gethsemani said, in an open world exploration game I'd prefer enemies to be slightly stronger but not impossibly so. I played Skyrim on the setting below legendary and although it can be rewarding to enter a room full of enemies and strategically annihilate them, it too often turned into a game of jumping around and trying to get them stuck on the landscape so I could pick them off with arrows. Also, there were times that I had to turn the difficulty down because I was getting swarmed with enemies on all sides and found it nearly impossible to dismantle them. Also, I don't necessarily derive enjoyment in a game like Skyrim through my ability to defeat the enemies. For me, I enjoy the story/setting/immersion aspects of those games more than utilizing my strategic prowess.

My $0.02

 

[Casual Shinji]

I think it goes without saying most gamers want to face enemies that give them a challange. It just needs to be well balanced.

For a good example look no further than Resident Evil 4. It perfectly ranks up the difficulty, then dails it down, only to punch you in the gut the very next moment.

 

[DementedSheep]

Generally I prefer fighting less enemies to mowing down hoards of very weak ones. Enemies should be stronger than you to make up for the AI though preferably not stronger by having massive HP.

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Stronger. Besides the satisfaction factor you mentioned, rare is the AI that cannot be outwitted to compensate for their advantage in firepower (case in point, no matter how big an enemy army is in Fire Emblem, most of the time the individual squads will not attack you until you move a character into their attack range. Even if they did rush you all at once you can usually find a choke point to block with your tanks).

In most FPS you are outnumbered and out-gunned. Yet because the enemy army is comprised of individuals usually unaware of your presence until you are visible/audible, you can take them down piecemeal while avoiding detection, avoiding firefights that might prove too much for you. I enjoy this aspect in Stealth games. Because a player will always be more inventive and persistent (infinite continues remember) than an AI, they can be relied upon to take down swarms of more predictable enemies en masse so long as you give them the right tools to do so.

Certainly you can create more frustration than fun by stacking the deck too much (I recall certain fanmade maps in Doom where it was possible to create invisible demons that could phase through any walls or doors and always went straight for you the moment you started), but for the most part the enemy must be stronger to create any kind of challenge. Of course in online multiplayer you want equal ground.

 

[EternallyBored]

All of the above, it depends on the stage of the game, type of gameplay, type of enemies, and the overall mood being aimed for by the story.

In an FPS or hack-and-slash, I expect everything outside of bosses to be individually much weaker than me, fighting a room full of 20 guys with the same or better health and shields as me would be tedious and boring, it would be like playing through Halo where every enemy is replaced by Brute chieftains and Elite Honor Guards, it would end up more of a chore than actually fun. Same for open world RPGS, keeping all the enemies challenging would require level scaling, and that makes exploration pointless because all the loot and enemies are scaled to whatever level you are at, I want low level enemies to die in one shot if I'm in certain areas, and I want other areas to have enemies that are higher level by default.

Usually I prefer things like mini-bosses, and elite enemies to be roughly an equal challenge to my character. Either they've got similar shields, better armor, or a wide range of attack, but at least some elite enemies should feel like I could be beaten by them one-on-one, if I'm not on my toes.

Bosses and the like, I usually expect to be stronger than me, you beat them by dodging their attacks and exploiting weak areas. Good bosses leave you with a feeling of accomplishment, that the random mooks and mini-bosses you just slaughtered your way through were all merely the prelude to this particular crescendo of violence. For individual levels and areas, the boss is the cumination of everything you've learned and seen to that point, the period that caps off the whole experience for the area. End game bosses are like a summary of everything you have played up until this point, they should be the finale of story and gameplay into one final climax that punctuates the entire experience, bringing everything together into one final challenge, like a final exam in school, it should be the ultimate test of your knowledge and skill since starting the game.

 

[The Wykydtron]

So I've been playing Fire Emblem: Awakening a lot lately and I've realized that in every single story mission, during the preparation phase, I take a look at the enemy troops and go: Fuuuck...

In other words, I always think the enemy will beat me because they are larger in numbers, higher in level and better in weapons. Yet I manage to win in the end. It is a good feeling.

I've mainly played FPSs during my time with video games (don't hit me) so the enjoyment of feeling powerful and mowing down hundreds of baddies is something I'm used to, something which isn't present in games like Fire Emblem or XCOM.

There is the enjoyment of feeling like you're a badass and another where you feel like you're not going to win, yet you get enjoyment from the challenge which you face.

There are rare occurrences when both you and the enemy have the same odds to win, but I can't really think of any where it's not against a "dark" or "evil" version of the character you're playing.

The forums ate the poll. Damn it.

Speaking of Fire Emblem Awakening, Manor of Lost Souls sidequest. What the fuck is THAT?!

35 enemies, all of which are set up in a way to fuck your advancing forces entirely. The one mage at the start is almost in range of your spawn position from like 10 tiles away and every type of enemy is sprinkled in so Cordelia and Cherche can't fly in and destroy everything because fucking bowmen will instakill them. For once Cherche's stat bonuses for flying in on her own like a one woman army is a bad thing. Also. WALLHACKS.

Is the entire point of this quest to pick up Nah as a party member? She's mediocre at best and this NIGHTMARE is her introductory quest? So tempted to ignore it entirely.

OT: I suppose equal or slightly better? Roflstomping through everything gets old fast. I haven't played so many singleplayer games lately so i'm not so sure. Multiplayer is a bit different though, in League I want as many bad people on the enemy team as possible, thanks. It might not be so fun but fuck it, free ELO.

On the more 1v1 side I would say equal definitely. I know for a fact I would be decent at BlazBlue if I had been into it on launch and learnt the game alongside everyone else. Now it's basically just those bellends online who know everything, pick Hakumen, Jin or Ragna and lock me in the corner for the whole match, you're the reason I had to swap Makoto to a sub position you bastards.

Yes, you learn from your losses but there is a limit people.

 

[scorptatious]

Depends on the game and the situation at hand.

For the most part, I like it when enemies are stronger than I am. It's satisfying when I do emerge victorious.

Sometimes though, I like those occasional sequences where I just roflstomp everything.

 

[MoeMints]

Is the entire point of this quest to pick up Nah as a party member? She's mediocre at best and this NIGHTMARE is her introductory quest? So tempted to ignore it entirely.

Huh? Children almost across the board are superior to their parents as long as your choose the right husband and set the couple right.

Nah maxing out way faster than anyone else with Donnel, or becoming an offensive tank if you marry Nowi yourself for the most popular two I know.

She's average if your concern is post-game but she'll have res and luck way faster than anyone else, and shouldn't be really used as an offensive ace to begin with.

 

[PFCboom]

Most of the time, a stronger enemy makes for the better, more rewarding challenge. Unless it's PvP, because then you don't have the advantage of being against enemies with set AI. That said, if you're up against little mooks and cannon fodder, weakness is a expected.

 

[Exterminas]

My favourite enemies are those that are in fact inferior to me or on equal ground but make it look like they are way stronger than me. A good example for this is the AI in CIV5: It usually fields vast armies but handles them like a complete moron, providing me with a lot of satisfaction for dismantling them.

 

[Scrubiii]

I'm not really sure what category enemy strength it comes into, but one of the most enjoyable experiences I've had with a game was playing the new Devil May Cry on the difficulty mode where all the enemies die in one hit, but so do you. It's such a weird feeling, because you're slaughtering hoards of them, but at the same time you only need to fail to notice one attack and you die.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Stronger.


That way, when you win, you by definition have become stronger than you were, since you beat someone who was stronger than you, which means you became stronger than them too, which means you're stronger than your past self, which is the core engagement of games focusing around growth.


Now, weather or not your victory means you were already stronger or if the fight intself improved you, that's a different issue. I feel sometimes enemies can "seem" stronger than you but actually not be. I prefer the cases where they actually are and they push you to adapt and improve, though seemingly strong enemies ending up being weaklings can definitely grant a kind of "hah, you were bothering me but that's all you can do? die!" enjoyment out of fighting them. It's not as good as growth but it's something.




Captcha: Robot Shake

Yes, let all robots shake and cower in fear! Mwahaha!

 

[C. jejuni]

Anything between 1HKO-giants and annoying lemming-fleas is ok, depending on how many there are or how much skill is actually involved in beating them.