That's why I narrowed down what I considered a "reward" to be. I guess I've just played far too many MMORPGs and I know the only reason I'm doing kill quest #2,791 is that while boring, it is the most effective use of my time. Are you honestly going to tell me that even a significant number of people want to do all the quests because the lore is so enticing? That they don't just skip the text as fast as possible and then proceed to the "X" on the map? How many people do grey quests if they are not part of a chain?

I think this behavior is more prevalent in MMORPGs because the focus is to keep people paying as long as possible, which means a treadmill, which causes a great deal of regurgitated content. Like the DAOC joke, you can fight a reskinned badger all the way to 50! Take a random current Heroic dungeon in WoW, and remove the emblem reward from it. Watch how many people just drop out of it the minute they /random into it with the dungeon finder. I'm willing to bet that would quickly become the "hardest" dungeon to clear. This is already seen to a certain extent with the shorter / more efficient heroics in WotLK being favored over the longer ones.

I'd think that it was just me that felt this way, if I did not see all of the emphasis in the most efficient methods of leveling aimed at minimizing the perceived boredom. Even which pieces of gear to buy off the AH and which to buy with emblems has been set out. In WoW, every guild I was in had a problem keeping raids going because the people with the gear really didn't want to go through the raids that they did not stand to benefit from again. Even knowing that having other people get geared out would in turn further progression and help them get gear.

In DAOC, people stopped RvRing at around RR4 / RR5, which not surprisingly is about where RPs and RAs hit diminishing returns both in terms of the reward, and how much time it took to get it.

I can point to this over and over again, and if you want to focus on a semantics argument and ignore the point I'm making, all I can do is /shrug. You can tell me that I'm oversimplifying, but I don't know how it needs to be any more complex than what it is.

As for rewards being their own fun, that's pretty sad. If I spend 30 hours doing something, I want those 30 hours to be fun. I don't want to have a brief bit of joy over some new bit of gear, only to be immediately confronted by the fact that its going to be obsolete in a month anyway. If people were really having fun, why would they get so upset about their gear becoming obsolete?

EDIT:

TLDR: How many people keep their job after winning the lottery?

Rewards aren't fun?

I'm not saying I'm going to have an orgasm for epics, but we are after all no better than Pavlov's Dog.

 

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I work to survive. I play games to have fun. The former is not optional. The latter is very much so.

 

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Exactly. Stupid comparison is... stupid.

 

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I guess I can only point to Bonsai or any number of things where if the final result was removed, many less people would do it. Ultimately many things in games or leisure are essentially meaningless. Many things in games are boring in themselves and are done because they achieve a goal of some sort.

I think you're just in a reformed smoker shtick.

Otara

Pretty sure you /random on gear in raids like the lottery. Somewhat reasonable comparison was reasonable.

 

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Its not a stupid comparison at all, because that's exactly what MMORPGs have been turned into: Work.

Let me ask you this about bonsai. If someone said "Hey, screw the 200 hours you are going to put into trimming that tree over the next 4 years. Here is a finished one" would you take it? In an MMORPG, the average person would answer "Hell ya, give me a full set of gear!" and then quickly tire of showing it off, and stop playing.

This is why I laugh when people want the treadmills removed. Remove the treadmill aspect, and retention goes straight in the crapper. At that point without a treadmill, you essentially have no game. SWG was an interesting sandbox game that had horrible retention because you could max out in a couple of days if you had half a clue. Games need a perpetual treadmill to keep people over the long haul.

As for a reformed smoker shtick, I'm not trying to get anyone to quit. I just sneer when people try to equate an addiction with fun. You actually pick a pretty apt analogy as well. Most smokers I know don't consider it "fun" or enjoyable (beyond feeding their addiction). They consider it an expensive filthy habit that they wish they could be rid of, but they have trouble quitting because they are addicted. The most common advice I've seen from smokers is "don't start".

Its also an appropriate comparison because denial plays a significant part.

You don't have to agree with me, just ask yourself the next time you log in "Would I run this dungeon or do this quest repeatedly if I didn't get xp / loot?" Who knows, maybe you are the one out of one million that actually would. In that case, congratulations you are much more easily amused than I am.

At the end of the day I think everyone in this thread understands exactly what I mean. I don't think I've seen a single person truly defend the type of activity that I'm condemning. From people pulling in references to a 12 year old game as an example of fun (how sad, nothing more recent?) to bonsai trees and soccer... and I'm the one with the stupid comparison.

There is no-one in dispute that some chase rewards in their gaming, merely a contention that not all do. I do not, for example. I don't do dungeons or epics. I don't do PvP. I have no interest in the best gear.


I wouldn't claim to be a typical MMO player, but I'm by no means a unique one. It all comes down to one's competitiveness. I am competitive in some aspects of my life, but gaming isn't one of them. It's just a hobby, and one that I pursue for fun, no more no less. If I'm having fun then I'll play the game, I couldn't care less about the so-called rewards.


And, like 99% of internet forum analogies, the lottery was a crap one. Winning the lottery is a life-changing event, running a dungeon in a computer game is not. There's simply no comparison.

Well, I can give two example of my recent personal experience that some people aren't just "driven by rewards".

1) I had absolutely no problems to stop raiding when it became boring. I always raided for fun, gear was only a tool. When the fun stopped, I also stopped getting the tool - but who cares? Some people definitely are addicted to the tool, I've seen it in my own guild, but many also aren't.

2) I stopped needing anything from random BG PvP on my Druid since a very long time. He was (before 4.3 today) decked with the best PvP gear you can get for honor, since I can't be arsed to do rated BGs or Arenas. Did I stop PvP? Nope. I kept playing. I filled that 4000 honor limit so many times I didn't count. What did I do? Well, I purchased some enchant mats from the vendor, since it was the only way not to waste those points, and when guildies needed some enchants, I did them for free including the mats. My payment was already included in the fun I had doing PvP.

My guess is that the people who think other's can't play without rewards even if it's fun are projecting their own play style onto everybody. You need a goal, yes. But the goal can just be fun. Actually, GOD FORBID the goal in fun in a GAME. Nope. A game should be like a second job, shouldn't it?

 

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Disclaimer before you read all this: im writing this tired as hell and I cant sleep. So if it looks like im doing nothing but spouting incoherent dribble, then I do apologize

In my experience there are arguments on both sides of this debate. Yes there are some people who simply have fun getting loot, achievements, and rewards and will quickly leave a game once they reach the end game and cant go any higher, then come back when new content is introduced. However there are some people who find fun in just playing the game as it is no matter where they are. Yes this is an example of a 12 year old game, and im using it since it was used several times in this post, but with DAoC I knew plenty of people who continued to RvR after hitting RR10 when it was the cap just because they had fun in PvP even after they got to, what was at the time, the end of the end game.

Then there are people out there like myself who like content, getting gear, and achievements and see that as fun but will sometimes play just to socialize. I do have a personal life and a social life outside of a game that I am playing but I also have friends in game, some that have developed into friendships outside the game through email, texting, phone calls ect... and on road trips I have met a few in game friends in person and have had a lot of fun seeing these friendships develop. Me personally I cant play a game, even one as highly played as WoW, without a good community. I stopped playing my rogue at around 35 just because I couldnt get into a guild because no guilds were recruiting anyone under the max level at the time so I was just soloing a lot and got bored off my ass and quit.

As far as the original argument is concerned, not being able to play without reward or achievement, yes there are some people like that. But I play Rift and I am almost T3'd out on both my builds yet I still do T2's all the time with friends and have over 2K plaques that are worthless to me. There is no loot that drops in a single T2 that I need but I still do it with friends, that are on the same level as me and not needing anything, because we have fun just hanging out.

I do believe that If you removed the rewards and achievements from MMO's that there certainly would be a major drop in paying customers. However I have I have to agree with someone else in this topic that said the same can be said about any game. You used Tetris as an example, just being able to get a higher score then what you had before is an achievement to some people, just being able to match stuff up just right and solve a puzzle is an achievement to some people. Using Chess and monopoly as an example, for people who have competitive nature, just the thrill of being competitive and the possibility of winning is fun, then winning in itself is a reward, maybe short lived but at the time it is a reward. Most people in this world are competitive by nature on some level, if they weren't then the world, especially sports, would be a hell of a lot more boring, in fact there probably wouldnt be any sports at all.

So, in my opinion, saying that if you remove rewards and achievements from this or that game ect.. and see how many people would still do it? You might as well just say ok, lets remove the points from football, cause thats an achievement and a reward. While were at it lets take away throwing and receiving, because to some people throwing the perfect pass and seeing it caught over a defender is an achievement, and catching a good pass is an achievement to some people. While were at it lets take the running back out of the game because to him getting past the defender is an achievement. While were at it lets take blocking out of the game because keeping the defensive line/line backers from getting to QB is an achievement and so on and so forth until you have a bunch of men standing on a field just staring at each other and then lets see how many people play that game?

Just about any aspect of any game can be considered as an achievement to some person in this world. Hell I remember back when I was playing DAoC on a crappy computer. Just being able to duel log and run my buffbot without one, or both, of my accounts going LD was a bit of an achievement to me lol

 

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