Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| The problem with external rewards. *long-ish* | |
| Posted By: Gravemind <kuukan_no_kage@yahoo.com> | Date: 6/20/12 11:38 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: Bungie speaks... on Behavioral Game Design (serpx) : In my opinion, this is going to be a subjective matter. As one who studies : psychology, and is a gamer, I think it is smart for developers to : incorporate more psychological ideas into their game designs. It is : important, and I agree, for players to create their own rewards to build : intrinsic motivation, but I feel external rewards have their place in : games as well, as I think they can help players not only get into : different aspects of the games, but also fabricate intrinsic motivators : which may not have been fabricated without intelligently placed external : rewards. : For an example, there's players out there who just play Halo multiplayer
It could probably be argued that, at least in principle if not in practice, that external rewards don't necessarily have to be a bad or even undesirable thing. There's been a few achievements that actually enticed me to do really fun things that I otherwise wouldn't have thought to do, like the Annual and Deja Vu Vidmasters or BioShock's "Brass Balls" achievement. But by and large, these external rewards are rarely done well. For example, there's some really trivial achievements in the Halo games. Did we really need achievements for picking up your first health pack in both ODST and Reach? However, that's just peanuts compared to my biggest problem with external rewards. Rewards are at their worst when they either A) encourage players to behave in ways they normally wouldn't in play modes where such behavior shouldn't be encouraged, or B) lock things behind arbitrary barriers, when such things don't absolutely have to be locked as a necessary consequence of game design*, or have a combination of both A and B. Such rewards have a deleterious effect on game design. One example as it relates to achievements is Halo 3's original MP achievements. Several of them required an extreme degree of luck, and they could only be unlocked in ranked FFA matches, which further complicates things. Take the "Two for One" achievement, which required the player to get a Double Kill with the laser. In order to unlock it you had to be lucky enough to meet the following requirements: 1) Be on a map that has a laser on it by default, 2) actually be able to acquire said weapon, 3) find two enemies who are in close proximity to each other and hope they line up single-file relative to your POV, and 4) fire off a shot with the laser and kill both enemies before they kill each other (or you are yourself killed by someone else). Meeting such conditions involves some very unlikely circumstances, which is made even more unlikely due to the chaotic nature of the battlefield (and FFA is arguably considerably more chaotic than a Team-based game, plus Lone Wolves for the longest time only supported like 5 or 6 players). Your average player would have to play many, many matches in Lone Wolves until they get lucky enough to pull off such a stunt, and instead of, y'know, actually playing the game, they ignore everything for the sake of acquiring a single weapon and trying to get that elusive Double Kill with it. Of course, few players had the time or patience to get "Two for One" (or "Steppin' Razor, or "Overkill") through legit means, so most of them would group together and help each other get those achievements. Strangers. In a free-for-all playlist. Helping each other unlock achievements. Not just counterintuitive, but hardly a desirable situation, especially considering "boosting" for achievements is widely frowned upon. Then there was the original Gears of War. It's MP achievements required the player to be in ranked playlists, and most involved a ton of grinding, often of the "Get 100 kills with [weapon]" nature. This resulted in quite the opposite situation of Halo 3's "People working together in free-for-all." Rather, it was "every man for himself" in what was ostensibly a team game. Nobody was interested in working together because they were so focused on getting just one more kill with, well, whatever. There were many occasions where I needed assistance, and my teammate ignored me, I guess because if I'm getting chainsawed that make the enemy doing so an easier target or what the fuck ever. Also, some players would forgo an easy kill via shotgun to the back just so they could dance around an enemy trying tag him with a frag grenade. People forgoing teamwork and not giving two shits about winning just so they could do just that much more grinding to an additional 10 or 20G added to their gamer score. Again, hardly a desirable situation. Both Bungie and Epic made strides to correct these issues later on. Most (but not all) of the Halo 3 DLC and Reach (initial batch and Noble Map Pack) achievements could be unlocked in any playlist and involved actual effort instead of involving incredibly unlikely situations. In other words, not only were you actually achieving something, you were doing so in a way that was much, much less disruptive to the natural, intended flow of online multiplayer. For example, getting a Sword Spree in Team Slayer is far more skill-based and less luck-based than getting a Triple Kill with the sword in Lone Wolves. Epic Games made improvements to their achievement design in GoW2 by making the "Get x kills with [weapon]" achievements unlockable not only in ranked and unranked MP, but also in Campaign and Horde mode as well. The few MP-only achievements involved minimal grinding (the worst it got was "Won 10 rounds of Guardian as the leader"). Of course, achievements are purely for bragging rights, and failing to unlock them carries no real consequences. Modern "RPG-style/Skinner box" player progression systems like the ones utilized in Call of Duty from Modern Warfare to the present, however, do. They have various gameplay-affecting elements such as gear and abilities locked behind arbitrary barriers. To unlock these things one must play match after match of multiplayer, progressing through the ranks and sometimes earning some form of in-game currency (e.g., "COD Points" in Black Ops). Only when you've reached the requisite rank (and when applicable earned enough points/credits/whatever) can you unlock whatever weapon, perk, or killstreak you had your eyes set on. This of course leads to a classic "carrot-and-stick" scenario, which is part and parcel of operant conditioning. The developer entices the player with a carefully structured rewards schedule. Say you want the MK14 in MW3, the only semi-auto weapon in the assault rifle class. Well, you better be prepared to rank up to level 60. "Keep ranking up and you'll get all this cool stuff" is the carrot. The stick involves how COD's player progression system is woefully unbalanced. When you start off at rank one, you have access to only the most minimal and basic gear and abilities, and you don't even get to create custom loadouts right away. However, even if you're a raw recruit, you'll still get matched against people who are high-ranking (since your visible rank in COD is experience-based rather than Trueskill ranks) and therefore have access to all kinds of advanced, upgraded weapons and more powerful perks and killstreaks. So, if enticing you with promises of cool new stuff to unlock is the carrot, the stick is knowing that if you don't take the time to play match after match to progress through the ranks, you will be left at a disadvantage against players who are putting in more time than you are as they're unlocking more and better stuff and you are not. This is horribly unbalanced and unfair, and it treats the player's time as a commodity. Players no longer play to have a good time, but rather because they feel they'll be missing out if they fail to keep playing regularly. All of this for the almighty rewards schedule. This does not need to be done. It is not a necessary consequence of multiplayer game design, and it is arguably quite deleterious to the gameplay experience. Why should I have to play for days on end just to get to some ungodly rank before I can get access to the one mother-friggin' semi-auto gun in the game? Hell, why should I have to keep playing just to be on an even playing field with the other players in the first place? Why do systems like this exist in the first damn place? Well, because it works at getting people to keep coming back to play, and apparently it's a system people are drawn to in and of itself. That's why. Before Modern Warfare, Call of Duty games had sales that were respectable, but relatively middling compared to the juggernaut that was Halo. Likewise, COD 2 & 3 were being beaten out in the XBL activity charts by Halo 2 and Gears of War. They did decent, but weren't exactly chart toppers. It was COD4 that really brought COD to the top of the FPS heap, with the last three COD games being the three best-selling FPSs of all time and enjoying immense success online. Meanwhile, Halo, while still very successful, has fallen behind. Could this be why 343I insisted on a COD-style player progression system instead of sticking with the traditional Halo balancing act where players always start with the same gear (or access to the same gear in Reach) and are thus always on a level playing field? Are they hoping that if adding such a system worked for Activision, it would work for Halo and propel it to new levels of success? Who know? It could very well work. I will applaud 343I for trying to make the system less broken than what you see in other Skinner box shooters. They're trying to make things more balanced, as apparently there will be a standard loadout optimized for the map and/or gametype, which should help things a bit by granting lower-ranked players access to at least one weapon and/or AA that they might otherwise not have access to, and according to the latest Bulletin "Matchmaking will account for skill level, experience, equipment and more." Still, there will almost certainly be situations where people who have played few matches and thus haven't unlocked much if anything are finding themselves in matches against players who have played many matches and have unlocked a lot of different things. There will still be imbalances of some form, some degree of unevenness in the playing field, some situation where someone has an unfair advantage "earned" by playing more than the other guy, and this is always undesirable. 343I might be trying to remove the stick and leave the carrot, but the stick's presence will hard to get rid of entirely. It's an inherent part of having a rewards schedule. If I choose to play mostly Campaign and only play MP for a couple of hours a week, I shouldn't feel like I'm being punished? "Haven't played enough to get to Major Grade III? Well, forget about putting the BR in any of your loadouts." 343I might be trying to balance it as much as such a system can be balanced, it still doesn't change the fundamental wrongness of placing players in a Skinner box. Developers should just let the players play the game for the sake of playing it and stop making external rewards an integral and mandatory part of the gameplay experience. Players should play because they want to, not because they feel they have to. Keep the external rewards to a minimum, and use them to offer suggestions on things they could do (i.e., "Complete the last level in Halo 3 in 4-player co-op with everyone in Ghosts and the Iron skull on"), not to encourage people to play in ways they wouldn't otherwise play or tell people what they should do or else they'll miss out ("You must rank to _____ to unlock that weapon you want in MP."). Rewards can be done right, but they rarely are. That needs to change.
*When I refer to something as being a "necessary consequence of game design," I mean something like "beating stage 1 to get to stage 2." Trying to compare that to a Skinner box-style player progression system is rather disingenuous, IMO. It's an apples and oranges kind of thing.
| |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |