Reward-driven mentality

OP:

Perfect example of why "Just play" does not work is the Cathedral of Pain trial. Yes, yes, you can blitz it in 10 minutes. But you get NO REWARDS. No Inf, no Salvage, no Purples...you get badges and the temp power.

I did it enough times to get badges, never bothered again.

Hmmm when I first started ages ago, even though I had the foggiest concepts of efficiency, I did want "That next power." Once I got to 50...not much else to do then (Issue 4) so rolled a new alt.

I *like* Purples and Shards. I have lucked out and received 8 purples since Friday on "Shard Runs". The majority of them were sold and now I have several billion inf doing nothing but...it IS MY pile of Inf, and I can log in and see 2,000,000,000 on my bank toon and more X,000,000,000 on my bids. I get much satisfaction from this. Without Purples, I'm not getting multiple billions easily. Or at least not as quickly.

Lastly, there really is no harm in YOU doing stuff at a relaxed pace.
As a matter of fact, the "Shard Runs" usually slow down the pace of gameplay, turning stuff into a virtual defeat all.

Rewards are awesome. Epic loot is more awesome. EvilGeko was right about epic loot and still is.

Also:

Quote:

Originally Posted by ClawsandEffect . I work at a job I dislike because I need the reward from it (my paycheck) in order to simply survive. I don't want to spend what little free time I have feeling like I need to earn rewards in a video game to make it worth my time. I play the game and accept whatever rewards happen to come my way, but I don't do things I find unenjoyable in order to maximize them. I suppose that's where the disconnect is occurring for me. I don't understand why people would do something in the game they find unfun simply because it gives better rewards. Especially since you get rewards for just playing the game in the first place.

You don't *need* to do any of it though. My level 33 Energyx2 Blaster is loads of fun with just SOs.
If your fun is logging in, making an alt and fiddling around defeating Hellions, that is 100% fine.

Me, my fun is:

You received 5,981 Influence.
You received 2,341 Influence.
You received Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage (Superior).50 (Recipe)

And then, putting it all in bins in my storage base and taking a big dive into the loot pile.

Of course, I also spend hours on costumes, pvp, using the game as a chat client and making cheesy alts.

But that's me, and I'm weird that way.

Continuing the above conversation, I've been working my butt off with 10-12 hour days these past couple weeks. Last night I was particularly beat, but I logged on to City to see what my friends were doing. They were, in fact, starting a Dr. Kahn TF. An hour and change later, I was up 3 Shards, an Incarnate Salvage, some recipes I haven't even looked at yet, and I'd had some fun (it's quite satisfying to take Reichsman and his cronies down with only 6 people).

I realize this is pretty much anathema to your own playstyle, Sam, but I wanted to reinforce anecdotally that it does depend on what you want out of the game.

For me, the reasons rewards are now factoring into things is that, non-rewards wise, I’m basically done the game.

Fiery Redeemer, my main, has done all hero arcs, turned villain, did all those arcs, and therefore, I’m done the story. I’ve read almost all of them. Heck, I even did almost half the Task Forces, just to get the badge and read the story itself on wiki.cohtitan.com since the TF people go too fast for me to read the actual text live.

So, now, I keep playing because of the rewards. I’ve done all the content, and the new content of each issue is done 1-7 days, on average, after the publish. That’s not meant as a criticism, that’s life.

As someone said here and on IMDB “It takes Hollywood 3 years to make a movie. It takes me 2 hours to see it, 30 min to drive home, and 5 min to log on to the official board and ask ‘When is the sequel?’ In movies and in games, the makers can’t catch up. It’s not possible.”

For all the good stuff I’m expecting of “The Old Republic”, 8 full arcs, fully voiced, etc… you can bet that when you hit L50 or whatever the cap is, you have to grind your butt off to get that “Lightsaber +1” or whatever the top end gear is… or people will /quit soon as they’re done their arcs. And companies of MMOs want you stay subscribed for a long time.

It’s all a matter of quantities. A theoretical MMO could have a super long term plan of rewards, so that, after 3 months, you upgrade from bare fists to a bent, half broken bone dagger, and it takes you a year to get to a stone dagger, let alone the 2 years for a bronze one… but realistically, very very few players would stay for that kind of curve. But, if players did, that’d be the ultimate money maker. “Play 20 RL Years for your Steel Weapon”. That’s a long subscription.

So that’s why there’s always a carrot really far off. It’s just HOW far that’s the trick.

Also, the other thing is that an MMO does, despite complaints (sometimes even by me) to the contrary, listen to its player base and adjust, fairly. RL does, but much slower. Personal example…

There’s a high end restaurant we go to every year a treat. There was no such thing as a reservation to that specific restaurant (we’re not in the USA). You show up, and however much money you give to the Greeter determines if/when you are seated. It’s worth it, hence why we go, but that’s how that restaurant works. After 12 years, finally, due to a combination of complaints to the owners, competition, and city by-laws, it takes reservations, but that took a while to come about. Until then, it was “This is how it works or here’s the door.”

With an MMO, we know it’s a game, a program. It can change really fast. The devs want to increase or decrease a drop rate? It’s likely just a change in 1 number. Change the difficulty? Adjust the damage / defence. Probably takes an hour at most. What takes a long time is figuring out *IF* they should do the change, and what impact it can have. And that’s based on finances, market research, etc… As a real CoH example = You can’t do anything about the hour in traffic you spend, each day, to get to and/or from RL work. But CoH can and did make travel easier by merging the train lines.

It’s a much more malleable world, hence why feedback is done more often.

And, about the complaint of not liking the activity vs the reward, there’s a personal line we all have. Would you do TF or Arc –A for 10 min to get the badge? Maybe / Maybe not. Most probably would. Make it a 30 min arc… you lose some, but most will likely stay. 2 hours? Ok. You’ve lost a lot of people. 6-10 hours? Yeah, only the most dedicated will stay. We all have our line in the sand, and that’s different with each person and task pair.

Free time does have something to do with it, at least for me. When my wife and daughter were on a trip for 2 weeks, and I was home and unemployed at the time, I did x8 missions with my main, levelled up a Villain on the second account so I could 2-box the Villain Newspaper missions, etc… Now that things are back to normal, I log in every night to do my 5 Tip missions with my main, and other than that, I play once a week an actual “session”. I got tons of shards and purples during that 2 weeks. Barely saw 1 of each in the months since.

My choice. Situational granted, but that’s why.

But, since you said you had trouble understanding the behaviour, just think of it like a spectrum. And don’t forget that there’s the venting aspect of things. When my friends get together with me for drinks and they complain about their bosses, chances are their bosses aren’t THAT bad, but, it’s venting time, there’s vodka, they are my friends, so I smile and nod. I’m sure that for some, not all, but for some, the venting here is more than what they feel. I know *I* do it some times when I complain on a bad day.

But, right now, I’m in no mood for TF during my once a week “real” session, so I’m content with no shards / purples. When the time allows, and the need rises, say, Rare/Very Rare Alpha, I’ll do a few TF, get the goody, till the annoyance passes the need, and I’ll go back to Tip missions.

Hope that helps ClawsandEffect.

And another successful thread necromancy. :/

It's getting real bad.