The Daily Grind: How many times do you try before you give up?

If a game is too hard, I usually just go do some PvP battlegrounds or dungeons and overlevel the content. Then go back and do it.

It depends on if the challenge is unfair or just hard because the designers were lazy/incompetent or if it's actually a wellmade challenge i.e. the more intelligent and skillful I'm playing, the greater the chances for me to master the challenge. Examples for stupid challenges are ones that rely too much on randomness or trial and error

What's with the Dragon Quest VIII picture?

I don't have a set number of "tries". Sometimes I give up, never return, sometimes I take a break. Sometimes I play another system or game or blog or go out.

But yes, I can be frustrated. It's not an exact science. There are times I *know* I can do something, but just fall slightly short and that can be frustrating.

Sometimes It's just better to go out and do something else, your unconcious mind will work at the problem in the meantime and you will be refreshed and relaxed when you comme back.

My rule of thumb is never more than three times in a row. Two goes would be normal.

Obviously it depends on lots of variables: how interested am I in what I get from succeeding? How close do I think I am to getting it right? Is it my performance that needs to improve or am I up against something in the structure of the challenge that's not working? Could it even be bugged?

The most important factor, though, is am I still enjoying trying? So long as the answer to that is "yes" then no number of attempts is too many. The second the answer comes back "no" then it's time to stop.

My rule of thumb is never more than three times in a row. Two goes would be normal.

Obviously it depends on lots of variables: how interested am I in what I get from succeeding? How close do I think I am to getting it right? Is it my performance that needs to improve or am I up against something in the structure of the challenge that's not working? Could it even be bugged?

The clincher is "Am I still enjoying myself?" If the answer to that is "Yes" then no amount of tries is too many. As soon as it turns to "Not any more" then I stop immediately.

for me it's not about the number of times I try, but how much time I've spent on it. Generally speaking if I can't do it in one hour, I'll stop and do something else. Maybe I'll return to it in the future, maybe not.

"I'd love to hear specific stories about particularly problematic obstacles that resulted in eventual success or frustrated surrender."

MOST RECENT: I was leveling my Imperial Agent on Tatooine, and was trying the quest "Plugging the Leak". I was having difficulty, to say the least, because the boss at the end on the instanced story zone kept healing himself. Soloing it, this proved an issue because once Kaliyo (companion) was knocked out I couldn't out DPS his heals.

Making matters worse, I failed, I had to exit the instance. To reenter, I had get 4 barrels and a signaling device before retrying. And when I retried, all the droid mobs would respawn. While, as an agent, I could stealth by most mobs but I had some clearing to do on the upper warehouse area.

After 4-5 tries (which was an hour of my life I'll never get back) I took on other quests until I gained another level and some new gear. I then bought medpacs and stims (stims I normally don't bother with).

During this additional level of quests, however, I took it one step further and did WOW-esque PVP keybinds to make myself that much more intuned with my character's abilities for fast attack and takedown.

When I reentered and signaled for the smuggler boss this time was different. Aside from being a level + gear + stim stronger, Kaliyo lasted much longer due to my quick interrupts and arena-style burst DPS combos I'd developed and practiced questing. By the time it was down to me vs. the boss all I had to do was unload on him and pop medpacs to save energy.

It was frustrating as kark but I generally DO NOT give up... even if I have to save the quest until I'm too high a level for the zone. :P But this time it was a comparatively minor bump in the road.

One of my favourite things to do while levelling in WoW is to try to solo the dungeons. If I'm making progress then I'll usually keep going until either my gear breaks from repeated rezzing, or the mobs start to respawn - at which point I'll leave it, go level and come back in a level or so.

In Fallen Earth I have a personal rule that I don't tow my horse out of danger zones if I get killed - I'll go back and get it in person. I spent 2 hours one night trying to get my horse back from the middle of a pack of very rapidly respawning creepers outside Sunshine Corners. Did it in the end and it was very satisfying.

(I think the only time I've broken that rule was when I was killed by the faction guards in a conflict town and could have only recovered my horse by taking on 2 of them - there's difficult, then there's downright impossible.)

It depends on how badly I want to get through the challenge or how necessary it is. I got to the end of Chapter 1 on my Sniper in TOR, but I was a level under. Unfortunately, this didn't work out so well when trying to take down that final boss, a three stage fight and I couldn't even survive the first. I didn't want to leave, so I tried pvp'ing, but I wasn't close enough to leveling to make it worthwhile so eventually after fighting the way I normally fight wasn't working, I decided to get a cheap and just kite the guy around the computer consoles and slowly erode his health with my Interrogation Probe and other DoTs. Finally I won and I didn't mind that it took me 10 tries and an unorthodox method.

I like when games have challenges like that in them. It can be frustrating, but when it's just a matter of finding the right mix of tactics, it's really satisfying when you finally win. I'm pretty pleased with the difficulty level in TOR, for the most part.

Does anyone remember old school Nintendo and Sega games? You know, the ones that were designed for you to actually fail and not get to certain parts?

I fondly remember playing Aladin on my Sega and not being able to get past the Cave of Wonders flying part. Probably tried 100 different times and never once made it past it. I mostly blame it on my being a small kid, but it was ridiculous.

I rarely give up.

Well after few tries I can give up temporarly, do something else in mmorpg (thouh it gets harder nowadays since modern mmorpg's don't offer anything except questing & instances in opposition to some older titles :/)
or just turn off game and go back to challange the content later on.

I rarely get challanged in mmorpg's nowadays though. Content is in 99% of times faceroll especially in open world. Even if I die then 1 min after I am there again and just do it.

Really any sort of challange in open world in current mmropg's is SO rare that maybe I have 1-2 moments in whole levelling process between level 1 and max level.

Mmorpg's just got easier.

As Harry Callaghan said "A man’s gotta know his limitations".

I play for pleasure and simply do not want an excessive challenge. Therefore my tolerance threshold is far lower than others.

However, I have been caught up in the hype surrounding SWTOR and broke my policy recently when struggling with the Lightspring class quest for the Smuggler. I did grind out about 7 or 8 attempts before success.

But as I said. This in unusual for me.

In LOTRO I love throwing in-game gold at problems to make them go away. For example, I am currently chasing kindred rep with Theodred's Riders.

I can do tasks and spend hours of my time in return for very little rep XP. Or I can buy vast quantities of a particular task item on AH and over a few days just accept the same task and hand over the items required to the taskmaster, with no real effort.