The Challenging Challenge



I've been away for the week and I've just arrived back at home yesterday night. Craving for some MWO action, I immediately fired up the game and was greeted by the "To the Victors Challenge" poster. Apparently this challenge based on another one of PGI's experimentations with the challenge scoring system.

I didn't think much of the scoring system at first, as it seemed pretty straight forward. "Get a kill and an assist, survive and win, got it!" was my first thought. Though as I played more and more, I realized the meta behind this scoring system was brilliant. I thought I'd check the forums about what people thought about it and I was greeted by a wall of threads with titles like "This is the worst scoring system ever!", "Terrible Challenge!" and so on. Apparently people hated it.

The previous scoring systems weren't really appealing to me, they felt more like a grind rather than a proper challenge. "Get X points for a qualifying point" is really boring and can be grinded by just playing normally. Win or lose doesn't matter as long as you get your points. "Get X wins" is also grindy and just results in people PTFO'ing really hard by rushing bases or caps; it degrades the gameplay.

Why do I like this one? It's simple, the scoring system has contradicting goals. You have to get a kill and an assist. Then, you have to win and survive. You're forced to be aggressive until you get your kill, but afterwards you just can't sit back and relax(even quit the match) like the other challenges. No, you should also make sure that your team wins while making sure you stay alive. Surviving and making sure the team wins are tough goals to balance.

. . . and I like it. It doesn't degrade the gameplay, it actually encourages action but as people get their kills, it evolves into a more careful objective oriented gameplay. The action is sustained throughout the match, because there's always someone missing his kill and he's desperate to get one.

The reward really feels like a reward too. You get a beast of an Assault completely kitted with DHS, Endo and an XL engine. Keep it or sell it, it's a valuable gift.

Despite what people thinks, I think this was a brilliant challenge. I hope PGI brings out this scoring system once in a while, despite the negative feedback in the forums.
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About Rak

I'm an engineer who likes to write extremely long articles about games that border simulation and mainstream.
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