Comment by tedks | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tedks | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

It's important to note that while MMO's don't explicitly incentivize exploration, some of the memories my friends most enjoyed in WoW were glitching underneath Stormwind, into unimplemented areas in raids, all over the place. MMO's are social games, and even if they don't explicitly give you a token for having fun with your friends, saying that they "don't encourage fun" is pretty false.

I mean really, why do you think people get gear? It's so they can play more parts of the game and have more fun.

Personally, I can't really defend dungeon running that much because I always liked PvP more -- having human opponents to fight was always more fun for me, and the game certainly encouraged that. Some of my friends will still talk about how they were the top of their server or server group, and have folders of screenshots of them beating other prominent PvPers.

I never got very into WoW because by the time it got popular with my friend group in earnest I had switched to Linux and wine only ran WoW at about 20fps. But I had plenty of fun playing it and I barely got into it at all. Saying that the game doesn't encourage it is total bullshit. Finding night elf in Warsong, chasing them down, and watching their health drain from my warlock's curses was some of the most fun I've ever had in a video game. And I got a shiny token for that, too, so there.

Having played WoW for years and gotten into just about every corner of the maps, almost all the undeveloped regions, and every Easter Egg area I heard about in Vanilla I have to say it was one of my favorite activities in the game and completely unrewarded. Guild Wars 2 rewards just about everything with XP (crafting, gathering, some achievements), but exploration & map completion also come with tangible rewards and enough XP to level a ton just running around. It's a really nice feeling to track down that last hidden point of interest or vista and have the big announcement pop up. There's a big reward for 100% completion of all maps, but not many people make it there.

Basically GW2 is a game that respects your time - waypoint teleports instead of flight paths, no corpse runs, no tagging mobs, per-character (or maybe player?) resource nodes, world events you can just jump into and everyone receives credit based on participation, area quests you don't have to pick up to start getting participation, and a lot you can do at the level cap that's not grinding gear - in fact the best is almost all crafted. I think this has to come down to the game being an initial purchase plus very carefully designed micropayment options instead of a subscription model. The micropayments are pretty much all vanity stuff or conveniences like extra bank slots, there's no gear and the only content options are Living Story episodes you weren't around for. Gold is easy to acquire & swap for the currency.

I think Blizzard tried to introduce some of this stuff in Mists of Pandaria, but there's just too big a gap for them to bridge now. Guild Wars 2 is missing world PvP, but has huge World-versus-World three way maps and team-based PvP. I miss Southshore mass insanity as much as anyone, but WvW is better.

> saying that they "don't encourage fun"

You missed the second part of that clause, which is pretty critical context.

> So unless you're really into just having fun - which the game mostly does not encourage in lieu of running dungeons and getting gear and etc

PvP most certainly falls under that umbrella in italics. Getting to grand marshal back in the day involved sinking copious amounts of time into battlegrounds in order to get a special title and some special gear. There was/is most definitely a carrot on a stick for PvP as well.

In contrast, players have never been incentivized to explore much. Maybe you get a title nowadays, but it's not going to be anything cool like 'Dreadful Gladiator'. There's no special sword for exploring every sector of Azeroth.

EDIT: Further thoughts

> if they don't explicitly give you a token for having fun with your friends, saying that they "don't encourage fun" is pretty false.

Why do you think it's false? It's implicit discouragement. In the thinly-veiled skinner box that is WoW, gear and tokens and titles are positive reinforcement.

It's not a huge leap of logic to say that positive reinforcement tends to discourage behavior that doesn't lead to the reward.

You don't need to be grand marshall to play PvP. When I played WoW you could just hang out at level 19 and keep playing early-level PvP as long as you wanted to. And the simple challenge that PvP is is always fun. Gear is one part of pvp, but it's fundamentally about beating the other player.

I think you have a very cynical view of video games, and a very simplistic view of human psychology. The mere existence of a reward to do something doesn't make someone want to do anything else anything less -- it just might make someone want to do that thing more.

I think the real problem comes from players, like you, who are literally unable to break the skinner box and are slavishly dedicated to extracting rewards from the system, using only the components of the system. Organic play and indeed, fun, is lost on you, because everything is reduced to work, the mechanical gaining of utility from authority figures. I blame overprotective parents and overscheduled youth and hope you one day feel better and can explore in MMOs without feeling discouraged.

Lol, you're projecting something fierce here.

Like:

> Organic play and indeed, fun, is lost on you

Really? That's the only explanation here? Not that I might be right about Wow?

You're clearly upset about something else. Let me know when you're ready to have a real conversation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com