Anti-farm mechanics

[Xenich]

Never understood this stuff.

Older games like EQ and others implemented rare spawn/drop systems, or implemented extremely long mundane grind mechanics in some cases (not a fan of), but this modern appeal for keeping people from playing the game too much is absolutely ********.


I noticed this with the injection of "dailies" into games. It is a lazy mechanic and very... "Equity in outcome" in its ideal to be honest. Anytime you have to justify implementations using "outside the game" support is pandering.

If the concern is people will eat up content too fast, then that is poor design because you aren't implementing a solution, just telling people to play, then log out and come back later. Solutions should require more effort, bigger obstacles, rare spawn/drops, etc... to slow the progression. People don't need to get a shiny every time.

The reason I always see from some players is "well, I don't have time to play all day, so its not fair that someone else can and gets the items faster!" which is completely stupid and pandering to whiners.

One might think, well... I work a lot, so this will help, but how many times have you got some time off and had a good chunk of time to work on the game and because of these implementations, you essentially log in, do the thing, then log out. Any mechanic that discourages you from playing a game is **** poor design.

Anyway, I noticed this with DDO as I was running certain dungeons multiple times to get a drop. The ransack penalty only produces named loot up to 8 times you loot a chest before it goes on a week timer . The thing is, the game is centered around grinding dungeons over and over... there are even store items that increase quality and drop rates, reset raid timers (raid reset is 3 days). There are even in game awards (shrines) which also help with this.

It is such a bad mechanic and I perplexes me why it exists (outside of the monetary scam) because even games that don't monetize off this behavior have similar systems.

Why would you make a game designed around replaying dungeons with rare drop rates for loot, then penalize someone for running the dungeons to get the loot?

Seems rather stupid to me.

[Magick]

Daily quests are to give the devs (bean counters) absolute control over how much play time (subscription or attention) you need to put in.

[J1M]

I like mechanics where you can combine finds for slightly better versions of them. For example, gems or runes in Diablo 2. That way a "bad" drop is at least contributing towards one that you want.

Lots of room in the number tuning to make such a system a good/bad experience.

In a lot of cases the MMO devs really do need to protect players from optimizing the fun out of something. It really comes down to which mechanism to use.

[Rigwort]

I think you are misunderstanding something here. MMOs don't have you pay for hours, but for months. Therefore, the more they can spread the grind over time, means likely more money for them. Further, yeah you can get 12 yo Jimmy to play your MMO because his dad is stacked... but if you made it seem as if people who have daily responsibilities can play as well... you can get the whole family (possibly) hooked!

At least, that's what it seemed to me.

[GhostCow]

Daily quests are to give the devs (bean counters) absolute control over how much play time (subscription or attention) you need to put in.

I think it's more a psychological game of making you log in every day than making you play a certain amount of time. It's manipulative as **** and I refuse to play any game that has this mechanic. It means they are trying to make the game addictive rather than fun

[Gregz]

Botting is such a problem that the removal of repetitive gameplay may be the only way to save online games.

[Magick]

Daily quests are to give the devs (bean counters) absolute control over how much play time (subscription or attention) you need to put in.

I think it's more a psychological game of making you log in every day than making you play a certain amount of time. It's manipulative as **** and I refuse to play any game that has this mechanic. It means they are trying to make the game addictive rather than fun

Both. It's all about "engagement".

Engagement = money spent, either on subscriptions or in cash shops.
It also gives them a nice little metric to show to their bean counters.

[Xenich]

Botting is such a problem that the removal of repetitive gameplay may be the only way to save online games.

Kind of like saving the education system by lowering the requirements for passing.

[Xenich]

Daily quests are to give the devs (bean counters) absolute control over how much play time (subscription or attention) you need to put in.

I think it's more a psychological game of making you log in every day than making you play a certain amount of time. It's manipulative as **** and I refuse to play any game that has this mechanic. It means they are trying to make the game addictive rather than fun

Both. It's all about "engagement".

Engagement = money spent, either on subscriptions or in cash shops.
It also gives them a nice little metric to show to their bean counters.

They are no longer games, but psychological marketing strategies used to ensnare the lazy, bored, and inept. They had to figure something out, TV died and they no longer had the drones to milk anymore.