Reward-driven mentality

Something has been bothering me slightly for a while now.

That thing is: Why are so many people obsessed with being rewarded for the time they spend playing City of Heroes?

I see complaints about the drop rate of Incarnate Shards, purples, and any other thing that you get while you're playing, and I can't for the life of me figure out why it is so important that people get these things.

Try something real quick: Think back to when you first started playing the game, and why. I can guarantee that, whatever your reason for playing the game was, it did not involve purple drops or Incarnate Shards. In fact, I would go so far as to say you started playing the game because it was fun.

Now, when I read the forums, it seems that for a lot of people, the amount of fun they have is directly connected to the amount of rewards they get while playing.

Look at anything else you do for enjoyment. Lets say you enjoy bowling, for example. When you go out bowling with your friends, you're going out for the express purpose of going bowling. Having fun while bowling is it's own reward. You don't get upset that you didn't get a trophy for it, you had fun bowling and that was the point of doing it.

Why are video games, and MMOs in particular, so different? You would think that it would be the same. If you go bowling to have fun, why wouldn't you play video games for the same reason?

But I see a lot of people saying that they are playing to get the rewards associated with it, and complaining when they feel that they aren't getting them fast enough. That would be the same thing as going bowling and getting upset that you didn't get a trophy at the end of the night.

What happened to the fun? Why do people feel the need to be rewarded for entertaining themselves? You don't expect a reward from watching TV or a movie. You don't expect a reward for playing catch with your son (or dad, as the case may be). You don't epect a reward for going bowling, or hanging out with your friends. In all of those activities you do to entertain yourself, the fun you have while doing it IS the reward.

Why is a video game so different?

There are two things that come to mind, instant gratification, and its a bit of a stretch but self worth.

I've wondered the same thing. I play for fun, the rewards are just a side benefit.

It's a virtual material world these days.

I'm somewhere in the middle of it all. I do like my rewards, but I play for fun so I don't do anything that I find boring even if the rewards would be way better than doing fun stuff. For example, farming is incredibly boring so I don't do it even if the rewards can be high. Then again, those rewards help make this game more fun for me. This is the only MMO I know of that lets your characters be absurdly powerful and I like it, but to take them to that level you need rewards. So yeah, I do prefer doing stuff that gives rewards but I won't go out of my way to do something boring to get them.

I wanna start out that I agree with you on fun being its own reward, and I remember when I first started playing, and no I had no thoughts about purples, or any other drops, but as I continued to play, I met people who had these things, and saw how awesome their toons were, and how easily they could run though TFs and things, that I struggled with. They gave me something to aspire to, and that is why I started to want these things.

I don't really know if things are much diffrent in RL than in GL, There are the obvious diffrences yes, but on the desire for rewards, not so much. There are many out there who do go out with friends, and bowl without being poor sports, but you do have people out there that just get pissed if they don't win. That is what it all comes down to, winning. If you get a good drop in here, it's like winning something. I think most people compete with each other daily. In RL it's not purples they want, it's the best clothes, the best job, the best cars, the newest gadgets, and if they don't have these things they complain about it, just like here.

Now, as for there being no reward for playing catch with your son? The reward is the look on your child's face while he's having fun with you, the knowledge that you are teaching your child, something he can pass on to his kids, and the memories you are making with him, you know that when he grows up you can always look back at that time the two of you spent together playing. It is not the same reward as a trophy, but is possibly a much better one.

The numbers game is fun to me. The one running it all behind a shiny GUI - the rules are not particularly complicated. With tools like Mid's available for helping with calculations the game has become to get an idea for a concept, pinning the numbers on what it *should* do and then acquire what's needed to actually see your idea in play.

Having done the regular content so many times, watching ideas spring to life is more fun and more rare to me than say a task force, a completed story arc or that cave with Council that you just cleared out that now contains boatloads of Circle of Thorns since you turned your back for a second.

The methods of having that idea brought to life takes a lot more invested time than level to 50, for instance, if you only play the numbers game with the pretty GUI. If that's what you enjoy, the only way to make the trip shorter while still entertaining is to increase the ratio of rewards over time unit invested. Everything becomes the means to an end, to finally beat that numbers game.

That's why I find myself running tips and task forces a lot of the time I'm in-game even if there are a lot of fun stuff to do in the AE that are more related to story-telling. There will be time for those things once the numbers game has been completed for the characters I bother to take it up with.

There's got to be a carrot on the end of the stick or people just aren't going to do it. Why waste your time and efforts for nothing really?

MMORPG's in particular. The rewards vary from small to great depending upon how hard the task. Most people get a sense of acomplishment and gratification.

Why is WOW so popular? Because they understand the carrot on a stick policy all too well. Just look at their model. They roll out the next tiers of armor every 6 months to keep people in a constant gear grind. Why else would millions of people run the same dungeons over, and over, and over, and over. Not because they are enthralled with the content. They have to do it for the rewards.

On a different level COH has great missions and stories. But there is little to no carrot. I'm rolling in influence, shards, have a multi billion influence base and really have nothing left to do except reroll and do it all over again. Repetition without rewards is dreadful.

MMORPG's are an extention of yourself. Lot of people play them to escape the realities of life. They play them to do things they can't in real life. They want their character to become more powerful and naturally gain attachments for these characters. Most want to keep improving their character forever- but when they hit a dead end with no rewards. They get bored and cancel accounts.

COH seems very much designed to pull in new players and not really maintain subscribers. The COH experience is pretty much leveling up to max and the only thing left is rerolling or replaying missions without any inscentive. Just look at GR. Sure the 50's were thrown a bone with the ability to change to her/villain/rogue. But the vast majority of the content is leveled at gaining new players with a superior 1-20 experience.

Rewards are very important. People play MMORPG's for many different reasons. Social or whatever. But without rewards it's just a glorified chat room.

I've often wondered the same thing, and frankly I can't understand it either. I think a large part of it relates this:

Ah, another "People who play the game differently from me are wrong!" thread. It must be Tuesday.

Really, the "point" of bowling is to hang out with your buddies (and drink beer). Bowling in itself is not that interesting, as evidenced by the fact that no one ever goes out and does it alone.

CoX, though, is interesting in itself, and is fun to do solo (much as some people would wish it otherwise). Part of the fun is in growing and developing your character, which requires a certain amount of loot-gathering. In many cases, specific content (costume pieces, accolade powers, contacts) is gated, and requires some grinding to get to. This, of course, is an intentional time sink, meant to keep you playing longer. Players grudgingly accept this, and push through the less-fun (if only because of the repetitiveness) bits in order to unlock things they will enjoy.

Taking a stroll through the Shadow Shard is fun, because it's cool-looking. Circling it enough times to kill 100 Overseers becomes a little annoying. But it unlocked that bitchin' Rularuu shield with the eyeball on it, which suited my character perfectly, and makes me grin every time I see it. I decided it was worth the effort, so I went for it. There are other things in the game I would like to have -- the Field Crafter portable table, for instance -- but decided that it really wasn't worth the effort required. So I grumble a little and live without it.

Whether the payoff for the Incarnate System will be worth the grind remains to be seen. Based on what we've gotten so far, I've just about decided to opt out. But maybe down the line, some really groovy reward or interesting storyarc will be added that catches my eye enough that I'll be motivated to push through the annoying prerequisites to get to it.

If you really think rewards aren't important, roll up a new alt, immediately turn off your XP, delete every drop you get, don't spend any of your Merits, and give away all your INF to random strangers. Then come back in six months and tell me how much fun you're having.

It's all about the hamsters. You perform an action that produces a pleasurable response, you will continue to perform that action even when the pleasurable response takes longer and longer to achieve - further down the time line when this response is achieved in only, say, 1 out 20 attempts, the scale of the pleasure is adjusted accordingly. People like pleasurable responses and given enough of them early on will want more and more and more.

Ever notice how the early levels fly by so quickly but later levels tend to last longer? You got hooked in the beginning. Little tastes.

Notice how the best/most visually attractive powers don't come until much later?
Designed to look within your reach.

Any creature with more than two brain cells to rub together can be easily modified to want more pleasure and we are certainly no different than hamsters in that aspect.

Bowling has points. You can most certainly bowl competitively and work to reach higher and higher scores. You can also choose to play without caring about the points. (But who hasn't cheered on getting a strike?)

The same goes for baseball. The same goes for any sport, any video game. Some folks find their fun in playing socially without minding the score, some find their fun in increasing their score. Why is one better than the other?

I'm along the lines of what some have touched on.

I started to play the game because I was interested in CoH (back in the closed beta days). When I first logged in and made a toon I was amazed at the amount of customization you could do and you could choose different powersets that all sounded cool!

I played to look at/play with the powersets/powers which means I was playing to "get to the next level."

Now that I have 20+ lvl 50s (only 2 non-50s atm), there's "nothing" to do...sure there are some powersets I haven't played but to be honest, I don't really want to play them...they are "old" to me and "blah"....I want new powersets!

If the devs released new powersets for each AT like every 3 months or so I'd be excited and probably 'good for now'. There are quite a few of my 50s that still have SOs or just missing a lot of enhancements because once I hit 50 "I'm done" with that toon and just too lazy to log them in for the most part.

I want new powers, new things....I don't necessarily care about content (although always nice to have) but give me new powersets and I'd be at least happier