I am not a fan.
I want the RPG to be an escape from my daily life.
Having a reminder as soon as I log in that I have missed receiving a shiny bottle cap just makes me feel a little bad. It is negative reinforcement, and the marketing scum that push it can sit on a tack.
Kilsin said:Community Opinion - Daily/Weekly Rewards - Are you a fan of them or not? Do they make you want to log in or turn a fun game into a job? Let us know your thoughts below! #MMORPG#CommunityMatters#dailyrewards#rewards
Utterly, completely and overwhelmingly despise them.
I strongly dislike them. They make the game feel like a chore, they hijack what I was planning on doing, they break immersion, and they scream of developers manipulating their players. The only upside of them is that they can make it easy to find a group for that specific task (assuming you even want to do it).
I suspect they actually drive people out of games. If you can't keep up with enough of them, it feels like being left behind and that can make people quit.
Personally, I hate dailies. As soon as you start feeling like you need to log in just to knock out your dailies so you don't feel like you're falling behind, it feels like a chore or a job.
If you're going to have them in the game, it needs to be something where players have much more latitude as to when / how they complete them. For example, maybe there are quests that reset "daily" but your character is capped at, say, 15 per month... you could knock those out more easily and focus your efforts as to what the reward is (eg, extra mats, faction, XP or whatever...)
If you're striving to emphasize group-oriented adventure play, it will take careful consideration to implement any kind of "daily" system... It would have to be something that occurs naturally and not something that drives individual players away from the group in order to go complete. By that I mean, if this is solo-able content, you've now got a motivation and a means to not spend time with a group of people... Even though there might be a group of people doing the same thing, they stick around until their quota is met and take off, typically.
Maybe instead of having a quest hub with dailies that everyone has the exact same thing, there could be dynamic, hidden, character flags once a week or something where you don't know what the quest is until they've killed one of the particular class of mobs then it pops up with an option for the entire group to join in on killing a certain camp with a random spawning named mob as the boss for a reward for the entire group. You could even have a hint mailed to you from an NPC of an area saying something like, "Help! Our farmstead was raided last night by a group of "xxx" and took something valuable, please hunt them down blah blah blah." Make it a level-appropriate area that you and your group of friends could all partake in becuase, hey, you were probably going there anyway to farm or explore or whatever or it takes you to another zone you maybe haven't explored yet.
Either way, I would really hate to have a static quest hub that is repetative, especially on a daily reset or even weekly unless they are a capped in a way where you only have so many a month and that they aren't incentivized in a way where it competes with group play. Grouping should be king, but I do see some merit in something that gives you an opportunity to advance if your friends aren't online at a certain time... then again, maybe you use that time to meet / group with new people and force you to socialize with others *gasp!*
Someone in the YT comments offered up 'monthly' rewards. I much prefer this idea to the daily grind/carrot on a stick. Make monthly rewards lead up to an event or long quest chain that is just for giggles. Anything but dailies, please. Also, the monthly idea will best suit those with limited time.
I am glad to see the idea seems to have such a constant negative response from everyone. In short just no. It is a manipulative unhealthy relationship with your player base.
As games have started to add small little carrots like this to get players to behave the way they want at first, I did not even notice. I had no past experience or warning to look out for this. We were taught by our parents to not talk to strangers but we were never warned to look out for evil game designs.
But as this has become more norm in games, I have grown to recognize it as not only a negative in games but also on my own life. For this reason, I have dropped games that even hint at it.
If you build a fun and interesting world players will come. If you keep making new content they will stay.
I can't tell you how many times I've logged into an MMO excited to play, and figured I'd knock out my dailies and weeklies first; by the time I was done with my "chores" all of the excitement to play was gone and I was done for the day. After a few weeks of that, I'm gone.
No, could I have just ignored my dailies and played the way I want to play? Yes, but so much advancement is tied to those quests that you feel compelled to complete them.
I strongly dislike them. It seems both the forums and twitter are agreed on this too, and for good reason.
But the term ‘daily/weekly reward’ could also be interpreted as mobs on a 24hr/7-day spawn timer. So why is it that they feel so different to login/daily quests?
Allow me to explain this using Yu-kai Chou’s 2015: The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design.
Meaning – When there is a feeling of purpose or being part of something greater than yourself. (Helping out other players, friends or guildmates).
Accomplishment – Overcoming a challenge (something harder than a task intended to be completable by 100% of the player base).
Empowerment – Seeing the result of your efforts and progress (creating strategies from repeated attempts to defeat an encounter).
Ownership – Obtaining rewards and the drive to get them (rare loot drops).
Social Influence – The resulting social responses (bragging rights, admiration, envy, companionship, mentorship).
Scarcity - Can only be claimed by one group/raid on the server each spawn cycle (adding value and drive to get it).
Unpredictability – Excitement of expected rewards only reflects the emotional value of the reward, while the possibility of receiving a reward elevates it. (Spawn time/location variance, Dispositions, Attack patterns, Loot tables)
Avoidance – Preventing loss. The knowledge that you will be unable to attempt to claim a reward if other players or guilds defeat the mobs before you. (While ‘not losing’ is complementary to the previous statements, it causes a different behavioural response).
While on the other side, effortless rewards for attendance only tick two of these boxes, Ownership and Avoidance. This is what makes them feel like a chore, but it is even worse when they undermine the rest of the gameplay experience:
When the daily reward is worth exponentially more than what you would get from clearing non-daily content, it has the opposite effect; making players not want go and clear content at their own pace because playing for 4 hours would yield the same results as just hopping on for 30 minutes of dailies.
"Thanks for coming to my TED talk."
TL;DR I referenced behavioral design stuff to say daily/weekly rewards are bad.
I don't really like daily rewards or systems where I feel like I have to log in every day; so I don't miss out on something. Personally, systems implemented in this way feel like a superficial way to improve user engagement metrics.
Weekly rewards also typically feel like a forced system for engagement purposes. I prefer these more than daily logging chores as they typically allow more control over how and when I do them. However, they still come across as a chore that must be completed before a weekly reset.
With all that being said, I think that weekly goals could be a good thing if they are tied to the community. I think that weekly tasks could potentially be implemented in a way where they promote community-driven gameplay through a player's natural experience. Maybe there could be weekly server rewards for players.
I use to play a flash game called Dawn of the Dragons. Every week they would have a world boss and players would receive loot based on personal damage. However, sometimes they would have a community world boss where rewards were based on both personal contribution and communal contribution.
It might be cool to see weekly community events like this in Pantheon. For example, maybe there is a community goal for level 1-15 zones. Where the goal is for the community to clear X amount of mobs and mobs from each starting area count towards this goal. Rewards would be on community participation, as well as a personal contribution.
TL;DR: Daily and weekly rewards urgh. Weekly community events could be an interesting concept.
I'm with most the rest of us, dislike them whole heartedly. And for the reasons stated above, feels like a job (already got that) repetative, boaring, etc.
I don't belive they were ever put in games because people liked them. I belive them a manipulation technique by game "designers" to try to keep server populated up on already failing games. Why else would they be Daily? In a subscription game as I belive VR is planning for Pantheon, you don't need me to log in daily, you need me to keep my monthly subscription. Monthy game events would do more for me keeping my Sub. where daily's will bore me into canceling it.
Repeatable quests? Maybe. If done well. They have, in the past, tended to be abused to give lazily developed ways of adding an extreme grind 'challenge' to get top rewards, which is horrible. No reasons they need to be that way.
Linked to RL day/week cycles? No. As a principal, nothing should be overtly linked to reality, especially in a way that makes you feel you're 'clocking in' like a factory job!
*edited* upon review my first reply was crap
I've never experienced them per se. Why did they get developed/institued? Was it because a populous complained of having nothing to do and no one around? Is the marketing feedback that players want to be led? (or spoon-fed?).
As others have said they end up sounding like chores. But I do understand the "endorphin feed-back loop" that is desired by the playing public and that I ASSUME is somewhat resolved by the institution of dailies/weeklies by dev teams in response to this desire by the playing public.
Given the assumption that this is what the playing public wants, how can it be instituted so it is more fun than a chore? I think this calls under the long game, or slow game kind of mentality. what I mean is, the kind of benefit or buff that builds up slowly over time but is available in ever increasing doses at certain intervals. If the buff/benefit is declined at a certain interval , the previous intervals benefit remains through until the next interval where the player can then use that intervals buff/benefit.
I Imagine like , always tossing a few coins to a beggar whenever in town. (the amount recorded and tallied secretly by the game program) or always donating -something- to a certain temple or shrine . Bonus if money can be spent in development to have the program discern what was being donated and have that influence the suprise benefit buff, like always bringing colorful flowers to the fairie door and, over time, discovering the allergy benefit from these donations allowing you to create a small pollen cloud in the enemies face causing them to sneeze (stun, 2 seconds), or if animal pelts; fleas in battle (+1damage for 2 tics) or warmth for a time in cold (+1 cold acclimation for 5min. three dog night= cold! as you need 3 dogs to sleep with you to stay warm enough). Or stabbing a pilloried known executioner of war crimes as you pass by or swiftly and mercifully ending the suffering of terminal patients/refugees/ensconced torture victims.
Something slow that builds up over time as a "daily" where the player has to make a mental note to take a second, where the benefit is available weekly or monthly and unknown until claimed.