I'm all for difficult challenges. I mean, they're named "challenges", not "cakewalks", right? Overall I think SRIV has a good mix of challenges, with one glaring exception: the "Distance Traveled in Alien Vehicle" challenge. It's excessive, in fact its beyond excessive, it's painful and unfun. Let me explain why.
First and foremost, there's a slight issue with being required to travel in an alien vehicle when SRIV is a game that makes vehicles mostly unneeded. The only times you really travel in a vehicle are in the early game or during specific missions/diversions that require it. Still, that wouldn't be so bad but for the next thing.
And the next thing: the distance required, 2.5 million feet. That's one of those numbers that sounds like it shouldn't be THAT much since it's only in feet, not miles, but let's do some math. 2,500,000 feet divided by 5,280 gives us 473.48 miles. Holy crap that is a LONG distance. To put it in perspective the super sprint challenge only asks you to do 25 miles, and that takes most people at least an hour or two to compete. Plus, don't forget that super-sprint is the fastest way to travel in SRIV without exception. Even assuming any alien vehicle can manage 100 miles an hour, you're looking at almost five solid hours of being in an alien vehicle doing nothing but traveling at top speed.
Which brings me to my final point on this challenge: it is incredibly, incredibly boring and un-fun. Pretty much every other challenge is something that by its nature means you're doing something active and engaging to progress in it. Kill X number of aliens with Y skill/weapon, get all golds in Activity Z, so on and so forth. In almost all of them you are asked to do something you can accomplish while having fun (barring overwhelming frustration). With this challenge, due to the distance and thus time required, the way you accomplish it winds up looking like this:
That's not fun, that's just excruciating. It's really excessive, and winds up feeling like some kind of bizarre punishment. "You've killed too many random pedestrians. Go do circles in an aircraft for five hours! That'll teach you." Hell, console users don't even have the unattended option, since turning involves a control stick and good luck getting that to stay in a solid "turn" position without eventually spiraling into the ground or the forcefield ceiling.
So please, Volition, would you reduce the distance requirement on this challenge? It's not really bringing anything good to the game.
First and foremost, there's a slight issue with being required to travel in an alien vehicle when SRIV is a game that makes vehicles mostly unneeded. The only times you really travel in a vehicle are in the early game or during specific missions/diversions that require it. Still, that wouldn't be so bad but for the next thing.
And the next thing: the distance required, 2.5 million feet. That's one of those numbers that sounds like it shouldn't be THAT much since it's only in feet, not miles, but let's do some math. 2,500,000 feet divided by 5,280 gives us 473.48 miles. Holy crap that is a LONG distance. To put it in perspective the super sprint challenge only asks you to do 25 miles, and that takes most people at least an hour or two to compete. Plus, don't forget that super-sprint is the fastest way to travel in SRIV without exception. Even assuming any alien vehicle can manage 100 miles an hour, you're looking at almost five solid hours of being in an alien vehicle doing nothing but traveling at top speed.
Which brings me to my final point on this challenge: it is incredibly, incredibly boring and un-fun. Pretty much every other challenge is something that by its nature means you're doing something active and engaging to progress in it. Kill X number of aliens with Y skill/weapon, get all golds in Activity Z, so on and so forth. In almost all of them you are asked to do something you can accomplish while having fun (barring overwhelming frustration). With this challenge, due to the distance and thus time required, the way you accomplish it winds up looking like this:
That's not fun, that's just excruciating. It's really excessive, and winds up feeling like some kind of bizarre punishment. "You've killed too many random pedestrians. Go do circles in an aircraft for five hours! That'll teach you." Hell, console users don't even have the unattended option, since turning involves a control stick and good luck getting that to stay in a solid "turn" position without eventually spiraling into the ground or the forcefield ceiling.
So please, Volition, would you reduce the distance requirement on this challenge? It's not really bringing anything good to the game.
![[V] Ellix](/forum/data/avatars/m/48/48889.jpg?1373923030){kind=avatar}
![[V] Knobby](/forum/data/avatars/m/44/44150.jpg?1371153262){kind=avatar}
