Gaming to test Skill vs Gaming for Story

[FelixMordou]

So I know everyone gets something different out of video games. We all have our reasons for playing, from wanting a good story, to escaping reality for a bit, to doing wacky stuff with no recourse in reality, but I recently had a thought. Well, more of a realization.

My wife and I play games for different reasons.

Now this should not be a new thing for me, but it took watching her get frustrated while climbing a thorn-covered Tower in Breath of the Wild for me to get it. She simply does not get the moment of triumph when she conquers a challenge. I will happily sit for hours and beat my head against a puzzle or a tough enemy in a game, trying different things until I work it out, because that's fun for me, but I also take a very John Carmack approach to games as a whole. Story is meant to be there, but it's simply not that important.

She, however, plays exclusively for the story, not for the challenge. If a game becomes frustrating, she hands the controller over to me, and then becomes even more frustrated when I finish the trial on one attempt. This brings a bit of a disconnect to enjoying games with her, because I find story-based games to be rather boring. They focus too much on cut-scenes and narrative rather than good gameplay and what I consider to be actual fun.

After all, it isn't fun to have a bad guy die in a cutscene. I'd rather cut him down myself.

So I pose this question to you guys. Why do you play games? What do you get from the games you enjoy? Is there anyway to bridge this gap between skill-based gaming and story-walks?

[TheOakStaff]

I usually like to play competitive games where your individual skill determines if you succeed or not, usually I get motivated by my stats slowly increasing, because knowing that I keep improving feels so good. I don't know if there is a way to bridge the gap between skill and story games, as lowering the skill would turn me of, while increasing the skill requirement would turn of many a casual player.

[metalspider]

i play for fun,you can do and see all kinds of things in games that you would never in real life.its fine if its challenging but there's a fine line between challenging and frustrating.
the "skill" i develop in games will almost always be pointless in any other circumstance.
that being said i would never hand over the controller/mouse to someone else so they can pass a level for me.but looking up guides is ok most of the time.

[JackofTears]

I grew up in the early days of consoles, when every game was designed to kill you over and over again and you only had three lives to make it through level after level of professionally designed death traps. Those games were meant to be played thousands of times because they were only a couple hours long. I became quite good, able to beat any Sega Genesis game in under 48 hours. But those days are behind me, I earned my bones, now I just want to enjoy a game for its story. I want to be entertained, not beat my head against a challenge for hours and sour my gameplay with frustration. I want a game to be exciting, interesting, engaging, and casual (or at least offer a casual difficulty option). To that end, I mostly enjoy RPGs and story heavy action games.

However, if a game is done well, I will enjoy the challenge it presents. "Shadow Tactics" is a tactical stealth game which encourages you to save every minute because every action could get you discovered and killed; it is a challenging, frustrating, beautiful, game with characters and gameplay so engaging that you want to keep coming back, even if you - like I - can only play it in 15-30 minute chunks because it's so frustrating. Similarly, "Divinity Original Sin 2" has a steep learning curve and requires you to think about your gameplay on every level - and it is probably the best PC game of last year.

Where most platformers leave a bad taste in my mouth these days, some can be deep and interesting, breaking convention in story and/or gameplay - Games like "Inside" or "Oxenfree" - and those still really intrigue me because I am attracted to knew ideas and experimental concepts.

So it depends on the type of game. My usual route is to play rpgs on casual setting, at least for the first playthrough, because I'm there first and foremost for the narrative but one of the reasons I'm a gamer is because the hobby gives me so many options and has the potential to entertain and challenge me in so many ways. I am not attracted to games whose main selling point is how difficult they are - but if a good game just happens to also be difficult, I'll give it my best effort.

[RevolverGirl]

It depends on the type of game I mostly prefer story based games but I can also enjoy a game of pure fun with no story.
I can play visual novel games and still have fun even the second time around. If its an RPG it BETTER have a good story, world and characters or theres not really a point for me to play. If its a fighting game I dont care, at most the characters need to look at least appealing to me. If its a shooter its either exclusively online or exclusively story.

[Juan-ton_Soup]

I love the challenge. I'm the sort of person to throw a game on hard-mode when I first buy it, or play against online opponents who are more skilled than me. There's nothing like beating a boss in Dark Souls on your 15th try.

I believe a story should come second. I love a good story, but I'll watch a movie instead of "playing" a plot oriented video game. It "needs to be fun, before it can be pretty."