Final Skinner Box 14

ask yourself this question instead:

Why are YOU playing an mmorpg?

why not play a single player game where you'll feel that awesomeness within a couple of mins?

why not a FPS where you'll feel that awesomeness after killing someone?

why mmorpg?

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

I'm just trying to make sure that we ask the devs for what we actually want. We should be asking them to make more content that ensures you can at least make some progress as you play (such as Garuda, where no matter what you can make progress towards a weapon) instead of purely luck based content. Saying to remove all "skinner boxes" from the game could easily be interpreted as asking to remove all elements that condition a player to perform an action, which is a lot of the content that we actually enjoy.

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I understand your concern, but I don't think that would be an issue.

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Originally Posted by Eard

ask yourself this question instead:

Why are YOU playing an mmorpg?

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To perform challenging, fun, and engaging content with other people and friends online to experience a journey that is both filled with depth and rewarding to the point that it impacts the player greatly.

After playing 7 years of FF11 many people feel the game changed them for the better and made tons of friends through excellent content. That's what I'm looking for.

Cheesecake!

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Originally Posted by Ventus

I suppose nobody is willing to actually discuss anything XD

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Post something worth discussing that hasn't been beaten to death, maybe?

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Originally Posted by mysterytaru

Post something worth discussing that hasn't been beaten to death, maybe?

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You meant, "Post something you didn't pull STRAIGHT FROM ANOTHER THREAD ALREADY DISCUSSING THIS TOPIC, maybe?"

itt: psychology is a real major.

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Originally Posted by Masamune1004

this thread again >.>/tldr/OP is a @#$@#$

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He's at a pound with money? Did I get that right? No? Shut my mouth? Ok... ._.

Can I not have credit for this thread? Please? ^.^;

Seriously though, you've taken my comments at the letter but not the meaning. Skinner boxes are vitally important to video games, and while often it isn't the best way to keep player interest, it is an important tool in the developer's belt. Not to mention, I don't even blame the FFXIV dev team for using the findings of Skinner (specifically that only rewarding behavior at random intervals actually increases the strength of the conditioning) in this situation. They are working understaffed, but have to keep players around. You bet they are going to use every trick - clean and dirty - in the book to keep the game limping along until 2.0.

Secondly, I am a programmer, not a psychologist (though as I said in the other thread, I do have a friend who I go to when I want to learn about something like Skinner boxes) from what I have seen, Urthdigger has a much better understanding of the principles behind a Skinner box than myself. I don't retract my comments about content like Ifrit being extremely indicative of Skinner box techniques, but if you want some really hard information, you should be quoting him, not me.

Now, for what it's worth, I do think that this is a valuable conversation. Just because something is "okay" and understandable now, does not make it so in the future. As Urthdigger put it, content like Ifrit, if anything, stresses the conditioning to insert effort, receive bacon, and makes it less likely for us to continue that behavior in the future (read as, quit the game). I would, at the very least, like to see a more consistent reward schedule in the future. The reward schedule doesn't have to be fast, but it does have to be consistant.

Right now, we have a reward variance larger than the static input time. That is, the effort of getting an Ifrit weapon is 1 +/- 70 (as a simple example). Instead, I would really like to see a reward schedule in the future closer to: 50 +/- 10. It actually takes longer to complete the later, but the incentive to do so is higher, since the reward is guaranteed with a much lower variance.