I don't race to be first at anything, I prefer to enjoy take a leisurly pace. But I do like to try to be my best at my character, so I tend to talk to and read about others that play the same class as I do, to find if there is anything they do that could improve my play, without compromising my entertainment.
I'm an odd mixture of dedicated obsession, but not being the least bit competitive with other players. I enjoy them at what *I* consider a leisurely pace, but others may not keep up due to the sheer hours I put in ;^)
I usually have to keep alts I only play with friends, otherswise I inevitably out-level them. In Pantheon the mentoring system should aleviate that though?
When I was playing DDO, I was much more into achieving perfection. But any time someone would say "it's just a game" or "don't take it so seriously," my dear guildie friend would always have the best response: "for some people taking it seriously - the intensity - is part of the fun."
That really resonated with me as my parents have always told me that they actually appreciate the fact that I "take my fun seriously." It's so true - the adrenaline and satisfaction is just plain fun and addicting. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. And it doesn't feel like a job if you enjoy it. The key is to remember not to step on other people during the climb. (And also remember to actually eat food lol) So I have come to realize that it's overall better to be competitive with myself. In my mind, the two playstyles are not mutually exclusive. I set my own pace, but that doesn't mean that pace can't still be very fast, just because I enjoy pushing myself. That's just how I like it. I never want to stop improving.
And if you're consistent with this attitude, you'll eventually naturally become one of the best without even realizing it. And it's easier to be consistent and focused because you're less likely to get burned out. The stress of constantly comparing yourself to others is just not necessary.
I am highly competitive, which is why I am so excited about a game that isn't focussed on direct competition between players. After EQ and Wow Vanilla I got bored of the same stale PvE encounters. The repetition and lack of social interaction totally killed my desire to be in a raiding guild, so I switched my focus to PvP with a small group of RL friends and ignored PvE. Unfortunately, even WoW PvP got stale as the game became more and more of a grind fest (anyone remember the origional Warlord system?), so I switched to League of Legends, which is what I have been playing for about 8 years now. I make it to plat 2/3/4 every season and still love LoL, but I miss the EQ and WoW Vanilla style gaming that focusses on community bonds and competition against the environment intead of against each other.
I read an interesting paper about why video games (MMO's in particular) can be so adictive. The premise was that when a person achieves a goal that is important to them a large dose of dopamine is release by the body. The brain doesnt care if the goal was closing a huge deal at work, kissing that girl for the first time, or killing that raid boss. Since rewards come in online settings faster than in real life, the brain associates playing the game with higher levels of dopamine causing a craving.
People who have a naturally adictive personality are at a higher risk of their brain saying " I dont give a damn if it is a virtual achievement! Give me MORE!"
Being highly competitive (desire) and highly successful (reward) fuels this cycle.
All that said... I try to be the best I can at anything I do. In an MMO setting that means research, thoerycrafting, and usually a bunch of spreadsheets, logs and math.
Kilsin said:Do you race to be the first at something, the best at your class or crafting profession or do you just enjoy games like Pantheon at your own leisurely pace? #PRF #MMORPG #MMO #communitymatters
Lesiurely here, to be sure. Not sure if you're following topics "elsewhere" (nudge, nudge), but there's a great company called "Quantics", headed by Nick Yee (Daedalus Project, etc) that uses an new set of algorithms to align play motivations with psychology with sociology using data science. It's interesting to me how much gamers have in common (and how much they differ) - here's a look at my motivators and a link for those who would like to get/post their own!
GET YOUR PROFILE: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/surveys/start/gamerprofile/
Check out my profile: https://goo.gl/Xyfgi7
I wouldnt call it 'racing'.. but I'll focus on one thing, become moderately addicted, and get it done. Friday and Saturday I reserve for RL socializing, but Sunday-Thursday I'll play at least 4 nights of the 5 and get less than optimal sleep so that I can accomplish in game goals. The first thing I'll focus on is max level(and gear to get me there obvi), then my top need tradeskill, and then use wikis/forums to decide on what 'endgame' items to farm.
My guess is 25-40 hrs/week which will hopefully put me in the top 30% to max level. I do get a sense of accomplishment when peers are impressed by my quick progression, and then being able to help lowbie guildmates thorugh the tough stuff.
I am highly competitive but I think it extends well beyond just being the first to achieve something. I would love to see a consistent sense of competition for resources in the world. Brad shared a post awhile back that basically summarizes what I am most interested in, as far as competition goes. Here is an excerpt:
"The Event System can actually be summarized pretty easily: Things have a status. Things listen for event triggers. Event triggers can be anything and you could keep adding and adding them. It could be a simple time of day. The thing is a mob of a pretty woman, status non-aggro. It listens for Time of Day triggers. The change of the clock to midnight creates a trigger that the woman becomes aware of. The Event is that when the midnight trigger occurs, the woman transforms into a vampire. It's really a very open system that could be taken very far (and I hope it eventually is).
The goal is Dynamics in a sense -- the content is not always the same and it can change. And again anything that minimizes obvious repetition and the Groundhog Effect plague is generally a good thing.
Smart use would be to start with simple triggers and events, nothing that truly impacts the game or the players, but something that is at least noticible when you are playing and makes exploring our world a little different and varied.
The slightly more advanced example I've given before (although we've still only scratched the surface) is the Hill Giant/Storm Giant War.
There is a Hill Giant camp in the world, and it is *nasty*. Either even a raid couldn't break into the camp or perhaps we don't allow raids there.
But sometimes the Storm Giants come out of the heavens and attack the Hill Giants. What triggers this? It could be player driven, and could be obvious and simple or very complex, requiring you to have a guildmate on the other side of world who must ring an ancient bell that triggers earthquakes. Sometimes the Hill Giants are forced into disarray because of the earthquake, their guards move inside the gates, the inhabitants are distracted and not watching as vigilantly for an attack. The earthquake happens while you and your friends are watching, hiding from a distance. Sure enough, a Storm Giant army dynamically spawns and heads towards the gates of the Hill Giant fortress. You follow at a safe distance. A huge battle breaks out, giants of both varieties are dying on all sides. What would have been impossible normally (free movement in the Hill Giant region) is now possible. The Hill Giant mobs could change to as they react to the invasion. Certainly the Storm Giant mobs are interesting because they're not normally even spawned.
The adept and clever guild watches for events like this and opportunistically takes advantage of them. In this example they let the two giant clans battle it out, occasionally coming out of hiding a picking off a few mobs that don't normally spawn. Lo and behold, they also spawn with items that are only attainable during this Invasion Event. The game's content changed, rare items were temporarily obtainable, and it made you and your friends pay attention to what was going on in the world.... if you don't have someone, for example, at least occasionally checking to see if the Storm Giants have attacked then you're going to miss it (and the players who pay better attention won't). Or perhaps nobody paid attention, it was off-hours, and the invasion took place but there were no players around to do anything about it."
This is the kind of competition I enjoy most. I want to see rare events in the world that can be opportunistically taken advantage of. The MMO genre has been a complete bust in this regard for a long time now as everything has seemingly been moved into instanced content. Any gameplay that rewards world awareness and efficient mobilization/coordination is something I am a huge fan of. I would love to see rare events like this spread all throughout the world of Terminus and in a variety of level ranges. Ideally there will be some really cool situational gear drops, crafting recipes, or maybe even a rare spell or ability scroll. Meaningful content like this is what I miss most and I am excited to see how VR is going to not only bring this kind of thing back, but evolve the genre and make these sort of events thrilling, rewarding, and memorable. Beyond all that ... I would also love to see an Arena where players can engage in controlled PVP combat, even on PVE servers. A Coliseum would also be a nice touch as players could compete to see who can last the longest in the ring events, or climb the highest on the Coliseum ladder.
I play games at my own pace, I enjoy my time. I like to be efficient and try to increase my characters power the best that I can. I usually advance fairly quickly in games.
I know people around me often think it's a competition and assume I have the same mind set just because of the way I like to play but that isn't the case. It's not a race...but at the same time I'd prefer not to waste time not improving my character. My own pace tends to be faster than average it seems. I have been first of my class to max lvl on a server etc, that type of thing...but I didn't realize it until someone pointed it out. That definitely wasn't the goal. I wasn't competing with the others to be first. I just prefer to play efficiently.
Player A hits Day One of Live like a Racehorse leaving the chute, not stopping to rest until her character is at level cap, then her and her level 50 guildmates start figuring out where the various dungeons/events are, whats in them and the most efficient ways to farm the loot
Player B is more interested in seeing all the sights, but also fairly competetive, so she wants to be the first to visit every starting city before anybody else gets there, which means grinding a ton of rep and a lot of travel
Both Players here are highly competitive, but they are basically competing in two very different games, just as would be the competitive crafter, quester or alter or the player that just wants to be the best at their class
All of this is fine and good until Player A and her guild decide they should camp dungeons and events in order to control who else can have access to them... Because their competition was to be the first ones to "get there" they are already there when everyone else shows up
Winning a race doesn't mean you were necessarily the fastest, you could have just tripped up all the rest of the runners
If Player A's method of competition puts her in front of all other players with any other type of competitve urge than to "finish first," hers was the correct answer and everyone else will pay for choosing incorrectly
So, define your terms: What kind of competitive do you mean?
i just play the game at my own pace degusting every seconds of my playtime, taking my time in each place to discover things, hidden locations, reading lore if there is lore to read (ie books, etc..).
but concerning raiding, i like to join a raiding guild and have fun with it, not looking to be the first to kill somehing serverwide let alone worldwide.
for me a game is not a competition but a place to have fun at my own pace, it's all about immersion, i dont care about e-peen.
so for Pantheon, i will play taking my time, joining groups for group contents, a guild for raids content (and group content) i will flee the so called elitists who think a game is a competition, totally different phylosophy of mine.
I have to have a goal to achieve. Now my goal might be different than others. IE - I might say I want to complete every dungeon in the game as I level, vs I want to level as fast as possible. I would say I am competitive, but I'm competitive against myself and my expectations. I look to know everything I can and be the best I can at all times. If I'm not then I need to improve. There really isn't much of a "race" for me in anything around MMOs, due to time I can't spend on the game so instead its more about completion and being perfect at it.
Random1 said:It's interesting to me how much gamers have in common (and how much they differ) - here's a look at my motivators and a link for those who would like to get/post their own!
GET YOUR PROFILE: https://apps.quanticfoundry.com/surveys/start/gamerprofile/
Check out my profile: https://goo.gl/Xyfgi7
Thank you for sharing that. I'm going to post a link to that in the off topic area so we don't derail this thread with talk about the survey. I'm interested in seeing results from other people.
The only thing I compete against now is myself to help me keep improving/learning. If I am doing better than others, OK. If not, well just means I can continue to improve over time but I don't worry about it. When it comes to being competitive, been there did that repeatedly, got to the top in doing certain things and watched so many people flare and burn out.
I have seen too many guilds, communities and real-life events end badly due to competition. I realize that sounds jaded and there is a place for competition in various parts of life/games. I suppose I have just seen it taken too far to many times until it destroys something great/fun. One of the more dreaded statements I can hear from a RL boss/raid lead/guild lead is "we are going to have a friendly competition" and it is always said in just that particular tone which imparts a feeling of foreboding.
From my experience, it typically indicated someone was going to get left out or discarded. When something is meant to be for fun, especially in a game, I like to see everyone, or as many as possible included and having a good time.
God, I miss the old days of raiding in games where we would shuffle unconventional groups together to see if we can complete content instead of focusing solely on the end game meta. While true you can still do that now to a degree, it is vastly rarer and depending on the game may not be viable at all depending on how an event is designed.
Cheers,
When it comes to having "Server Firsts", I couldn't really care less. Or racing to raids in order to beat that other guild. That's not so much competitiveness as it is "I woke up earlier than you, and work less than you".
What I do strive for is to become "The Tank". The guy people stick on their friends list for future PuG's and Raids. The guy you send a /tell to everytime you log on with, "Hey man, you running any dungeons today?" That's the kind of competition I like. Not the tank with the best gear, but just, the best tank.