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[PATV] Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 6, Ep. 1: Intrinsic or Extrinsic
I just wanna put it out that FF7's battles can be super engaging. I loved them and the last time I played it (about three years ago) I did in fact grind to fight. There was also the battle arena which was delightful. Materia management was interesting and engaging. There was enough dimensionality and options to wind up in interesting circumstances and do clever things.
I know they're not in fashion because they don't have combat maneuvering, but no shortage of people enjoyed the hell out of them.
This is a huge problem with RPGs. In fact, I would say that many, perhaps most RPGs suffer from this.
That being said, I think that there is one catch, and that is pacing. There is a certain rhythm to experience that improves many experiences - spreading things out instead of putting them all in at once, making it so that you DO do the things in parallel rather than in series. Grinding to level 99, then beating the game is MUCH less fun than gaining levels -as- you progress through the game.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't make everything intrinsically fun, but that it can be dangerous to allow too much of one of your best things all at once, because it can make that thing less fun, and simultaneously make players get less interested in the game.
One thing that I think was very interesting about Chrono Cross was that you couldn't grind indefinitely - you had to move on to get better. This not only ensured that enemies were of the proper challenge level, but also helped to force you to continue moving through the game. While the mechanics of that game were pretty terrible (thanks to having far too large a cast) and the story was bad, this idea was not a bad one - in fact, I would say that its very good for a game to really urge you to keep moving through it throughout rather than spending long periods of time running around doing the same thing, even if that thing is intrinsically rewarding, because repetition, especially in a short period of time, can dull the feeling.
I find this to be a problem in Final Fantasy Tactics games, particularly the Advance version, where laws prohibit what you do but that's just a personal pet peeve.
On the whole though, Tactics does exactly what they said. Keep you grinding for hours as they drip feed you the story, and as engaging as hell as their stories are, the rest of the game felt so demonstrably slow...oh sure stuff like the ability and job systems were creative and fun to do for a while, but once that novelty wears off, it's not as engaging anymore.
I know a lot of people love those games, but I couldn't get into them as much. I couldn't appreciate the story when 99% of my time was being taken up by slow paced turn by turn sequences that, when you really think about it, aren't even that fun to watch.
Although Tactics 1's story was pretty interesting, I'd never recommend the game for that reason. I and many others actually like the slow, tactical combat. (At least until you unlock some of the broken jobs/characters later in the game that turn everything into a joke, but I disgress!) Something like ATB took the worst parts of turn-based and real time IMO... give me time to think and navigate your silly menus so I can do something more clever than spam attack/magic!
Anyway I think the video is selling extrinsic rewards a bit short. There are plenty of people who love totally free-form games like minecraft or simcity, but there aren't that many successful ones, and I for one can't really stay occupied with them for long. I'd much rather have some kind of specific challenge or goal to work towards, even if that's as simple as getting to the next doom or sonic level. More freeform games like Oblivion dried up for me once the quests ran out.
One thing that's always been going for leveling in RPGs is that steady progress towards those extrinsic rewards can *itself* become more intrinsic. For example watching the XP/skill bars slide up as you kill stuff can become cool because you know what happens once that bar fills. However the payoff isn't just when the bar fills, but to a degree it also becomes a part of the actions you do to fill the bars. This kind of structure also applies to moving through the arc of beginning, middle, and end of a story, quest, or zone, working down a bosses' health bar, and so on. I mean the only reason your attacks even do anything on a boss is because you are making his bar shrink, and you know once the bar runs out, you "win."
I'd agree if you aren't enjoying the game you are playing right now then you should probably stop. But even so, longer-term rewards (here labled as "extrinsic") can have a very important place in terms of your immediate enjoyment. I personally get bored a lot faster with games that don't have long-term goals, and I suspect alot of people who do enjoy such games do so because they set their own long-term goals (i.e. making some cool huge building.) Without such goals there's not much room for gaining a sense of significant accomplishment, which is worth pondering over since so many games are based on dangling the "win" to get players to overcome challenges.
I think there's one thing that designers more then gamers have to also be aware of. Intrinsic and Extrinsic are more subjective then anything. Everyone has different things that draw them in, some people love to grind while others dread it. I have a perfect example.
In WoW I was in a fairly active guild that did a ton of recruiting. We went from 20 or so to 150 or so active players. I was in near the start and did my fair share of recruiting. One guy I recruited loved playing the AH. He would simply sit in Ironforge and record anything for sale, then when he heard someone was looking for an item, if he had a source he'd buy it and then resell it. He was making all sorts of crazy cash. In fact he would only come questing when we asked him to.
Now a few were critical of what he did and how he played the game, but he really enjoyed the economic side of the game. I'm sure if they ever released a MMO that was based on wall street he'd be in heaven. To me it was fine because he could find enjoyment to that aspect of the game, then why was it a big deal.
I've played almost every FF game and combat was mostly a lot of fun, till near the end where I just wanted to skip the random encounters so I could go demolish the end boss. For me there was a lot of depth in turn based combat. A gamer friend of mine hated FF and love games like The Legend of Zelda. He found turn based didn't give him the adrenalin rush that real time did.
So I guess to sum it up. It's really hard to pin down what's only intrinsic and what's pretty much extrinsic because it's often a matter of taste. If it wasn't no one would be buying games like Train Simulator, Farm Simulator or other niche market games.
This is a pretty simple analysis of Intrinsic/Extrinsic rewards. If you're interested I suggest checking out Scott Rigby's talks. His most recent talk at GDCOnline was particularly interesting as he criticized the assumption that Extrinsic is pure evil. His assertion being that extrinsic rewards that are aligned with people's natural desires can be extremely valuable.
I feel like this will become more important to even triple A developers considering we're starting to see games accidentally allowing you to pay to bypass the only parts of the game with intrinsic rewards.
I honestly never would have thought that monetization schemes would start to force more coherent exploration of positive game play, but there you are.
First, this is partly devil's advocacy. I agree with the goal of making game activities intrinsically pleasing, and today, I play games I find interesting in their own right. That said, as someone who played FF7 and a number of earlier RPGs back when they were new, I do not remember disliking FF7's combat -- at all. Today, we laugh at the crappy graphics, wince at the grainy sound, and drum our fingers through the awkwardly-animated cutscenes. We instantly see through the game mechanics, intuitively "get" the materia system to the point it becomes pure tedium, and howl at the loony minigames. We have gotten savvier and our standards have risen, and setting aside the devil's advocacy for one moment, I would say that we are probably a better audience for it. But in 1997, the things I listed above worked as intrinsic motivators. The RPG audience was very accustomed to a 2d, pixel-art, telling-not-showing world, whether it was the bird's eye view of almost all previous console RPGs, or the forced perspectives of pc dungeon crawlers. Players hadn't even seen very many isometrics like Tactics Ogre, Fallout, or Diablo. "Cutscenes" previously involved sprite animations and many panes of dialog; fmv of any sort was still something new and shiny, not something generally stale and tedious.
To bookend FF7 in its own franchise, it followed a title that suffered, more than anything else, from weak late-game content. FF6 let the player almost completely off the rails in its second half, but the plot and the combat did not support that decision gracefully (though it fared better than a couple of the earlier Famicom FFs). Each of its characters got exactly one brief, self-encapsulated vignette for character growth and never spoke another line until the final battle. The enemies basically came in two badly-signposted difficulty tiers; the game's challenge vanished after the player managed to bash their way through any one of the "harder" areas, because everything else was either of a similar difficulty, or laughably easy. So, FF7 had those challenges to meet as well: carry the plot and provide challenges through to the end.
FF7 mostly met those challenges. The battles *felt* intense, partly because of a very solid soundtrack (probably the element that stands up best today); partly because flashy, overly-dramatic, too-long attack animations still had a wow-factor for period gamers; partly because we didn't immediately grasp the polygon-junk nature of the battle graphics. Also, between limit breaks and Materia, the game melded character uniqueness and high customizability in a way that didn't exist in previous FF titles. Synergy between linked Materia was icing on the cake -- "You mean, if I level up two things and then put them together, they become more than the sum of their parts? Amazing!" The game also offered multiple endgame challenges (though admittedly, the only way to take them on without comprehensive game knowledge was to grind, grind, grind),
The plot continued on each disk, with the characters periodically chiming in and *seeming* to do a bit more than just play cards back on the airship. Moreover, the pacing was reasonably strong. The Cloud on Motorcycle sequence sold an awful lot of copies despite only being one tiny part of the game, but honestly, I don't think people really minded it being a one-shot interactive cutscene -- it did its job, keeping people hooked for a somewhat-necessary exposition block as the players left the starting area, and the players got a whole new (3d!) world to explore afterwards.
To complete the bookending, FF7's successor FF8 represented a step backwards in a lot of ways. The graphics stepped solidly up to PSX standards...and that's essentially all it had going for it. It took FF7's grind factor and minigame madness and cranked them up to 11, adding the Draw command and Triple Triad. Without going into detail, both were phenomenally grindy mechanisms that nevertheless were the best way to improve the characters, and neither one advanced the central RPG aesthetic of "kill stuff, get stronger, destroy big evil." Additionally, it still featured stupidly long attack animations, unskippable cutscenes, janky characters, and a badly-executed existential-crisis plot, which all served to amplify the game's core deficiencies.
Ultimately, yes, FF7 was a prototypical grindy jRPG, and it does deserve the slams it gets. Nevertheless, I'd argue that, taken as a period piece, it represents one high point for that design model -- it synthesized a lot of what earlier games had done right, and wrapped it in a relatively cohesive package. People didn't start quitting RPGs because of FF7. Rather, its immediate sequel FF8 was, historically, a game that highlighted the intrinsic/extrinsic problem for many more players. FF7 actually brought many new players into RPGs; in turn, FF8 showed many of those same players just how un-fun RPG mechanics tied to clumsy plot development could be. That failure put a lot more pressure on later sequels, along with RPGs in general. Players became capable of recognizing the "twisty tunnel of grind" factor in FF10 in spite of its other relative merits, and widely panned and canned FF13 for the same. Developers may or may not learn their lessons, but players...sometimes can.
While I do understand the difference between intrinsic/extrinsic, it's not really possible to cleanly tell them apart as long as all the mechanics you look at are happening -ingame-.
If I understood right, you use the question "Am I doing this activity because I -want- to do exactly this right now - or do I just do it for the sake of something else I get later?" for doing this. The root of that question is just the ever-present question of any game designer/player: "Is this fun? / Am I having fun with the activity I am doing right now?".
And no doubt, if the answer is a clear "no I don't, this is boring" then yes, it's certainly extrinsic. And on top of that, it's the kind of extrinsic any good designer should avoid.
But then again, almost all game activities are a -mix- of "immediately rewarding" and "long-term-rewarding". Even grinding in MMOs does have fun parts beyond the mere skinnerbox. Cleaving basilisks in half is satisfying, even without any xp-meter ticking somewhere in the background.
So, isn't the question rather "How MANY repetitions of mechanic X do I dare to ask the player to perform before it gets menial rather than fun?"
Also, I disagree with the idea that the perfect game has no extrinsic parts. If everything is purely intrinsic, i.e. focused on the current activity, then that implies that the game has no long-term rewards. Even Super Mario has coin high scores. Which are, by your count, an extrinsic reward element.
I think the element which shows good intrinsic design the best has got to be game menus. Look at Recettear's town map, or Pikmin's world map. You know the game has got something right when you just spend a good minute or two just flashing the cursor around the menu for the enjoyment of it.
I don't know where you'd put skill refinement into this system though. It's very extrinsic in the sense that you want to eventually improve to a certain point, but often the small moment-to-moment improvements or your current level of refinement give back some intrinsic rewards as well. Take any Sonic game. The objective is to be faster, but in the moment pulling off a clever move to shave off time feels great too. If you couldn't go faster you may not be able to justify playing the level in the first place. But if the moment to moment improvements weren't there, you wouldn't stick with it to achieve this either.
This is also part of why "Let's Play X" videos have become so popular. It allows people to watch games for the moments they enjoy without having to go through any gameplay they feel is boring. Additionally, the added commentary by the player then serves as a way to make the extremely boring parts less of a chore to watch. I've never thought about looking at the views or frequency that certain games show up in "Let's Play X" videos but I would bet that games with boring gameplay are probably screencasted the most.
Intrinsic or Extrinsic weren't good terms. Well, actually Extrinsic was the worst one because it's usually related to social reinforcement.
Basically you guys wanted to say people do stuff that they don't find fun by itself because they allow them to get to do something else that they find fun (repetitive grinding to look cool or cope with a boring battle system to see the story unfold)
This is the idea of chained contingencies.
The problem lies within the fact different people find different things fun and this changes the effect of each game element.
Example "I like building characters but hate grinding" and "A friend of mine likes to get the maximum strength the game offers but doesn't care so much about strategy diversity".
A funny thing to compare this to is the famous "Let's Play" series/website - some games are more fun to watch than to play.
I appreciate you are playing "Devil's Advocate" here but i ENJOYED grinding on Final Fantasy VII, VIII and X, however, I didn't on XIII. I think it's because it felt like it was "restricted by invisible rails" and the story didn't grab me; a bit like if you rocked back and forward on a roller-coaster for a bit, and not an a particularly enjoyable one at that.
The other games had compelling enough stories/openings that sucked you into the world, introduced you to the plot, characters and game mechanics then let you go off and grind for a while, explore the map or just continue the story. You could just play the story through, and level enough to make it through, or you could decide you wanted all characters to have master materia and play for 100+ hours like an old bud of mine. I liked seeing what I could steal from enemies, and learning all the enemy skills.
Initially he wanted to get his Cloud to be as badarse as Sephiroth was in the back-story you got to play, then he set more and more challenges that were really outside of advancing the plot.
So for sure, I like games like Minecraft which give you a choice to play in the way you enjoy the most. You can explore dungeons, build communities, play solo, and write your own narrative.
Same with career mode on Sports games, on Fifa 13, I COULD have the best team in the world by purely "playing to win" , taking the most "efficient players" based on website analysis, and using AI exploits but I prefer to restrict myself a little in order to get a more realistic sports experience, the wins feel more satisfying to me.
Equally, I don't enjoy Drake's Fortune and I've held off the latest Tomb Raider because being forced through that roller-coaster that relies on the plot/graphics/cool set pieces to keep you pulled in never really piques my interest.
You can't write your own narrative or enjoy the game mechanics in your own way, you just sit along for the ride and that's it.
Imagine X-Com without the resource management? It's the building your base and squad, then using the battle mechanics to try out your decisions that make it good, NOT the actual battle mechanics (which I found to be a little flawed). If the game was just a set of pre-scripted battles, it would be pants in my humble opinion.
Seeing that new plasma rifle and heavy armour you chose to put your research time into toast an alien? That's satisfying.
A bit off topic, but whenever I tell people I couldn't make it further than an hour into FF7 because of the gameplay and graphics, people assume it's because I don't appreciate the older technology. But it's not just a matter of me saying "FF7's Graphics Sucked". They actually made my eyes hurt, and it was because of a design decision. Keep in mind that Ocarina of Time came out one year later, and in my opinion looked WAY better. Heck, Super Metroid looked better. Again, my opinion. But it's similar to why WoW's graphics look better than Lord of the Rings Online. LotRO tries (and fails) at photo-realism, so it looks fine in stillshots but when animated it becomes choppy and clippy. WoW is more cartoony, but also more fluid and aesthetically appealing. I don't mind the polygons in FF7, but watching those polygons walk around on an attempt at photorealism in the background is jarring.
As far as gameplay goes, I don't really like ATB at all, and you can't blame the time period because, again, games like Ocarina of Time managed to have really engaging combat even when the story was the main focus. I played all the way through FF9 because the story engaged me so much, but it became a matter of suffering through grueling combat to get to the story. I still think the game was worth it because the story was that good, but a more functional and interesting combat system (the only JRPG I've found with one is the Suikoden series) would have made it a lot better.
I do think ideally, games would have both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. I've gotten over my need to grind through content I don't enjoy to be drip-fed rewards like I used to do. But I also have a hard time continuing with a game that has no sense of progress, no matter how much I like the combat. I loved the game feel of The Force Unleashed, but by the third level, I just felt like I had been doing the same thing over and over. I didn't get any new abilities, there weren't any setpieces to break up the combat, and the story didn't interest me very much. In Mario Galaxy, I didn't keep playing because I wanted more stars, I played because I loved the game. But it still always felt great to be unlocking new areas all the time--I never felt gated off but I still felt like I was being rewarded. Plus the first one had the best 120-star-reward ever...
I have become more elitist with the time I spend on games. This topic could be the reason why.
At the moment I enjoy playing WoW and GW2. I tried Rift, but it wasn't satisfying. The game mechanics didn't work and the 'grind' in it was too obvious. I felt like I could be doing something more useful and enjoyable.
If I want to eat away at the hours, I play Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and design. It eats a lot of hours. And at the end of it I have progress and work I can publish on the web to share.
I think it's important to play many games at once, so things stay fresh. But also so you have a game for any of your moods. Playing a grind game when frustrated and agitated and stressed might not be enjoyable. I don't know under what circumstances playing a MOBA is a good idea.
So at first, as I watched this video, it seemed like it made profound sense, as Extra Credits videos often do. But then I sat here thinking about it and the games I have played, and this video doesn't seem quite right. I have played a lot of games over a lot of years, but the only games that strike me as "intrinsic" are games like Street Fighter. I am playing for the current fight and nothing more.
But that's about it. Any other type of game falls into the extrinsic category. Even if I am not grinding for levels or something, I am still just working my way through the game, simply for the sake of completing the game as a whole.
And then there is the possibility that a game can be both intrinsicly and extrsinicly rewarding. I currently play Mechwarrior Online. The game is played in quick matches that usually last between 5 and 15 minutes. Those are fun or frustrating for the sake of the moment, like Street Fighter. However, each match I play earns me money or experience that I am able to spend in different ways for future battles. So, while I am inside a match, I am playing for the intrinsic reward, but what drives me to play more and more matches is often a need to obtain more money and exp.
I remember talking about this stuff in school in regards to Achievements and how they are Extrinsic and generally aren't as motivational as Intrinsic reasons.
And man, I often praise KH overall. The game did so much right. The gameplay and the story/characters and worlds. I love it. Prolly one of the best series from SE ever tbh.
But that's about it. Any other type of game falls into the extrinsic category. Even if I am not grinding for levels or something, I am still just working my way through the game, simply for the sake of completing the game as a whole.
Perhaps that just means you're playing the "wrong" games then? As an example, I've not played MWO (yet!) but up until a few months ago (when my free time was diminished greatly) I sank many, many hours into Tribes: Ascend. It's one of the few F2P games I've spent much time on, and the only one I've spent money on. IMO they nail the problem of intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards, by realising that it's a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other, you can just ramp up both! Moment to moment, I love the gameplay. The feeling of jetpacking around a map and the skill required to actually hit someone, especially in midair, is phenomenal. But that's also backed up with XP and unlockables. I played it for the moment-to-moment exhilaration, and I also played it to unlock more things to further enhance my future play.
In general, I've always very quickly recognised when a game is only offering extrinsic rewards and I just don't bother with those games. I've never liked MMORPGs, I've never liked JRPGs, I've never liked anything where the mechanic itself doesn't engage me. And I play loads of games, so there must be plenty of games out there doing it right!
Damn it, guys! Next time announce these kind of news in any other way than inside an episode... I couldn't watch ir propperly because I grieving my eyes out... Bye Allison.
@Synra Remember, this isn't necessarily about categorizing entire games but moments and pieces of the game. A lot of modern games have hooks for extrinsic rewards on things that were already intrinsic. It's about looking at pieces and how they fit together.
Like, it's super fun to watch the battle of wits from The Princess Bride. Sometimes I'll watch that scene without watching the rest of the movie. It's fun without me being invested in the rest of the story. The scene is intrinsic as well as engaging me in the movie all on it's own. Now, there's a 10 seconds or so sequence of Princess Buttercup riding a horse to escape from her confined life. It's not a bad scene but it's communicating an idea for the sake of the rest of the story and it's short and not bad.
Now, let's compare, say, the money earning mini-games in the first No More Heroes game. They take up a lot more time in the experience and aren't really that engaging all on their own. If you think that's on purpose or not (or if it being on purpose excuses it) depends on how you think about the game but having this in our vocabulary is helpful in discussing it.
A lot of comments pro and con jrpgs. And I guess at this point everyone knows what they involve and if you don't like the progression awesome. For the people who enjoy them like myself combat could be seen as intrinsically valuable. If the kind combat isn't enjoyable don't play it. I hate shooters, everyone else seems to love them, I don't.
A bigger issue I have with this series is the false dichotomy between grinding systems being skinnarian and narrative elements aren't. If you are playing tons of unfun content just to get to the story... Guess what the reinforcer is... The story. Just because unpalatable to use the term skinnerbox, does not mean organisms even (Gasp!!!) people aren't guided by the positive and negative consequences of our actions. If you don't like describing game mechanics in those terms, that's great... Audiences don't like thinking in those terms. It's just disenguous to pull "skinner box" out as a boogey man when you find a set of mechanics unpalatable.
Goodbye, Allison! We wish you well in life and hope to see you again sometime!
As for the episode, this is the first you guys have put out that I feel should be shared with all gamers, not just those with an interest in game design, business and theory. I plan to share this with as many gamer friends as I possibly can!
The way of the Paladin:
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
See, the thing is, turn-based JRPG-style combat can be very fun. Otherwise people would never have fallen in love with older RPGs like the first Final Fantasies or Dragon Quest games which had negligible stories.
Aww Allison! That's sad news, but I hope all will be great in the end. I wish you the best of luck!
As for the episode...nice! I was already trying to judge in my mind my own statements, like "waiting turn after turn in Civ, I don't get much but if it means I get to move things again, I wait for it". It gives me a proper way of explaining why some games are on my Steam that I haven't wrapped up, and some I use all the time.
I suppose these intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are also a person-by-person case! For example, I have friends who are not big on FPS games. Yet, they play Half-Life and appreciate how well-made it all is. To them, the experience of shooting at aliens is not rewarding for them (but it is for me!) yet they enjoy the other "thrills" the game bring in (i.e.: the alien horrors and atmosphere the Black Mesa lab gives). They, on the other hand, love puzzle games and like the feeling of playing and the challenges they give. So in a way, we gravitate towards particular titles because of that search for "the rewards that work best for us".
A general feeling of discomfort already made me post here earlier with some momentary peeves In the meantime, others have put that fuzzy discomfort I felt into words far better than I could back then.
It really seems like the proposed distinction between "ex/intrinsic" becomes ever more blurred the deeper one digs into the matter. And by doing so, one keeps finding more and more counter-arguments for the postulates made in the clip...
I think the breaking moment is when you try to abstract from what you personally feel is intrinsic/extrinsic to reach general guidelines what designers should (or should not) do. The catch seems to be that this cannot be properly generalized because one mans meat is another mans poison. What one sees as a "gating mechanism" may be the actual appeal for another.
I am sorry, I'm a big fan of this show - but going by pure intellectual content, this is probably not your most solid episode.
I completely agree with everything you have said. It isn't often I have a beef with the EC crew, but this episode did seem a little bit like. "I don't find these kinds of things rewarding. Ergo they are not rewarding." Of course, that isn't the case, but it does come off like that a bit, at least to me. (Disclaimer: Operating on being awake for 48 hours now, so take that with a grain of salt..)
I spent countless hours of the course of seven years on and off again in the world of Lineage 2. For those of you unfamiliar, Lineage 2 is one of the most notorious grinding MMO's ever made. Especially back in the day, several content patches ago.On retail, getting to level 80 literally took months of grinding every single day, killing monsters made your xp bar go up by .001% at the later levels, and ever slower by the time you got to 80. There where no real quests, story, or anything, just the grind, and the community players created.
And I loved the hell out of every minute of it. All combat in games like these comes down to spamming buttons, but it is the beautiful graphics, wonderful spell animations that give a feeling of weight to a game, that make every attack seem worthwhile, and the PVP in the game was some of the greatest in the genre. (The only game to get the same rush in my opinion is Tera, but I digress, that's my own objective opinion)
The point I am trying to make (good or not.. I think I am rambling really badly right now..) is that grinding for some people is an intrinsic experience. Some people aren't doing it just for the gear, they do it because they love the animation, details, combos, and just the entire battle system. (Such as the materia system from ff7) I agree every game should try and make every moment engaging, but by the same token, not everything one person finds engaging will be engaging to another. Some people just don't like pokemon! Some of us, will forever love it, no matter how stupid the next generation is.
Trying to make a game where everything is engaging is impossible, simply because what is engaging is a completely subjective viewpoint and there will always be people who think a mechanic is uninteresting, where others love it. It is about knowing the kind of game you are trying to design, and the audience you are trying to reach to, and making the best system you can for that audience instead of worrying about people who just don't get your type of game. A FPS shouldn't look to appeal to those people who hate FPS's and the same is true of JRPGs to those who hate JRPGs.
Couldn't disagree more catluck. If a piece of gameplay or whole chunks of a game isn't intrinsically rewarding, then those parts are suboptimal for creating player enjoyment. Moreover, I believe there's even research out there which supports the idea of doing things for extrinsic rather than intrinsic rewards making a task less fun than it already is. It's been a few years since I read that though and I've had some troubles finding a link to it again.
Regardless, I don't think anyone can argue that external rewards are a good thing when used to get people to slog through something they hate to get to something they like. Even if they weigh the pain of performing the boring task as not so undesirable that they come out ahead in terms of enjoyment, designers should still strive to have every task be rewarding in and of itself, with rewards external to the task merely supplementing the enjoyment, rather than being the sole source of enjoyment.
Getting the player to do something because it's fun should be the goal. Not getting them to do something that isn't fun because there's a nice reward at the end.
I completely agree with everything you have said. It isn't often I have a beef with the EC crew, but this episode did seem a little bit like. "I don't find these kinds of things rewarding. Ergo they are not rewarding." Of course, that isn't the case, but it does come off like that a bit, at least to me. (Disclaimer: Operating on being awake for 48 hours now, so take that with a grain of salt..)
I spent countless hours of the course of seven years on and off again in the world of Lineage 2. For those of you unfamiliar, Lineage 2 is one of the most notorious grinding MMO's ever made. Especially back in the day, several content patches ago.On retail, getting to level 80 literally took months of grinding every single day, killing monsters made your xp bar go up by .001% at the later levels, and ever slower by the time you got to 80. There where no real quests, story, or anything, just the grind, and the community players created.
And I loved the hell out of every minute of it. All combat in games like these comes down to spamming buttons, but it is the beautiful graphics, wonderful spell animations that give a feeling of weight to a game, that make every attack seem worthwhile, and the PVP in the game was some of the greatest in the genre. (The only game to get the same rush in my opinion is Tera, but I digress, that's my own objective opinion)
The point I am trying to make (good or not.. I think I am rambling really badly right now..) is that grinding for some people is an intrinsic experience. Some people aren't doing it just for the gear, they do it because they love the animation, details, combos, and just the entire battle system. (Such as the materia system from ff7) I agree every game should try and make every moment engaging, but by the same token, not everything one person finds engaging will be engaging to another. Some people just don't like pokemon! Some of us, will forever love it, no matter how stupid the next generation is.
Trying to make a game where everything is engaging is impossible, simply because what is engaging is a completely subjective viewpoint and there will always be people who think a mechanic is uninteresting, where others love it. It is about knowing the kind of game you are trying to design, and the audience you are trying to reach to, and making the best system you can for that audience instead of worrying about people who just don't get your type of game. A FPS shouldn't look to appeal to those people who hate FPS's and the same is true of JRPGs to those who hate JRPGs.
Couldn't disagree more catluck. If a piece of gameplay or whole chunks of a game isn't intrinsically rewarding, then those parts are suboptimal for creating player enjoyment. Moreover, I believe there's even research out there which supports the idea of doing things for extrinsic rather than intrinsic rewards making a task less fun than it already is. It's been a few years since I read that though and I've had some troubles finding a link to it again.
Regardless, I don't think anyone can argue that external rewards are a good thing when used to get people to slog through something they hate to get to something they like. Even if they weigh the pain of performing the boring task as not so undesirable that they come out ahead in terms of enjoyment, designers should still strive to have every task be rewarding in and of itself, with rewards external to the task merely supplementing the enjoyment, rather than being the sole source of enjoyment.
Getting the player to do something because it's fun should be the goal. Not getting them to do something that isn't fun because there's a nice reward at the end.
Goodbye and hope to maybe see you soon and all the best with your job and I hope you enjoy it at least half as much as I have enjoyed the art and design of this compelling series.
And for all the times you have made me burst out laughing, including a spit take I did when sipping some water, to improve a few moments of my dreary days, THANK YOU.
Sometimes the two kind of rewards are working against each other: like in the Batman Arkham games: hand to hand fighting is a blast but when you're given points at the end of the melee it constanlty reminds you how much progress you wasted for the next upgrade; so it forces you to use unwanted techniques and gadgets to maximize the point gain removing, in this way, part of the fun from the fight itself.
Other poorly used mechanics are the collectables and achievements: games like Batman, Uncharted or Assassin's Credd slow you down from the wonderful gliding/climbing/parkouring to force you to hunt every square inch for collectable and secondary objects; many times also dropping in an unwanted enemy fight that drains all the fun from the previous activity.
The sad thing is that they get it right in the past: the riddles in Arkaham Asylum or the tomb raiding in Assassin's Creed 2 were simply wonderful: engaging side activities that also rewards you with story bits and "power". In they sequels they overused that mechanic: adding more and more stuff to the level thay they all feel bland and generic.
Sinthesys is an art: a good idea repeated for the nth time became a boring chore.
As much as I love you, your definitions are off. Intrinsic value means the thing in-and-of itself is worthwhile, while extrinsic means the thing is done for something else seen as worthwhile. Your definitions better fit diegetic and non-diegetic. That gives a clearer way to view things. e.g: I am bashing this orc because it is fun vs to get more story= intrinsic diegetic vs. extrinsic diegetic; I am playing this game to have fun vs. win money= intrinsic non-diegetic vs. extrinsic non-diegetic.
As much as I love you, your definitions are off. Intrinsic value means the thing in-and-of itself is worthwhile, while extrinsic means the thing is done for something else seen as worthwhile. Your definitions better fit diegetic and non-diegetic. That gives a clearer way to view things. e.g: I am bashing this orc because it is fun vs to get more story= intrinsic diegetic vs. extrinsic diegetic; I am playing this game to have fun vs. win money= intrinsic non-diegetic vs. extrinsic non-diegetic.
This is something I thought Guild Wars 2 did really well. They created the game and progression in such a way that players never have to spend too much time doing things that they don't want for external rewards. The game is built on getting the players to the content that the player is most interested in from the get go.
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I just wanna put it out that FF7's battles can be super engaging. I loved them and the last time I played it (about three years ago) I did in fact grind to fight. There was also the battle arena which was delightful. Materia management was interesting and engaging. There was enough dimensionality and options to wind up in interesting circumstances and do clever things.
I know they're not in fashion because they don't have combat maneuvering, but no shortage of people enjoyed the hell out of them.
That being said, I think that there is one catch, and that is pacing. There is a certain rhythm to experience that improves many experiences - spreading things out instead of putting them all in at once, making it so that you DO do the things in parallel rather than in series. Grinding to level 99, then beating the game is MUCH less fun than gaining levels -as- you progress through the game.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't make everything intrinsically fun, but that it can be dangerous to allow too much of one of your best things all at once, because it can make that thing less fun, and simultaneously make players get less interested in the game.
One thing that I think was very interesting about Chrono Cross was that you couldn't grind indefinitely - you had to move on to get better. This not only ensured that enemies were of the proper challenge level, but also helped to force you to continue moving through the game. While the mechanics of that game were pretty terrible (thanks to having far too large a cast) and the story was bad, this idea was not a bad one - in fact, I would say that its very good for a game to really urge you to keep moving through it throughout rather than spending long periods of time running around doing the same thing, even if that thing is intrinsically rewarding, because repetition, especially in a short period of time, can dull the feeling.
On the whole though, Tactics does exactly what they said. Keep you grinding for hours as they drip feed you the story, and as engaging as hell as their stories are, the rest of the game felt so demonstrably slow...oh sure stuff like the ability and job systems were creative and fun to do for a while, but once that novelty wears off, it's not as engaging anymore.
I know a lot of people love those games, but I couldn't get into them as much. I couldn't appreciate the story when 99% of my time was being taken up by slow paced turn by turn sequences that, when you really think about it, aren't even that fun to watch.
Anyway I think the video is selling extrinsic rewards a bit short. There are plenty of people who love totally free-form games like minecraft or simcity, but there aren't that many successful ones, and I for one can't really stay occupied with them for long. I'd much rather have some kind of specific challenge or goal to work towards, even if that's as simple as getting to the next doom or sonic level. More freeform games like Oblivion dried up for me once the quests ran out.
One thing that's always been going for leveling in RPGs is that steady progress towards those extrinsic rewards can *itself* become more intrinsic. For example watching the XP/skill bars slide up as you kill stuff can become cool because you know what happens once that bar fills. However the payoff isn't just when the bar fills, but to a degree it also becomes a part of the actions you do to fill the bars. This kind of structure also applies to moving through the arc of beginning, middle, and end of a story, quest, or zone, working down a bosses' health bar, and so on. I mean the only reason your attacks even do anything on a boss is because you are making his bar shrink, and you know once the bar runs out, you "win."
I'd agree if you aren't enjoying the game you are playing right now then you should probably stop. But even so, longer-term rewards (here labled as "extrinsic") can have a very important place in terms of your immediate enjoyment. I personally get bored a lot faster with games that don't have long-term goals, and I suspect alot of people who do enjoy such games do so because they set their own long-term goals (i.e. making some cool huge building.) Without such goals there's not much room for gaining a sense of significant accomplishment, which is worth pondering over since so many games are based on dangling the "win" to get players to overcome challenges.
In WoW I was in a fairly active guild that did a ton of recruiting. We went from 20 or so to 150 or so active players. I was in near the start and did my fair share of recruiting. One guy I recruited loved playing the AH. He would simply sit in Ironforge and record anything for sale, then when he heard someone was looking for an item, if he had a source he'd buy it and then resell it. He was making all sorts of crazy cash. In fact he would only come questing when we asked him to.
Now a few were critical of what he did and how he played the game, but he really enjoyed the economic side of the game. I'm sure if they ever released a MMO that was based on wall street he'd be in heaven. To me it was fine because he could find enjoyment to that aspect of the game, then why was it a big deal.
I've played almost every FF game and combat was mostly a lot of fun, till near the end where I just wanted to skip the random encounters so I could go demolish the end boss. For me there was a lot of depth in turn based combat. A gamer friend of mine hated FF and love games like The Legend of Zelda. He found turn based didn't give him the adrenalin rush that real time did.
So I guess to sum it up. It's really hard to pin down what's only intrinsic and what's pretty much extrinsic because it's often a matter of taste. If it wasn't no one would be buying games like Train Simulator, Farm Simulator or other niche market games.
I honestly never would have thought that monetization schemes would start to force more coherent exploration of positive game play, but there you are.
To bookend FF7 in its own franchise, it followed a title that suffered, more than anything else, from weak late-game content. FF6 let the player almost completely off the rails in its second half, but the plot and the combat did not support that decision gracefully (though it fared better than a couple of the earlier Famicom FFs). Each of its characters got exactly one brief, self-encapsulated vignette for character growth and never spoke another line until the final battle. The enemies basically came in two badly-signposted difficulty tiers; the game's challenge vanished after the player managed to bash their way through any one of the "harder" areas, because everything else was either of a similar difficulty, or laughably easy. So, FF7 had those challenges to meet as well: carry the plot and provide challenges through to the end.
FF7 mostly met those challenges. The battles *felt* intense, partly because of a very solid soundtrack (probably the element that stands up best today); partly because flashy, overly-dramatic, too-long attack animations still had a wow-factor for period gamers; partly because we didn't immediately grasp the polygon-junk nature of the battle graphics. Also, between limit breaks and Materia, the game melded character uniqueness and high customizability in a way that didn't exist in previous FF titles. Synergy between linked Materia was icing on the cake -- "You mean, if I level up two things and then put them together, they become more than the sum of their parts? Amazing!" The game also offered multiple endgame challenges (though admittedly, the only way to take them on without comprehensive game knowledge was to grind, grind, grind),
The plot continued on each disk, with the characters periodically chiming in and *seeming* to do a bit more than just play cards back on the airship. Moreover, the pacing was reasonably strong. The Cloud on Motorcycle sequence sold an awful lot of copies despite only being one tiny part of the game, but honestly, I don't think people really minded it being a one-shot interactive cutscene -- it did its job, keeping people hooked for a somewhat-necessary exposition block as the players left the starting area, and the players got a whole new (3d!) world to explore afterwards.
To complete the bookending, FF7's successor FF8 represented a step backwards in a lot of ways. The graphics stepped solidly up to PSX standards...and that's essentially all it had going for it. It took FF7's grind factor and minigame madness and cranked them up to 11, adding the Draw command and Triple Triad. Without going into detail, both were phenomenally grindy mechanisms that nevertheless were the best way to improve the characters, and neither one advanced the central RPG aesthetic of "kill stuff, get stronger, destroy big evil." Additionally, it still featured stupidly long attack animations, unskippable cutscenes, janky characters, and a badly-executed existential-crisis plot, which all served to amplify the game's core deficiencies.
Ultimately, yes, FF7 was a prototypical grindy jRPG, and it does deserve the slams it gets. Nevertheless, I'd argue that, taken as a period piece, it represents one high point for that design model -- it synthesized a lot of what earlier games had done right, and wrapped it in a relatively cohesive package. People didn't start quitting RPGs because of FF7. Rather, its immediate sequel FF8 was, historically, a game that highlighted the intrinsic/extrinsic problem for many more players. FF7 actually brought many new players into RPGs; in turn, FF8 showed many of those same players just how un-fun RPG mechanics tied to clumsy plot development could be. That failure put a lot more pressure on later sequels, along with RPGs in general. Players became capable of recognizing the "twisty tunnel of grind" factor in FF10 in spite of its other relative merits, and widely panned and canned FF13 for the same. Developers may or may not learn their lessons, but players...sometimes can.
If I understood right, you use the question "Am I doing this activity because I -want- to do exactly this right now - or do I just do it for the sake of something else I get later?" for doing this. The root of that question is just the ever-present question of any game designer/player: "Is this fun? / Am I having fun with the activity I am doing right now?".
And no doubt, if the answer is a clear "no I don't, this is boring" then yes, it's certainly extrinsic. And on top of that, it's the kind of extrinsic any good designer should avoid.
But then again, almost all game activities are a -mix- of "immediately rewarding" and "long-term-rewarding". Even grinding in MMOs does have fun parts beyond the mere skinnerbox. Cleaving basilisks in half is satisfying, even without any xp-meter ticking somewhere in the background.
So, isn't the question rather "How MANY repetitions of mechanic X do I dare to ask the player to perform before it gets menial rather than fun?"
Also, I disagree with the idea that the perfect game has no extrinsic parts. If everything is purely intrinsic, i.e. focused on the current activity, then that implies that the game has no long-term rewards. Even Super Mario has coin high scores. Which are, by your count, an extrinsic reward element.
I don't know where you'd put skill refinement into this system though. It's very extrinsic in the sense that you want to eventually improve to a certain point, but often the small moment-to-moment improvements or your current level of refinement give back some intrinsic rewards as well. Take any Sonic game. The objective is to be faster, but in the moment pulling off a clever move to shave off time feels great too. If you couldn't go faster you may not be able to justify playing the level in the first place. But if the moment to moment improvements weren't there, you wouldn't stick with it to achieve this either.
Basically you guys wanted to say people do stuff that they don't find fun by itself because they allow them to get to do something else that they find fun (repetitive grinding to look cool or cope with a boring battle system to see the story unfold)
This is the idea of chained contingencies.
The problem lies within the fact different people find different things fun and this changes the effect of each game element.
Example "I like building characters but hate grinding" and "A friend of mine likes to get the maximum strength the game offers but doesn't care so much about strategy diversity".
A funny thing to compare this to is the famous "Let's Play" series/website - some games are more fun to watch than to play.
I appreciate you are playing "Devil's Advocate" here but i ENJOYED grinding on Final Fantasy VII, VIII and X, however, I didn't on XIII. I think it's because it felt like it was "restricted by invisible rails" and the story didn't grab me; a bit like if you rocked back and forward on a roller-coaster for a bit, and not an a particularly enjoyable one at that.
The other games had compelling enough stories/openings that sucked you into the world, introduced you to the plot, characters and game mechanics then let you go off and grind for a while, explore the map or just continue the story. You could just play the story through, and level enough to make it through, or you could decide you wanted all characters to have master materia and play for 100+ hours like an old bud of mine. I liked seeing what I could steal from enemies, and learning all the enemy skills.
Initially he wanted to get his Cloud to be as badarse as Sephiroth was in the back-story you got to play, then he set more and more challenges that were really outside of advancing the plot.
So for sure, I like games like Minecraft which give you a choice to play in the way you enjoy the most. You can explore dungeons, build communities, play solo, and write your own narrative.
Same with career mode on Sports games, on Fifa 13, I COULD have the best team in the world by purely "playing to win" , taking the most "efficient players" based on website analysis, and using AI exploits but I prefer to restrict myself a little in order to get a more realistic sports experience, the wins feel more satisfying to me.
Equally, I don't enjoy Drake's Fortune and I've held off the latest Tomb Raider because being forced through that roller-coaster that relies on the plot/graphics/cool set pieces to keep you pulled in never really piques my interest.
You can't write your own narrative or enjoy the game mechanics in your own way, you just sit along for the ride and that's it.
Imagine X-Com without the resource management? It's the building your base and squad, then using the battle mechanics to try out your decisions that make it good, NOT the actual battle mechanics (which I found to be a little flawed). If the game was just a set of pre-scripted battles, it would be pants in my humble opinion.
Seeing that new plasma rifle and heavy armour you chose to put your research time into toast an alien? That's satisfying.
A bit off topic, but whenever I tell people I couldn't make it further than an hour into FF7 because of the gameplay and graphics, people assume it's because I don't appreciate the older technology. But it's not just a matter of me saying "FF7's Graphics Sucked". They actually made my eyes hurt, and it was because of a design decision. Keep in mind that Ocarina of Time came out one year later, and in my opinion looked WAY better. Heck, Super Metroid looked better. Again, my opinion. But it's similar to why WoW's graphics look better than Lord of the Rings Online. LotRO tries (and fails) at photo-realism, so it looks fine in stillshots but when animated it becomes choppy and clippy. WoW is more cartoony, but also more fluid and aesthetically appealing. I don't mind the polygons in FF7, but watching those polygons walk around on an attempt at photorealism in the background is jarring.
As far as gameplay goes, I don't really like ATB at all, and you can't blame the time period because, again, games like Ocarina of Time managed to have really engaging combat even when the story was the main focus. I played all the way through FF9 because the story engaged me so much, but it became a matter of suffering through grueling combat to get to the story. I still think the game was worth it because the story was that good, but a more functional and interesting combat system (the only JRPG I've found with one is the Suikoden series) would have made it a lot better.
I do think ideally, games would have both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. I've gotten over my need to grind through content I don't enjoy to be drip-fed rewards like I used to do. But I also have a hard time continuing with a game that has no sense of progress, no matter how much I like the combat. I loved the game feel of The Force Unleashed, but by the third level, I just felt like I had been doing the same thing over and over. I didn't get any new abilities, there weren't any setpieces to break up the combat, and the story didn't interest me very much. In Mario Galaxy, I didn't keep playing because I wanted more stars, I played because I loved the game. But it still always felt great to be unlocking new areas all the time--I never felt gated off but I still felt like I was being rewarded. Plus the first one had the best 120-star-reward ever...
At the moment I enjoy playing WoW and GW2. I tried Rift, but it wasn't satisfying. The game mechanics didn't work and the 'grind' in it was too obvious. I felt like I could be doing something more useful and enjoyable.
If I want to eat away at the hours, I play Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 and design. It eats a lot of hours. And at the end of it I have progress and work I can publish on the web to share.
I think it's important to play many games at once, so things stay fresh. But also so you have a game for any of your moods. Playing a grind game when frustrated and agitated and stressed might not be enjoyable. I don't know under what circumstances playing a MOBA is a good idea.
But that's about it. Any other type of game falls into the extrinsic category. Even if I am not grinding for levels or something, I am still just working my way through the game, simply for the sake of completing the game as a whole.
And then there is the possibility that a game can be both intrinsicly and extrsinicly rewarding. I currently play Mechwarrior Online. The game is played in quick matches that usually last between 5 and 15 minutes. Those are fun or frustrating for the sake of the moment, like Street Fighter. However, each match I play earns me money or experience that I am able to spend in different ways for future battles. So, while I am inside a match, I am playing for the intrinsic reward, but what drives me to play more and more matches is often a need to obtain more money and exp.
And man, I often praise KH overall. The game did so much right. The gameplay and the story/characters and worlds. I love it. Prolly one of the best series from SE ever tbh.
Perhaps that just means you're playing the "wrong" games then? As an example, I've not played MWO (yet!) but up until a few months ago (when my free time was diminished greatly) I sank many, many hours into Tribes: Ascend. It's one of the few F2P games I've spent much time on, and the only one I've spent money on. IMO they nail the problem of intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards, by realising that it's a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other, you can just ramp up both! Moment to moment, I love the gameplay. The feeling of jetpacking around a map and the skill required to actually hit someone, especially in midair, is phenomenal. But that's also backed up with XP and unlockables. I played it for the moment-to-moment exhilaration, and I also played it to unlock more things to further enhance my future play.
In general, I've always very quickly recognised when a game is only offering extrinsic rewards and I just don't bother with those games. I've never liked MMORPGs, I've never liked JRPGs, I've never liked anything where the mechanic itself doesn't engage me. And I play loads of games, so there must be plenty of games out there doing it right!
Like, it's super fun to watch the battle of wits from The Princess Bride. Sometimes I'll watch that scene without watching the rest of the movie. It's fun without me being invested in the rest of the story. The scene is intrinsic as well as engaging me in the movie all on it's own. Now, there's a 10 seconds or so sequence of Princess Buttercup riding a horse to escape from her confined life. It's not a bad scene but it's communicating an idea for the sake of the rest of the story and it's short and not bad.
Now, let's compare, say, the money earning mini-games in the first No More Heroes game. They take up a lot more time in the experience and aren't really that engaging all on their own. If you think that's on purpose or not (or if it being on purpose excuses it) depends on how you think about the game but having this in our vocabulary is helpful in discussing it.
A bigger issue I have with this series is the false dichotomy between grinding systems being skinnarian and narrative elements aren't. If you are playing tons of unfun content just to get to the story... Guess what the reinforcer is... The story. Just because unpalatable to use the term skinnerbox, does not mean organisms even (Gasp!!!) people aren't guided by the positive and negative consequences of our actions. If you don't like describing game mechanics in those terms, that's great... Audiences don't like thinking in those terms. It's just disenguous to pull "skinner box" out as a boogey man when you find a set of mechanics unpalatable.
As for the episode, this is the first you guys have put out that I feel should be shared with all gamers, not just those with an interest in game design, business and theory. I plan to share this with as many gamer friends as I possibly can!
To Seek,
To Learn,
To Do.
-QFG2
If the speed of light is faster then the speed of sound, is that why people always appear bright until they speak? o_O
As for the episode...nice! I was already trying to judge in my mind my own statements, like "waiting turn after turn in Civ, I don't get much but if it means I get to move things again, I wait for it". It gives me a proper way of explaining why some games are on my Steam that I haven't wrapped up, and some I use all the time.
I suppose these intrinsic and extrinsic rewards are also a person-by-person case! For example, I have friends who are not big on FPS games. Yet, they play Half-Life and appreciate how well-made it all is. To them, the experience of shooting at aliens is not rewarding for them (but it is for me!) yet they enjoy the other "thrills" the game bring in (i.e.: the alien horrors and atmosphere the Black Mesa lab gives). They, on the other hand, love puzzle games and like the feeling of playing and the challenges they give. So in a way, we gravitate towards particular titles because of that search for "the rewards that work best for us".
It really seems like the proposed distinction between "ex/intrinsic" becomes ever more blurred the deeper one digs into the matter. And by doing so, one keeps finding more and more counter-arguments for the postulates made in the clip...
I think the breaking moment is when you try to abstract from what you personally feel is intrinsic/extrinsic to reach general guidelines what designers should (or should not) do. The catch seems to be that this cannot be properly generalized because one mans meat is another mans poison. What one sees as a "gating mechanism" may be the actual appeal for another.
I am sorry, I'm a big fan of this show - but going by pure intellectual content, this is probably not your most solid episode.
I completely agree with everything you have said. It isn't often I have a beef with the EC crew, but this episode did seem a little bit like. "I don't find these kinds of things rewarding. Ergo they are not rewarding." Of course, that isn't the case, but it does come off like that a bit, at least to me. (Disclaimer: Operating on being awake for 48 hours now, so take that with a grain of salt..)
I spent countless hours of the course of seven years on and off again in the world of Lineage 2. For those of you unfamiliar, Lineage 2 is one of the most notorious grinding MMO's ever made. Especially back in the day, several content patches ago.On retail, getting to level 80 literally took months of grinding every single day, killing monsters made your xp bar go up by .001% at the later levels, and ever slower by the time you got to 80. There where no real quests, story, or anything, just the grind, and the community players created.
And I loved the hell out of every minute of it. All combat in games like these comes down to spamming buttons, but it is the beautiful graphics, wonderful spell animations that give a feeling of weight to a game, that make every attack seem worthwhile, and the PVP in the game was some of the greatest in the genre. (The only game to get the same rush in my opinion is Tera, but I digress, that's my own objective opinion)
The point I am trying to make (good or not.. I think I am rambling really badly right now..) is that grinding for some people is an intrinsic experience. Some people aren't doing it just for the gear, they do it because they love the animation, details, combos, and just the entire battle system. (Such as the materia system from ff7) I agree every game should try and make every moment engaging, but by the same token, not everything one person finds engaging will be engaging to another. Some people just don't like pokemon! Some of us, will forever love it, no matter how stupid the next generation is.
Trying to make a game where everything is engaging is impossible, simply because what is engaging is a completely subjective viewpoint and there will always be people who think a mechanic is uninteresting, where others love it. It is about knowing the kind of game you are trying to design, and the audience you are trying to reach to, and making the best system you can for that audience instead of worrying about people who just don't get your type of game. A FPS shouldn't look to appeal to those people who hate FPS's and the same is true of JRPGs to those who hate JRPGs.
Regardless, I don't think anyone can argue that external rewards are a good thing when used to get people to slog through something they hate to get to something they like. Even if they weigh the pain of performing the boring task as not so undesirable that they come out ahead in terms of enjoyment, designers should still strive to have every task be rewarding in and of itself, with rewards external to the task merely supplementing the enjoyment, rather than being the sole source of enjoyment.
Getting the player to do something because it's fun should be the goal. Not getting them to do something that isn't fun because there's a nice reward at the end.
I completely agree with everything you have said. It isn't often I have a beef with the EC crew, but this episode did seem a little bit like. "I don't find these kinds of things rewarding. Ergo they are not rewarding." Of course, that isn't the case, but it does come off like that a bit, at least to me. (Disclaimer: Operating on being awake for 48 hours now, so take that with a grain of salt..)
I spent countless hours of the course of seven years on and off again in the world of Lineage 2. For those of you unfamiliar, Lineage 2 is one of the most notorious grinding MMO's ever made. Especially back in the day, several content patches ago.On retail, getting to level 80 literally took months of grinding every single day, killing monsters made your xp bar go up by .001% at the later levels, and ever slower by the time you got to 80. There where no real quests, story, or anything, just the grind, and the community players created.
And I loved the hell out of every minute of it. All combat in games like these comes down to spamming buttons, but it is the beautiful graphics, wonderful spell animations that give a feeling of weight to a game, that make every attack seem worthwhile, and the PVP in the game was some of the greatest in the genre. (The only game to get the same rush in my opinion is Tera, but I digress, that's my own objective opinion)
The point I am trying to make (good or not.. I think I am rambling really badly right now..) is that grinding for some people is an intrinsic experience. Some people aren't doing it just for the gear, they do it because they love the animation, details, combos, and just the entire battle system. (Such as the materia system from ff7) I agree every game should try and make every moment engaging, but by the same token, not everything one person finds engaging will be engaging to another. Some people just don't like pokemon! Some of us, will forever love it, no matter how stupid the next generation is.
Trying to make a game where everything is engaging is impossible, simply because what is engaging is a completely subjective viewpoint and there will always be people who think a mechanic is uninteresting, where others love it. It is about knowing the kind of game you are trying to design, and the audience you are trying to reach to, and making the best system you can for that audience instead of worrying about people who just don't get your type of game. A FPS shouldn't look to appeal to those people who hate FPS's and the same is true of JRPGs to those who hate JRPGs.
Regardless, I don't think anyone can argue that external rewards are a good thing when used to get people to slog through something they hate to get to something they like. Even if they weigh the pain of performing the boring task as not so undesirable that they come out ahead in terms of enjoyment, designers should still strive to have every task be rewarding in and of itself, with rewards external to the task merely supplementing the enjoyment, rather than being the sole source of enjoyment.
Getting the player to do something because it's fun should be the goal. Not getting them to do something that isn't fun because there's a nice reward at the end.
And for all the times you have made me burst out laughing, including a spit take I did when sipping some water, to improve a few moments of my dreary days, THANK YOU.
Other poorly used mechanics are the collectables and achievements: games like Batman, Uncharted or Assassin's Credd slow you down from the wonderful gliding/climbing/parkouring to force you to hunt every square inch for collectable and secondary objects; many times also dropping in an unwanted enemy fight that drains all the fun from the previous activity.
The sad thing is that they get it right in the past: the riddles in Arkaham Asylum or the tomb raiding in Assassin's Creed 2 were simply wonderful: engaging side activities that also rewards you with story bits and "power". In they sequels they overused that mechanic: adding more and more stuff to the level thay they all feel bland and generic.
Sinthesys is an art: a good idea repeated for the nth time became a boring chore.
PS. We shall miss you dearly Allison
PS. We shall miss you dearly Allison