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FFXIV now with more WoW and Aion?Follow

#77 Jan 15 2013 at 10:38 AM Rating: Excellent
I've been hanging around the Internet since I was 17.

It's pretty hard to offend me. (A certain poster I'm not allowed to mention managed to do it, but then again he offended so many people he got banned from ZAM, so I'm not alone in that regard.)
#78 Jan 15 2013 at 10:56 AM Rating: Decent
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I'm not even a booby man myself. But with all the attention this subject is drawing made my curious eyebrow raise.

*Imagines some random men's magazine showcasing melons and other sweet fruits.*

Edited, Jan 15th 2013 11:56am by sandpark
#79 Jan 15 2013 at 12:52 PM Rating: Excellent
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This is like memory lane... First le' boobs, then "the one who shall not be named". If drunk milich enters the thread now it would be complete.

#80 Jan 16 2013 at 12:50 AM Rating: Good
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sandpark wrote:
I'm not even a booby man myself.

This offends me. Wint, can we get a mute here please?

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Its personal preference and all, but yes we need to educate WoW players that this is OUR game, these are Characters and not Toons. Time to beat that into them one at a time.
#81 Jan 16 2013 at 7:00 AM Rating: Excellent
FilthMcNasty wrote:
sandpark wrote:
I'm not even a booby man myself.

This offends me. Wint, can we get a mute here please?



Sure, how long do you want to be muted Filth? Smiley: grin
#82 Jan 16 2013 at 9:45 AM Rating: Excellent
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You know Wint, for the longest time I thought your avatar was Yoda in a Dracula cape Smiley: dubious
#83 Jan 16 2013 at 9:52 AM Rating: Excellent
Balance, Star Wars style Smiley: thumbsup
#84 Jan 16 2013 at 10:57 AM Rating: Excellent
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crasyk wrote:
You know Wint, for the longest time I thought your avatar was Yoda in a Dracula cape Smiley: dubious


Cannot be unseen. Smiley: frown

Ugh, and that makes for what is perhaps the worst accent match-up I've ever heard. "Vant to suck yoor bloot, I do. Toorn into a bat, I vill."
#85REDACTED, Posted: Jan 16 2013 at 7:23 PM, Rating: Sub-Default, (Expand Post) Genius.
#86 Jan 16 2013 at 10:04 PM Rating: Good
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Ishihara wrote:
If your so fvckin BUSY, go out and get your **** done before [complaining] about how someones hobby takes time and doesn't suit your chosen lifestyle


I have to agree with the sentiment here (if not the rather puerile articulation). I do wish that more people would consider the plethora of high-profile, casual-oriented, fantasy-themed MMORPGs that currently exist before acting as though it would be a terrible thing for one to require a more than 60 minutes of dedication on weekends to make significant progress.

Moreover, it is worth pointing out that a game's lifespan is in a strong way determined by the amount of time it takes to complete things (and how many things there to do, of course). We see how common it is for a game like KotOR to draw people in with promise of groundbreaking and engaging content, and then how quickly those same people leave once they've completed all of said content in 2-3 months. While a time-sink may seem like only an inconvenience to some, it can also play the vital role of elevating player investment and long-term retention. They should be done in moderation, not done away with.
#87 Jan 16 2013 at 11:09 PM Rating: Decent
KaneKitty wrote:
Ishihara wrote:
If your so fvckin BUSY, go out and get your **** done before [complaining] about how someones hobby takes time and doesn't suit your chosen lifestyle


I have to agree with the sentiment here (if not the rather puerile articulation). I do wish that more people would consider the plethora of high-profile, casual-oriented, fantasy-themed MMORPGs that currently exist before acting as though it would be a terrible thing for one to require a more than 60 minutes of dedication on weekends to make significant progress.

Moreover, it is worth pointing out that a game's lifespan is in a strong way determined by the amount of time it takes to complete things (and how many things there to do, of course). We see how common it is for a game like KotOR to draw people in with promise of groundbreaking and engaging content, and then how quickly those same people leave once they've completed all of said content in 2-3 months. While a time-sink may seem like only an inconvenience to some, it can also play the vital role of elevating player investment and long-term retention. They should be done in moderation, not done away with.


Alotta what KaneKitty said, minus any possibility of over moderation... were the quickies should be the plenty, and journeys be plentiful :D and the min focus

Quote:
(if not the rather puerile articulation)


Id say my response was more of a reply that matched the OP's intensity... but if pompously offending someone you agree with is your way, good luck with that.


Edited, Jan 17th 2013 12:25am by Ishihara
#88 Jan 16 2013 at 11:34 PM Rating: Excellent
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Just for the record here people, if you are going to report a 47 paragraph post, please include what lines specificly caught your ire.

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also, **** filters to, well, that so you really don't need to break the filter for that one ok? don't break the filter in here anyways. It annoys admins.
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#89 Jan 17 2013 at 2:05 AM Rating: Excellent
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People actually report posts other than spam? Too many years in the Asylum have hardened me, it seems. I usually don't even bother to rate down anymore.
#90 Jan 17 2013 at 2:20 AM Rating: Decent
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Re: timesinks. (Psychobabble engaged. You are warned.) Extrinsic motivators are what make games work; they are what distinguish games from play. They depend upon the player's ability to delay gratification to achieve the goals that they set around these extrinsic motivators. In an ideal game, everything that happens between reaching these goals is fun--never boring. That's the intrinsic motivation part, which actually makes it fun, and sets it apart from work. (It's also why some people actually enjoy their work to the extent that it becomes play, and some people dislike certain kinds of play to the extent that they become work.) It's a lofty goal for something to be intrinsically motivating for such a very long period of time, 100% of the time. Practically impossible due to the pratfalls of life, but not theoretically impossible.

A game obviously doesn't have to be fun 100% of the time to be good, so timesinks can be acceptable. But the calculus that needs to happen and never does is an assessment of roughly how much intrinsic motivation (play meat) is on the game's bones. The more there is, the more frequently and quickly players can be rewarded for their play (with progression... gear, levels, etc.). Older games like FFXI and WoW have tons of meat on the bone in terms of content (though the quality of the content counts, too), and could easily afford to be more giving of rewards, though they both have significant problems with their reward distribution and the way they incentivize the content. GW2 was an example of a newer game that gave these out too quickly and didn't incentivize the content enough (by using generic rewards instead of content-specific rewards).

So as a generality, timesinks are bad. Essential at times, but bad. However, that doesn't mean that a game never benefits from making things take longer. A timesink isn't just something that developers do to stretch out the content... things like gear upgrades and leveling are necessities of progression-oriented content (they're staples of the RPG), and faster is not always funner. Timesinks generally refer to the tipping point at which the designers have overshot the amount by which players have to delay gratification to reach their goals... when they have well past the point where playing the game was fun, and now are solely working at it.
#91 Jan 17 2013 at 10:05 AM Rating: Decent
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The key to anything in game design or life in general is moderation. We each have our own pain to pleasure threshold. Most people fear the pain, alot of people indulge in the pleasure, a small amount of people indulge in the pain. Often pain or pleasure is in the eyes of the beholder. One man's milk & honey is another man's ******** A static dose of either extreme desyntesizes you over time. Your tolerance or intolerance may rise or fall but we become desyntesized when exposed to an extreme nonetheless. Peaks and valleys make everything we do more exciting and rewarding.

Wait a second, if everything is done in moderation, everything will be lukewarm? Lukewarm is boring and uninspiring. It doesn't make me commit to anything, it doesn't make me commit to love or hate something. Therefore, I do not feel engaged or invested. There needs to be tastes of extremity to stoke the embers of the heart. Lukewarm is mainstream, it is played by many. But to achieve that mainstream, alot of the content gets watered down. Lukewarm will be received well but will rarely shock & awe.

Designing content should not be watered down. I'll use this example regarding timesinks. Alot of people play the lotto. Few win and most lose. The winners feel like the luckiest people on earth. The losers might or might not keep playing. But over time they lose faith, heart, they lose investment. If there were a way to make everyone a winner, no matter how long that took. Hell, if there were a foolproof, tangible way to get rich through hard work. EVERYONE would do it, they would feel invested & energised regardless of the time spent. There are no guarantees in the real world, but in a game anything is possible.

Just avoid the obvious timesinks. What is an obvious timesinks? Anything that has nothing to do with in game time cycles that causes one to wait or repeat something monotonously during advancement. That's my opinion anyways lol.
#92 Jan 17 2013 at 10:52 AM Rating: Excellent
I think time sinks are fine as long as certain features are included:
- The amount of work is discretely quantified (e.g. kill 50 spiders on Firesday). No vague progress bars.
- The quantity done and remaining is properly tracked, and visible (so in XI, WSNM trials were quantified but not visibly tracked, leading to a feeling of frustration)
- The amount of time needed to complete the task can be estimated (if I can kill one every two minutes, I will be done in about two hours, including potty breaks)
- The reward matches the amount of time spent (killing 500 monsters for a minor upgrade is unreasonable)
- Portions of time sinks that involve other people require less repetition than portions that can be done solo
- The time sink can either be done any time, or can be scheduled for a specific time (Weather trials in XI are the worst! Day trials are less painful.)
- The quest is not a bottleneck for further progression in the game (time sinks for limit breaks or to access new areas are unfair, but fine for performance upgrades)
- The time sink is repeatable with different options depending on choices made

In other words, people don't mind time sinks as much as they know what they've done, where they're going, and what they're getting out of it in the end - whether that's the next level or a new piece of gear. My current goal in XI is level 99 Gjallarhorn. I need to buy 5 Umbral Marrows. For that, I know I need around 70 million gil. For someone who has never had more than 9 million gil at once that's a tough goal. But since it's quantifiable, I can work toward it - I've already earned my first million gil in the last week.
#93 Jan 17 2013 at 11:04 AM Rating: Good
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Right, so at that rate it will only take you a little over a year of working towards that and not much else Smiley: lol

Timesinks frequently fail to deter players from setting goals as much as they deter them from actually achieving them. And any time your players set a goal that they have to give up on, the odds of them quitting altogether have risen significantly.

Carrots are supposed to keep horses running. Some games treat their carrots like they're made of gold, or as if they fear their horse won't want carrots anymore if they give them out more than once a week. Actually, carrots are cheap as hell and horses can't eat enough of them.

XI is one such game with lots of land to cover and a stingy rider.
#94 Jan 17 2013 at 11:26 AM Rating: Excellent
Well, I could speed up the process considerably by joining an HNM that regularly does Arch Dynamis lord runs and spending all my DKP points on Umbral Marrows. I'd be done in a few months then. (Damn graduate school!) Or logging in for more than a few hours every other day. Smiley: lol (Damn graduate school and work!)
#95 Jan 17 2013 at 11:36 AM Rating: Excellent
Kachi wrote:
Right, so at that rate it will only take you a little over a year of working towards that and not much else Smiley: lol

Timesinks frequently fail to deter players from setting goals as much as they deter them from actually achieving them. And any time your players set a goal that they have to give up on, the odds of them quitting altogether have risen significantly.

Carrots are supposed to keep horses running. Some games treat their carrots like they're made of gold, or as if they fear their horse won't want carrots anymore if they give them out more than once a week. Actually, carrots are cheap as hell and horses can't eat enough of them.

XI is one such game with lots of land to cover and a stingy rider.


I knew a Lu Shang, at optimal conditions, would still take me months. Ended up taking me years, but at the same time was at times the ONLY reason I was playing the game. Did what they wanted it to didn't it?
#96 Jan 17 2013 at 12:00 PM Rating: Excellent
Both the Level 99 horn and the Lu Shang's rod are the "ultimates" of their gear classes, though. Level 95 horn already puts me in the top 1% of bards - Level 99 horn will put me in the top dozen or so across all servers, especially once it's matched with Dharp (which I'm also picking away at.... slowly. I'm on 75 Souls right now and it sucks.)

I'm hoping that by the time I have 70 million gil saved up, the price of Umbral Marrows will have dropped down considerably. I might get lucky!
#97 Jan 17 2013 at 12:02 PM Rating: Good
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Kachi wrote:
Carrots are supposed to keep horses running. Some games treat their carrots like they're made of gold, or as if they fear their horse won't want carrots anymore if they give them out more than once a week. Actually, carrots are cheap as hell and horses can't eat enough of them.


Do you really think that there's no saturation point at which incremental gear upgrades become less appealing? For me, at least, I know that WoW did a great job at devaluing my motivation for gear; it felt as though there were about fifty armour sets from which to choose, and the ones that weren't palette-swaps gave the equivalent of AGI+346 instead of AGI+325; when questing, I had so many new, best pieces of equipment that I'd sometimes miss equipping one until I'd out-leveled it!

To continue the metaphor, I had a truckload of carrots dumped on top of me, and there came a point where I didn't clap my giddy little hands (hooves?) and cry, "Oh, boy! :D" every time I turned around and picked up another one from the pile.
#98 Jan 17 2013 at 12:03 PM Rating: Excellent
catwho wrote:
Both the Level 99 horn and the Lu Shang's rod are the "ultimates" of their gear classes, though. Level 95 horn already puts me in the top 1% of bards - Level 99 horn will put me in the top dozen or so across all servers, especially once it's matched with Dharp (which I'm also picking away at.... slowly. I'm on 75 Souls right now and it sucks.)

I'm hoping that by the time I have 70 million gil saved up, the price of Umbral Marrows will have dropped down considerably. I might get lucky!


While not the ultimate, the Lu was one of the hardest things I've gotten in the game. The Ebisu was no picnic either, but comparatively I got it in no time at all Smiley: nod
#99 Jan 17 2013 at 12:22 PM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
While a time-sink may seem like only an inconvenience to some, it can also play the vital role of elevating player investment and long-term retention. They should be done in moderation, not done away with.


I prefer activities that are fun enough to make me forget how much time I sunk into them.
#100 Jan 17 2013 at 12:23 PM Rating: Decent
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Which is to say: you guys are approaching the issue from the wrong angle.
#101 Jan 17 2013 at 12:25 PM Rating: Excellent
Relaxing is good too, though. I've always liked to zen out, put on some good music, have a drink, and just repeat the same thing for a few hours - provided there is very little stress involved in the activity. It's why I enjoyed healing on RDM in bird parties so much in XI. I'd get into my pattern of cycles and just chill. Conversely, pulling on BRD was repetitive with a lot of stress, and I hated it.

I finally have an almost stress free farming method in XI, and I'm going to milk it until I have enough money to upgrade my horn. Smiley: grin
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