Since this topic is discussing specifically reactive vs predictive challenges, I'm only leaving two options in the poll. If you don't quite agree with those options, you can just null.
So here's a question that popped in my mind last night, and I've been wondering what people's thoughts are about this. I'm sure most of us played fairly difficult games. Now what's actually considered difficult is very subjective, but this isn't the point or matter of discussion I'm trying to have here. I just want to know your thoughts about two specific things I've been noticing in difficult games.
Let's start with reactive. For the past few years, I've been trying to focus challenges in my quests entirely around reactive design. As in you see some form of telegraph, or the attack does have enough frames so that a person can reasonably avoid most attacks, even on their first try. Now how many frames is fair can be subjective for every person, but I've always favored attacks and traps that you can see coming, and you must rely on quick reflexes to avoid. Because of this, I've often criticized predictive gameplay as "bad design".
However, let's now discuss predictive gameplay. I originally counted this form of design out as bad design because it expects some form of magical thinking from people, as if we're supposed to know the trap is coming before we even see it. However, the more I think about it, a lot of challenge games do rely on predictive gameplay. Most of the time you're not going to beat a level or a boss in these games on your first try. There's just not enough tell in the traps or attacks. However, the game has already thought you to seek out clues from earlier points in the game to predict where the traps will come. Sure, you may not be fast enough to avoid it, but you'll certainly avoid it if there is a common pattern from earlier moments in the game.
What got me thinking about this is a recent interest I had in fighting games. I sometimes debated the fairness of fighting games because a lot of punches are difficult to simply react to, specifically those quick jab like punches that move faster than a human can just react to. This leads to a more often than not, situations where the bulk of the gameplay requires you to "know your opponent" and punish their predictable behavior. You don't need to react to somebody if you know what they are going to do before they even do it. If on the alternative, a fighting game's attacks were so slow that you could just react to and dodge every attack, that could potentially make the entire genre too easy and dumb.
Hell, one could argue that you cannot even have a truly hard game if the entire bulk of the challenge relies on our reactions, because generally people have similar average speed, and as such what we have is a game that technically doesn't challenge anybody who's really willing to push forward. So forcing situations that must keep players guessing probably is the only way to make these real challenging games.
So I figured I'd open this topic with a poll and get your opinions on it. Especially from those of you who play challenge games like old NES titles, Dark Souls, hack n slashes, or fighting games.