Having to do two things at once as playing video-games?

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I was watching Dr. Who too as I was playing Persona 3 FES last year. xD

Surely Dr. Who is engaging enough to watch exclusively?

And this is why I dont do RPGs anymore.

The moment my attention starts to wander to anything that ISNT the game, is when the game has proven there's something wrong with it and isnt ABLE to hold my attention anymore (and this happens *instantly* when "grinding" appears). Doesnt help that most jRPGs (the usual offenders) are A: really really slow, and B: really really easy. So I dont touch those. Just... ugh. Booooooring.

Final Fantasy 11 Online has a combat system that things are slow paced but they are also very difficult and you *have* to know what you're doing or you will die a horrible, painful death.

A single enemy of equal level to you requires a team of 3 or 4 players to take down safely. They have high amount of hitpoints, high evasion and resists...which is why you need a team. One to debuff it, another to heal your party and the other two to deal damage to it/tank it. It is a grindy game however the grinding requires interactive teamwork...and for most of the time you will spend hours killing the same monster type getting xp and not feel bored.

Compared to games like Diablo3, WOW, LOTRO, etc that are what I call 'massacre endless little weak creatures of the horde with ovepowered attacks solo' games that just shut down your brain since you only click-spam the same high damage attack over and over and over again.

I often listen to music while I play. The different actions can become part of a single rhythm. On the other hand, music can be distracting.

Actually I've found it to be the reverse of that.

I've played... alot of MMOs. So many. So very, very many. You name any major one, going back to the original Everquest when Kunark came out (which is downright ANCIENT by this point) and I've probably played it, and I have alot to compare any individual game to.

FFXI was... slow to me. Very, very slow. Though, understand that my sense of time and sense of speed is pretty warped; MOST things seem slow to me. Applies to every genre. But that one was slower than usual even compared to other MMOs. And it was kinda like modern action games being compared to the old "Nintendo hard" NES games from way back when: The challenge didnt even come close to comparing to the games I was more familiar with, particularly Everquest itself, one of the most unforgiving of all. I have a good sense of what to do in games like these, and figuring it out with FFXI wasnt too tough. Pretty much all MMOs, if designed well, work the way you describe: You need a team for most major targets or areas that are designed for party encounters, and each member has a very specific role, and often there were a great many roles. I was very good at figuring out EXACTLY what to do. Hell, with City of Heroes, my favorite of all (until they axed it somewhat recently, bah!) I could do things like survive a point-blank stand-off against an Archvillian (extremely powerful, major bosses, requiring a party to defeat), and hold them off for an extended time like a tank... except that I used a Blaster character, the supposed "glass cannon" of the game. Bloody well did it anyway. I'd very carefully set up that character to take on large waves of enemies solo (as in, 8-9 at once, when most heroes can only handle 3-4 solo), and focused on ONE target, I could hold the jerk off long enough for the rest of the party to take out the small fry. I'm good at finding ways to do things like that in the MMOs that offer enough freedom to make such things technically possible. Always been the min-maxer sort and I'm good at coming up with funky abstract builds in games that I play.


Now, something like WoW on the other hand.... ugh. I hated it. I still do. When it first came out, it was a *very* direct clone of Everquest. Very, very direct. Hell, the warrior class at the time, in that game (or whatever it was called) had almost the exact same set of skills and traits that the warrior class in EQ had at that time. I'd never seen a more direct clone of something in that genre. Obviously this changed after not too long as that game took off and EQ continued upon it's own course, and overall... ehh. I gave WoW a try, and quickly became bored. Too easy and too simple compared to the "HAHA YOU DIE NOW" difficulty that even EQ's more basic encounters (or other games like Anarchy Online, another one I loved back then) tended to have. I remember a quote I heard from someone regarding that game once: "The REAL fun doesnt start until level 60!", or whatever the max level was at the time. And my reaction was... okay, I have a better idea, how about the REAL fun starts at level 1? But that was the design philosophy they went with with that game, and just... bleh. Do not want. LOTRO I also tried and also got bored with quick, though I dont recall why.


And of course, those are all MMOs... the less said about actual JRPGs, the better.


Diablo 3 though I found to be different; not quite the "just click" experience I'd expected.... but then this is because I typically seek out higher level stuff, as opposed to what most players do, which is tear through low-level (in comparison to their characters, I mean) areas filled with things that can barely hurt them, because it's "efficient". Of COURSE you dont really need to worry about careful skill use and positioning and timing and such when you play it THAT way. Exactly the same concepts as grinding in a JRPG. That way is boring, so I simply dont do it. As a rule, if I simply just try to click on everything with the way I do play it, I end up really dead, really fast. Just doesnt work.

Frankly I dont know how the heck anyone can consider the usual way of playing that sort of game to be "fun" at all. Not sure I WANT to know.