Feeling Defeated

5778 words and counting!

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Originally Posted by Hulan

Someone on the dev team really loves Skinner Boxes. That being said, my suspicion (and I'll admit, it's entirely a hunch and has no grounding in fact), is that they are doing everything they can to keep the 1.0 game going and populated with a skeleton crew while the rest of the team works on 2.0. Skinner Boxes are the fastest and easiest way to artificially keep someone playing a "game" for a long time, so it's no wonder they would be over-utilizing it to keep people around until 2.0.

If that is the case, hopefully we will see a substantial decrease in pRNG based content in the future (read as 2.0+).

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Agree 500% with you, FFXIV has way too much Skinner Boxes.
Which is why I play less instead of playing more.
I'm just hoping for 2.0 to have significantly less Skinner Boxes.

Saying the game has too many skinner boxes is not quite the right way to put it. A skinner box rewards the test subject with unconditioned stimulus for performing the conditioned action, and can eventually condition a subject to continue to perform the action even without the stimulus.

Operant conditioning, which is what the skinner box researched, are in fact vital to gameplay. When you learn to play a game, you are essentially being conditioned to perform those actions. This usually occurs first in easier areas, where the benefits of an action are more apparent, and as the player progresses the process doesn't always work, or is not as effective as before, but if properly conditioned they will try anyway, because they know it can work. Long story short, operant conditioning is essential to teaching players how to play a game.

The reason I'm being anal about this is that if we want change, we need to use the right terms. I know what you guys mean when you say a skinner box, but someone unfamiliar with the connotations might think you're asking for less conditioning... and with no conditioning, there would actually be no real game. What you should be asking is for the player to see some sort of reward or progress for victory, rather than entirely luck based mechanics. This gets the point across clearly, and effectively, and shows what we all want. We want to be rewarded for our hard work. We want our stimulus for doing our operation.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Saying the game has too many skinner boxes is not quite the right way to put it. A skinner box rewards the test subject with unconditioned stimulus for performing the conditioned action, and can eventually condition a subject to continue to perform the action even without the stimulus.

Operant conditioning, which is what the skinner box researched, are in fact vital to gameplay. When you learn to play a game, you are essentially being conditioned to perform those actions. This usually occurs first in easier areas, where the benefits of an action are more apparent, and as the player progresses the process doesn't always work, or is not as effective as before, but if properly conditioned they will try anyway, because they know it can work. Long story short, operant conditioning is essential to teaching players how to play a game.

The reason I'm being anal about this is that if we want change, we need to use the right terms. I know what you guys mean when you say a skinner box, but someone unfamiliar with the connotations might think you're asking for less conditioning... and with no conditioning, there would actually be no real game. What you should be asking is for the player to see some sort of reward or progress for victory, rather than entirely luck based mechanics. This gets the point across clearly, and effectively, and shows what we all want. We want to be rewarded for our hard work. We want our stimulus for doing our operation.

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I completely agree, and I should have been more clear. I do not think that the Skinner box is a bad thing (all the time). I do, however, think that they are using the premise behind Skinner's work as a cudgel instead of an instrument - and for completely valid reasons as far as I am concerned. As long as they ween themselves away from black and white operant conditioning with an emphasis on random chance as a motivator in the days following 2.0, I have absolutely no complaints with the current direction.

At most, I was trying to inject a plausible explanation for the large number of pRNG based content into the conversation. And while I admit that psychology is not my field of study (though I do have a friend who does study psychology and often talks about it) content like Ifrit seems to be exactly a Skinner box. If it is not, what is the difference? As I understand it, a Skinner box, or rather the behavior induced by a Skinner box, is characterized by an choice (to try Ifrit one more time) induced by secondary motivators (gear) which has been shown to have the strongest effect when the reward has an element of chance (pRNG).

It's fairer to say that the whole game is a skinner box. Existing in a vacuum, by itself, nobody would do content like Ifrit. The rewards are too little for the effort involved, and if that's all the game was most people would have long moved on. However, things like Ifrit do not exist in a vacuum, and in fact that's the beauty of the whole conversation. The Ifrit fight is not the skinner box. The Ifrit fight is what BENEFITS from the skinner box.

What's actually an example of operant conditioning in this game, is in fact all the content OUTSIDE what people are bitching about. Quests, levelling, Toto-Rak, Grand Companies... let me explain. In quests, you put in the effort to do the quest, and you get your reward in xp, gear, and plot. For levelling, you put in the effort and are rewarded with higher stats, and more abilities. This firmly sets into your mind that effort equates to reward. That if you keep working at something in this game, it will reward you. Then we have Toto-rak, a low level dungeon. However, it differs from the endgame dungeons in one important aspect: Every chest from the boss has a 50/50 chance for items of equal value. The chests scattered about have random rewards, but the big reward from the dungeons is 100%. You're gonna get something, it may not be the weapon for your job, but you're gonna get something. Finally, Grand Companies are a method of earning endgame gear through pure effort. Just get the seals and buy your gear. All of this firmly conditions you to play the game and get better gear. THAT is the skinner box. THAT is the chamber performing operant conditioning on you so you'll repeat a conditioned response.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

It's fairer to say that the whole game is a skinner box. Existing in a vacuum, by itself, nobody would do content like Ifrit. The rewards are too little for the effort involved, and if that's all the game was most people would have long moved on. However, things like Ifrit do not exist in a vacuum, and in fact that's the beauty of the whole conversation. The Ifrit fight is not the skinner box. The Ifrit fight is what BENEFITS from the skinner box.

What's actually an example of operant conditioning in this game, is in fact all the content OUTSIDE what people are bitching about. Quests, levelling, Toto-Rak, Grand Companies... let me explain. In quests, you put in the effort to do the quest, and you get your reward in xp, gear, and plot. For levelling, you put in the effort and are rewarded with higher stats, and more abilities. This firmly sets into your mind that effort equates to reward. That if you keep working at something in this game, it will reward you. Then we have Toto-rak, a low level dungeon. However, it differs from the endgame dungeons in one important aspect: Every chest from the boss has a 50/50 chance for items of equal value. The chests scattered about have random rewards, but the big reward from the dungeons is 100%. You're gonna get something, it may not be the weapon for your job, but you're gonna get something. Finally, Grand Companies are a method of earning endgame gear through pure effort. Just get the seals and buy your gear. All of this firmly conditions you to play the game and get better gear. THAT is the skinner box. THAT is the chamber performing operant conditioning on you so you'll repeat a conditioned response.

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I give you a tip of the hat good sir, very well done!

This game was literally just a skinner box when it started. No content. Only grinding. So I assume steering from that until after 2.0 is hard. However, that does not excuse the new end game content that is a ridiculous waste of time.

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Originally Posted by Ventus

I give you a tip of the hat good sir, very well done!

This game was literally just a skinner box when it started. No content. Only grinding. So I assume steering from that until after 2.0 is hard. However, that does not excuse the new end game content that is a ridiculous waste of time.

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Grinding does not equal a skinner box. Whether something is a skinner box or not has nothing to do with how much time it takes, or the rate of effort towards the reward. I'd actually argue that when the game came out, it FAILED at being a skinner box, since the large number of people who quit says that it didn't do a very good job of conditioning the players to stay glued to the game.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Grinding does not equal a skinner box. Whether something is a skinner box or not has nothing to do with how much time it takes, or the rate of effort towards the reward. I'd actually argue that when the game came out, it FAILED at being a skinner box, since the large number of people who quit says that it didn't do a very good job of conditioning the players to stay glued to the game.

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You're contradicting yourself. You claimed leves and questing were aspects of a skinner box, the core of this game when it came out and thus part of the grind. If you watched the video hulan posted it made a good comparison of diablo's reward system to skinner boxes. Players will go on quest (leve) kill mob get loot and reward and level up to feel progression. They are fooled into repeating the same task long beyond monotony and thus are trapped in a skinner box.

Perhaps you are confused on the definition

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Originally Posted by Ventus

You're contradicting yourself. You claimed leves and questing were aspects of a skinner box, the core of this game when it came out and thus part of the grind. If you watched the video hulan posted it made a good comparison of diablo's reward system to skinner boxes. Players will go on quest (leve) kill mob get loot and reward and level up to feel progression. They are fooled into repeating the same task long beyond monotony and thus are trapped in a skinner box.

Perhaps you are confused on the definition

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Actually, I think I just misread your prior post. Grinding (Or, more precisely, the way the level curve works in games) IS an example of operant conditioning, because as the individual is more conditioned they can taper off the reward rate (the level gain) slowly until it hits the point of monotony, without reducing motivation. I was saying that how "Grindy" it is (How much you need to grind in the first place before we even consider the level curve) doesn't have to do with whether it's conditioning or not. Both FFXI and WoW employ conditioning in their level curves, even though we can all agree WoW is a lot less "grindy" than FFXI was.

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Originally Posted by Noir

Don't blame the ppl that got garuda weapons before patch. Blame the whiners that bichted about it. It happened what I said it would happen. The noobs can't get a group and win it. And the good ls got them and still keep getting it now. You guys have to understand that good ls will always get everything. Easy or har way. The pick up groups had a chance before patch. Now deal with it. Think before bitching about non existent "exploits".

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Um excuse me? Did I hit a soft spot?

And would you quit with the "noob" crap? A lot of people that first start Garuda are going to be "noobs", HELL everyone was a noob when it first released. With elitist @sstards like you, these "noobs" won't have anything to do or anyone to teach them what to do and they'll just quit. I'm so sick of people like you.

And fyi, it might not have been an "exploit" in Yoshi's eyes since it was a mistake.. but it was an exploit. People abused it for their easy wins. Doesn't make everyone else a "noob" because they don't resort to craptastic, easy peasy strategies like the "good LS's" that are out there. Now go elsewhere.