Thought Requisition #NB001
At random occasions when I don’t have the time or energy to write any worthwhile commentary myself, I’ll be posting questions designed to get people thinking and, hopefully, see a few responses to the inquiries. The first question is one that has arrived naturally as a result of some recent happenings in the virtual space. I won’t cite anything specific, but you’ll know where I’m coming from when you read the question:
Will players endure any amount of monotonous tedium if the carrot at the end of the stick is assumed worthwhile, even if the end reward isn’t fully known?
Definitively, yes. It is part of human nature. Early world explorers (Columbus, Lewis & Clark, etc) had no way of knowing that their forays would yield any benefit or profit. Climbing mountains just to get to the top, space exploration, submarines that go deeper, digging in the earth and finding fossil fuels, minerals, and artifacts. The cost is high, the outcome is unknowable and sometimes intangible. We do these things “because it’s there.” These aspects of human nature translate into the games. Yesterday’s Plane of Time progression is today’s Gates of Ahn’Qiraj. The carrot will always be pursued even in the face of questionable outcomes and considerable personal risk.
Certainly there is a limit. In each person, I believe there is some sort of function that looks like so (excuse my php-like psuedo code. Its mostly understandable by like, a huge population):
function evalWorth($risk, $reward, $rw_threshold, $rw_weight, $required_time, $available_time, $time_threshold, $rw_weight) {
$rw = $risk / $reward;
$rw_pass = ($rw $time_weight) {
return $rw_pass;
} else if ($rw_weight
ah heck. it ate my post. I give up. WordPress needs a preview feature.
GG, make it so.
Different players have differing levels of patience. What some might view as frustrating after minutes, others might fight a Zen-like method of relaxation. But I think everyone has their limits. There comes a point when the vast majority of players will find something too boring to continue with. That point will vary depending on just how worthwile the reward is perceived to be.
Some players may attempt to endure the boredom through other means. Examples would be watching television while doing a repetitive game task or creating imaginary meta-games (i.e. I will complete this task in less than three minutes) to keep thing interesting.
Or they will cheat. Faced with something intensely monotonous, players will view cheating as the only logical solution. Kind of a Kobayashi Maru situation but with tedium subsituted for overly high difficulty. If you look at points in MMO?s where people use macros or turn to the secondary market I think it is usually at points where they are trying to avoid a high level of tedium.
In We Love Katamari, there is a kind of bonus stage that requires you to roll up a million roses, a truly tedious proposition. Players ?solved? this level by using rubber bands on their PS2 controllers or attaching them to fans. But I like to think the game designer was parodying the tedious nature of some games and saying that games should, above all, be fun.
Basically, a high level of tedium is something you want to avoid in any game whether players will endure it or not.
Totally dependent on the person, their personality, thier history, etc. The easiest example for me is myself. I don’t put up with tedium very much. I can’t begin to count the number of games I’ve quit just before the end simply because the difficulty or the prospect of grinding didn’t interest me. Some of these games are considered some of the best ever made. On the other hand I have finished games I didn’t even particularly like, because I knew that all I had to do was memorize the level/mission to get past it.
Examples:
Zelda (the original) – Boy were those some great all nighters. Completed it at least once. Remembered with fondness
Dragon Quest – My first RPG so long ago. I did actually finish it, I was young and had a lot of free time. I wasn’t a very bright boy I guess.
FF X – Good game don’t you think? The battles became so difficult so quickly I was left with 2 options, quit or grind. I read some walkthroughs to learn what happened at the end of the story, I was 3 battles from the end. Such a disappointment I probably won’t touch any FF game again.
SOCOM II – The whole squad FPS genre is OK, but that’s it. Finished it even though I had to replay a couple of the missions half a dozen times. Once I had all of the enemies locations memorized I could get through and move on. I don’t want another squad FPS or any FPS on a console again.
Counter-Strike – One of my favorites of all time, started in 1999. Too many haxxors, the clan disbanded sometime in 2000. I quit. I consider those the glory days of my gaming life.
DAOC – The PvP really sounds cool, I’d love to play it some time. Quit 5 levels from the level cap because I got tired of the grind. What a waste of time that was.
I think many people will totally disagree with me on some of those, which is my point entirely. For me the carrot doesn’t really matter, I only have so much time and patience. If success is based only time, it’s not for me.
Yes.
1. They’ll want ti because it’s there.
2. They’ll want it to sell on to others who know it’s there but don’t have the time or inclination to grind their lives away.
cf – pre-CU SWG, jedi, jebay.
My 2 cents…
The first people to complete an event/quest/whatnot are the people that ALWAYS have to complete everything first. They don’t care what the carrot is, they get their satisfaction from being the first. Of course, when they find out the carrot is rotten and moldy, they tell others and no one does your content. I don’t think it’s ever possible to put something so time consuming in a game that no one will ever reach it. There’s always some cat-asses that will make the goal to do it and achieve it.
Most people though…I think it depends on what the carrot is and how realistic and fun it is to obtain it. I’ve done my share of long camps. I’ve done my share of grinding. I don’t mind it, I actually like it in a sick sad way. But I’m never the first to do it and I’m not going to chase rainbows where I don’t think I have the time/will to find the pot of gold.
Game specific observations that come to mind:
EQ-I did the chanter epic 1.0. Nuff said. I did it when I had something better in my primary. But I wanted it. The storyline was crap but it had some interesting encounters. It took me about a year and a half off and on to do. That being said, there were a lot (read: most) of insane drops and quests that I just stayed the heck away from.
SWG-I had no issues grinding to expert bartender and almost made it to master chef. I loved logging in every day to tend to my harvesters and my factory and craft and travel to several different markets to put up my wares. I also was one of maybe a dozen chefs on the server. Once they changed the profession to something completely different , I kinda got discouraged and stopped. I had already mapped out the best stuff to grind on and how I’d get there…and my life changed a bit at that time and I didn’t have enough time to dedicate to the game.
FFX-I got to the same grind or quit point and quit. Was almost at the end, too. I thought they really dropped the ball by making the story end and the ending too high to reach by natural progression through the story.
Pokemon-Played a couple of them and it got REALLY tedious to have to spend days leveling to beat the next gym and then it was like…yay! You won. Go grind more.
I guess my conclusion of this fairly self indulgent post is…in an MMO I expect to work for my carrot, because there is the added benefit of social interaction and so many different ways to advance (grinding solo or grouping, questing, raiding, epics, pvp, duels, etc) in many different locales. In a single player game, I want to just get caught up in a story and get VERY frustrated when I have to pause that just to gain enough power to keep going. It’s why I don’t finish a lot of single player games.
Great answers so far. My brief cent is that I will endure any amount of tedium as long as the task is both non-repetitive and the reward is at least implicitly worthwhile. But if it isn’t repetitive it isn’t really tedious, it’s just content… maybe.
I think the better term then is “arduous.” Rephrased: I will endure any amount of arduousness as long as the task is both non-repetitive and the reward is at least implicitly worthwhile.
Honestly there is tedium involved in anything they make us do. The question is wether they can make the complete journey to the objective fun overall. If so then we are going to have fun regardless of how long the end goal takes us.
The biggest killer in this line is grinding or repeating things. Once you start us down the path of repeating tasks and grinding out objectives is the point that fun is usually lost.
A good example I’ve always though of is the kill # of monster type quests. If kept within a quick and painless small number it doesn’t bother most. Increase the pain and the # and look at how quickly fewer people will want to do it.
Then you have the grinders and the hardcore that achieve the goal because they have the time and will power. That is a small subset of players and should never be your target audience.
Now here is something I want to toss into this. What about player created content? That in which the goal is forever changing and forever different upon each login.
A great example is the main content of EVE. Empire space and corporation wars. How much will players put up with other players before it is no longer worth it?
The WoW example is interesting in that it allows everyone’s tolerance for tedium to come into play. Someone has enough patience to be the first guy at a raid, and someone had to want that unknown content enough to donate the first resources (see also A Tale in the Desert, unlocking new tech). After a time, the next person says, “Well, only 9000 to go, I can kick in some.” By the time it is down to 20, almost anyone would be willing to donate to get that new potential shiny.
If everyone had to go through that individually, fewer would get through, but some would. Those who did would think of themselves as hardcore; others would think of them as catasses. Still, unless the bar is set at truly absurd, SOMEONE will be willing to try it.
Shawl quest in EQlive.. enough said
Actually, at this point I would say that once a game is out and people are playing it, the bar on new content cannot be set too high. There will always be one person or one group of people willing to put up with limitless torture just to be able to say “I completed your content and it sucked.” or alternately “I tried to complete your content and it is not completable.” In fact, the more horrible and tedious the design, the more those first finishers will wear it as a badge of honor.
Example: EverQuest, Cleric Epic, Ragefire. How many times did you hear someone say “Yeah, well I did my epic before they changed Ragefire!”