General Discussion

More and more with the advancement of technology, we live in a world where our wants and desires are met very quickly.  Instant messaging lets you communicate at the speed of light, Ipods let you program the songs you want to hear without commercials, microwave ovens let you cook meals in minutes.

This creates a mindset where we get used to having what we want without having to wait long for it.  Let's apply this mindset to gaming.  Everquest is routinely held up as a standard of the classic MMO (no disrespect to UO or SWG).  EQ was wildly popular in its day.  Loved by most who played it, it wasn't long before gamers and devs began to wonder how it could be made even better.  If only you didn't have such long time travels to get to where you're going.  If only the death penalty wasn't so harsh.  If only you could solo your way to the top so you didn't have to wait to get into a group.  If only they provided a map on the screen so you never got lost in the world.  These are all features that have been added to subsquent MMOs and now have become standard.

The result is that the rewards come quickly.  The biggest draw of role-playing is the satisfaction you feel when you receive a reward.  Therefore, the faster you are rewarded, the faster the mystique of role-playing wears off.

The opposite of instant gratification is "deferred gratification":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deferred_gratification

A reward that comes after it's been earned with considerable effort.  Now I'm not naive.  Nobody wants to wait around all day to find a group only to come up empty.  So there has to be a balance between delaying the reward and still being able to achieve it.  The key is the fun factor, imo.  If a game rocks, you're likely to not even notice the time it takes to succeed.

You are rigth in many ways but there is time and there are "fun times".

I dont much mind grinding, I can even take camping to a degree but less today then before, I remember I spent nearly 24 hours cmping the bloody fish in enchanted lands in EQ2 for my heritage quest and allthough not fun per say I met a lot of people during them 24 hours.

I spent 27 hours grinding Stanley Adams in AO and allthough we did almost EXACTLY the same thing for all that time I had a blast, we were 6 people who started and 3 of us were left when it ended but during that time I bet the other 3 spots were filled with something like 20 people coming and going.

I despise travelling times though, it such an artificial time filler from the creators it is sickening.

Dont get me wrong, in AO I probably spent well over 300 hours doing NOTHING but exploring the world of Rubi-Ka, every nook and cranny and I took pride in my knowledge of the world wich were probably second to none.

But I did that because I wanted to, not because I had to.

"Considerable effort" is NOT waiting doing nothing, having time is NOT a skill, more likely it is evidence of the opposite.

Delay the reward all you want, but fill the time in between with something to do and I am all ok.

Force me to wait doing nothing, or mindless travel and I am very likely to not go back.

As another example, it took me me 4 months in the last diablo2 ladder to get my first high rune to make a "fortitude" runeword.

The number of pindle/shenk runs I did is probably in the thousands, but I had fun almost the entire time, and anyone who knows can tell you how repetetive that is.

Just my thougts.

I agree. Because of instant gratification games have become very shallow and easy. And yet it is succesfull. It works so well that each and every developer is putting it into their game. The biggest customer group, the casual players, only play for a short time and want to be rewarded after playing for that time. Since MMOs are about repetition the player has to be rewarded fast or he may discover that the gameplay is not fun at all.

I think the only way to counter instant gratification is to make a fun game where the reward is the gameplay itself. The reward at the end of the road should be the icing on the cake. This means that developers have to create a new sort of game. The current grindgame to maxlevel simply doesn't deliver especially when you are an experienced gamer. But where to start? What sort of gameplay can be considered fun? Isfun the same for everyone? And the biggest problem of all: Why should I try to create something new when the old system is working?

Even after you think you have found a gameplay that keeps the player captivated without instant rewards: How do you convince investors to give the needed budget? Its very risky and the alternative is doing fine. All in all companies will always go the way of the maximum profit because that is the only way to get investors. It doesn't matter if a small group of individuals like it or not. I personally do not expect anything new this and next year. Right now we are experiencing the aftermath of WoW. All of the games are gameplay clones of WoW with modifications like even more instant gratification or even easier. I suggest waiting for the games that have started development this or last year (or games that started development before WoW).

Originally posted by Umbrood
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I despise travelling times though, it such an artificial time filler from the creators it is sickening.

...

<off-topic>

Traveling times can have a meaning! You might find it bad but that is only because the developers have implemented it in a boring way. Running for five minutes along a road without anything happening is obviously a bad idea. You can make traveling fun though. A few reasons for long traveling times are:

- immersion. If one of your quests wants you to do a long and perilous journey to the town of Tinbuktu somewhere in the dark swamps, the journey should be long and >dangerous<. Imagine lots of encounters, mini quests and exploring on the way. If a town is remote, then it should be hard to get to. Otherwise it is yet another town with just a different layout. Who cares if it is in a deadly swamp?

- economy. If all of the world is easily connected the economy suffers. Everyone will be competing with everyone in a central trading hub making crafting not worth it. With high travel times you will have traveling merchants, local trading hubs and specialized production hotspots. If you want to buy an armor of mithril you will have to either pay a lot of money or you will have to travel to its origin to neglect the transportation fee.

- pvp. High travel times will lead to goods being transported around the world. Merchants or producers will have to protect them (mercenaries) against thieves. Yet another incentive for pvp.

</off-topic>

UO didn't have excessively long travel times even if you were an absolute newb there were moongates.  Death penalty was as harsh as you wanted it to be, most of the time you tooled around in gm stuff that could be easily replaced.  But that of course brings up the OMFG I must have uber gear!!!!!  UO you could solo to 7x gm, would take a lot of time to accomplish but it could be done.  It didn't have to full size map except with add ons but memorizing location wasn't that big of a deal.  What UO had going against it which I believed lessened it's player base is it was ffa pvp only.

I wouldn't say quick travel, killing, softer death penalty or any of that is really hurting the current mmos.  It's the ability to level too quickly.  To many people get to end game, which is such a stupid concept in mmos imo, too fast.

Originally posted by Umbrood

You are rigth in many ways but there is time and there are "fun times".

I dont much mind grinding, I can even take camping to a degree but less today then before, I remember I spent nearly 24 hours cmping the bloody fish in enchanted lands in EQ2 for my heritage quest and allthough not fun per say I met a lot of people during them 24 hours.

I spent 27 hours grinding Stanley Adams in AO and allthough we did almost EXACTLY the same thing for all that time I had a blast, we were 6 people who started and 3 of us were left when it ended but during that time I bet the other 3 spots were filled with something like 20 people coming and going.

Of course, I didn't even mention grinding as one of the time sinks that leads to deferred gratification because that's actually one of the things I don't care for in MMOs.  It also seems to be one of the things games have not been able to eliminate, even though if there's anything that should be, it's the grind.  But I think it is possible.  Simply shift from level advancement to skill advancement.

All the other things that slow a game down - travel, death penalties, grouping, etc., I don't mind at all.

The harder you have to work, the sweeter the reward. I was proud of my first eq paladin, it took me a solid year to get him to 50. (remember that -25% xp modifier for hybrids?) Before that I had played the same character in a mud called Gemstone 3 for 6 years. I actually have a soft spot in my heart for both toons.

However since then, I could really care less about toons I make in other games, theyre done in a few months tops, theres nothing hard about it, so I dont feel any sort of connection to em. Frankly I dont know of any games out there that are even challenging enough for me to play to bring me back to that level. Maybe Ill go back and play Gemstone 3.

Another thing Id like to point out is that in eq, my guildies played in large part because of the social interaction, it was social first, and a game second.

Now most games you can solo your way to max level, and its pretty much just a console mentality...