don't let bungie know you have shortcuts or are having fun c (Destiny)

by scarab , Monday, October 27, 2014, 05:44 (3919 days ago) @ Riceamike
edited by scarab, Monday, October 27, 2014, 06:12

Jason Jones wants people to play the game.

Now, naeively, you would think that he would want to achieve this by making the game insanely fun.

For some people Halo campaign was insanely fun and they played thousands of hours of it.

But not everybody did that. Not everybody played lots of campaign.

JJ wanted to fix that. His chosen method was to put an investment system into Destiny.

Investment systems are designed to encourage/force you to invest very many days/weeks of your time to get good stuff to play the game.

It is a fact of human nature that when you invest so much time in something you become, well, invested in it. It becomes hard to let go and hard to admit that you made a mistake. For example: look at the people who couldn't admit that they were wrong about the indoctrination theory long past the point where it was obvious that it wasn't bioware's intention.

If people quickly get what they want then there is the danger that they will become satisfied and will decide to move on to something else.

If people are not yet satisfied but think that they just need a bit more whatever then they will keep trying.

They are not really having fun or at least not having pure fun. There is always some fun to be had but, mostly, they complain but still play anyway.

If your metric is total hours played over the entire player base then Destiny will be a success. But for me, and many others, the quality of those hours is not very high.

Anyway, as an answer to your question: investment systems rely on making you invest a LOT of your time into them. If things come easily then you will not be invested in them.

I can't paste the link I want on my tablet. Please go to the dopamine page on wikipedia and go to the section labeled, "seeking vs liking". I should probably titled this post, "seeking vs liking" as it encapsulates all that is wrong with investment systems. The people who implement investment systems know all about how they work. The complaints we are making are no surprise to bungie and are an expected part of the process.