Final Skinner Box 14

All credit goes to Hulan on this:

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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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And please don't say "all mmos are essentially built around skinner boxes/operant conditioning" because that would be setting the bar SO low....

MMOs can be better than this, and please for the love of god shy away from these blatant stalls for time SE. Players DESERVE rewards for working on content 50+ times.


inb4 "this thread again >.>"/"tldr"/"OP is a @#$@#$"

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

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Originally Posted by Masamune1004

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

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<3 ya!!!!!!!

Ok, I don't see WHY you felt the need to make a separate thread. As I mentioned in the other thread, you're kinda using the wrong terminology here. You say that thinking all MMOs are skinner boxes would be setting the bar low, but really they are. A skinner box doesn't mean a place where you keep repeating an action, hoping for a reward, but not getting one. A skinner box is the place that TEACHES you to do that action in the first place.

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. This teaches you that dungeons drop loot. 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.

Now, this sort of behavioral psychology isn't a bad thing necessarily. It can be used for good things, and can greatly help you learn any task faster, from tutorials in games (Games with good learning curves make GREAT use of conditioning to teach you how to play effectively in early levels), to doing your job. The problem is just when it's used to teach you to perform a task that you really shouldn't be doing in the first place, like throwing yourself at a 1% drop rate for a tiny smidgen of an increase in power in an MMO.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

Ok, I don't see WHY you felt the need to make a separate thread. As I mentioned in the other thread, you're kinda using the wrong terminology here. You say that thinking all MMOs are skinner boxes would be setting the bar low, but really they are. A skinner box doesn't mean a place where you keep repeating an action, hoping for a reward, but not getting one. A skinner box is the place that TEACHES you to do that action in the first place.

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. This teaches you that dungeons drop loot. 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.

Now, this sort of behavioral psychology isn't a bad thing necessarily. It can be used for good things, and can greatly help you learn any task faster, from tutorials in games (Games with good learning curves make GREAT use of conditioning to teach you how to play effectively in early levels), to doing your job. The problem is just when it's used to teach you to perform a task that you really shouldn't be doing in the first place, like throwing yourself at a 1% drop rate for a tiny smidgen of an increase in power in an MMO.

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Yes I believe you posted the exact same thing in the other thread similar to this, but the point of this thread is not to shed light on what skinner boxes can do FOR MMOs, it's about how this game in specific is exploiting them to derail the game from having content with any valid depth and reward system.

Skinner boxes aren't vital to teaching a player on how to play a game and that is a mistaken notion. If you watched the video that hulan posted it's intrinsic in a skinner box that it baits you into repeating an action not because it benefits YOU the person but usually the maker or developer in this case.

Learning how to surpass content does not go hand in hand with me killing ifrit 70+ times and getting nothing.

This thread is meant to focus on what is bad about skinner boxes in this game and how they are hurting it. Rather than discuss that it feels as if you deride them then lift them up just to spite the nature of this thread. Very odd.

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

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Originally Posted by Masamune1004

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

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Originally Posted by TheVedis

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

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I suppose nobody is willing to actually discuss anything XD

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Originally Posted by Ventus

Yes I believe you posted the exact same thing in the other thread similar to this, but the point of this thread is not to shed light on what skinner boxes can do FOR MMOs, it's about how this game in specific is exploiting them to derail the game from having content with any valid depth and reward system.

Skinner boxes aren't vital to teaching a player on how to play a game and that is a mistaken notion. If you watched the video that hulan posted it's intrinsic in a skinner box that it baits you into repeating an action not because it benefits YOU the person but usually the maker or developer in this case.

Learning how to surpass content does not go hand in hand with me killing ifrit 70+ times and getting nothing.

This thread is meant to focus on what is bad about skinner boxes in this game and how they are hurting it. Rather than discuss that it feels as if you deride them then lift them up just to spite the nature of this thread. Very odd.

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I have seen that video before. I've also taken psychology classes. My point is that you're using the term wrong. Killing Ifrit 70+ times and getting nothing is NOT an example of a skinner box. It's an example of something that BENEFITS from prior conditioning.

If the game was nothing but Ifrit, would you feel the need to keep repeating it for gear? Because of the drastically low rate of rewards, events like Ifrit actually do a very poor job of reinforcing behavior... if they even reinforce it at all.

I am not trying to say that events like Ifrit are good. I agree that things like Ifrit should be changed. I'm objecting to the term you are using.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

I have seen that video before. I've also taken psychology classes. My point is that you're using the term wrong. Killing Ifrit 70+ times and getting nothing is NOT an example of a skinner box. It's an example of something that BENEFITS from prior conditioning.

If the game was nothing but Ifrit, would you feel the need to keep repeating it for gear? Because of the drastically low rate of rewards, events like Ifrit actually do a very poor job of reinforcing behavior... if they even reinforce it at all.

I am not trying to say that events like Ifrit are good. I agree that things like Ifrit should be changed. I'm objecting to the term you are using.

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I've taken many psychology classes as well but I don't believe that is a precursor for mastering the knowledge around the skinner box because the term seems to be bended so frequently to whomever sees it fit. Besides tossing "Qualifications" in front of someone as an excuse for being right is a bit cheap.

I believe one of the main analogies used in the video was to that of a casino slot machine. We understand the odds are direly against us yet we continue to press on hoping for a reward since the odds are essentially random.

The reason doing ifrit 70+ times IS an example of a skinner box is because although most all players are aware the content rewards players very little and they may have exhausted all the fun and mastery they can out of it, they STILL attempt ifrit because they hope for that random chance to get a weapon. I'm not sure how we don't see eye to eye on this, but nonetheless it doesn't even seem to be what I'd mainly like to talk about anyways. We are just arguing definition and semantics.

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.

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.

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Originally Posted by Dragon

Cheesecake!

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Ooooo.....

We need more cheesecake box design!

Press button.

Receive Cheesecake.

Different Cheesecake every time.

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Originally Posted by Ventus

All credit goes to Hulan on this:






And please don't say "all mmos are essentially built around skinner boxes/operant conditioning" because that would be setting the bar SO low....

MMOs can be better than this, and please for the love of god shy away from these blatant stalls for time SE. Players DESERVE rewards for working on content 50+ times.


inb4 "this thread again >.>"/"tldr"/"OP is a @#$@#$"

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFZrzg62Zj0

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Originally Posted by Jinko

Ooooo.....

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Ya...

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

We need more cheesecake box design!

Press button.

Receive Cheesecake.

Different Cheesecake every time.

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Sounds good to me. ^.^;;

Skinner Box...like it...hate it...research before you flame/whine:

"1UP: A couple things in the game right now that seem to be, as Final Fantasy XI players might say, are "haunted by the ghost of Tanaka." For example, the Relic weapon quests that were just added yesterday seem to rely very heavily on luck. And this kind of thing is really discouraging to a lot of players. An element of luck is okay, but effort is more important. And there's always the thought that, yeah, if I do this enough times, I might get lucky and get it, but there's always the fear that they won't. Especially after the Ifrit and other boss battles. I know people say that they fought 75 times and they haven't gotten a weapon yet, and they're just really frustrated, and they're upset to see that same thing happening in other systems. So are there any plans to adjust the luck/effort balance of high-level content in the future?

NY: We can tell you that at version 2.0, a lot of things are going to be changing in this aspect. For example, like a token type of system, where if you do it enough times, you're going to get rewarded for doing it that many times. We also have something else prepared as well that's going to address this… we can't talk about it now, but we have many things in place that will address that issue.

And the other thing being that, the real need for the Need, Greed, and Pass type of system when things get dropped, things that are pretty much a global standard that we haven't achieved yet on Final Fantasy XIV. We understand that we have those problems, but with the current system, we can't address them. But we will be able to address them in 2.0 with the new system and the new engines. And so you can go back and tell the community that, come 2.0, we will actually have that global standard and you won't have to worry as much about these types of things. But again, that doesn't mean we're going to forget about our current version players. We're going to listen to the voices of the players, look at the forums, adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible for the players so they can experience this grand finale, the Seventh Umbral Era story, that ushers in 2.0."

So yes, they're aware you (being the ones who made 51432 threads on the same topic) hate RNG and they're going to change it. Honestly though, anything with a leveling system could be "Skinner Box'd". But yeah, I figured this was a complaint thread on the RNG stuff in the game so ^^b

Can you imagine after all this talk of "we'll make it happen on the 2.0 ver", they can't live up to some of them? Man, that'd be disappointing.

Just playing devil's advocate for a little here.

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Originally Posted by Ventus

I suppose nobody is willing to actually discuss anything XD

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Do you expect anything better from them? Especially "TheVedis", a guy that literally spends 90% of his waking life inside this game.

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Originally Posted by Chain

Do you expect anything better from them? Especially "TheVedis", a guy that literally spends 90% of his waking life inside this game.

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It couldn't possibly be because he didn't post anything that hasn't been discussed to death in 342124542524 other threads. No, not at all. The Horse. Is. Dead.

asking a player what they want in a game is the same as asking a starving kid what he wants to eat while walking down the aisles of a grocery store.

fruit by the foot?

Aisles, but yeah, I guess.

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Originally Posted by Silvano

that doesn't mean we're going to forget about our current version players. We're going to listen to the voices of the players, look at the forums, adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible for the players so they can experience this grand finale, the Seventh Umbral Era story, that ushers in 2.0."

So yes, they're aware you (being the ones who made 51432 threads on the same topic) hate RNG and they're going to change it. Honestly though, anything with a leveling system could be "Skinner Box'd". But yeah, I figured this was a complaint thread on the RNG stuff in the game so ^^b

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And here we are, 51432 threads later and still no official reply to the players in regards to the stupid RNG system. The only one we got was something like they have more ways to obtain gear in 2.0 which actually answers nothing in terms of the current loot system issue. Whats the point telling the interviewers "We're going to listen to the voices of the players" when in reality they have no answer for the 51432 players who started a thread on the topic so far. Current loot system and RNG sucks, no one likes it, its stressing out the players, it makes content hard to enjoy and more and more stressed out ppl are starting a new threads everyday or the give up and play something else. How long before they "adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible for the players so they can experience this grand finale, the Seventh Umbral Era story, that ushers in 2.0." so far its all talk and no action. Rather have Yoshida tell us players who made 51432 threads he is gonna "adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible" instead of telling some random interviewer who probably doesn't even play.

inb4 "this thread again >.>"/"tldr"/"OP is a @#$@#$"

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Originally Posted by Shura

And here we are, 51432 threads later and still no official reply to the players in regards to the stupid RNG system. The only one we got was something like they have more ways to obtain gear in 2.0 which actually answers nothing in terms of the current loot system issue. Whats the point telling the interviewers "We're going to listen to the voices of the players" when in reality they have no answer for the 51432 players who started a thread on the topic so far. Current loot system and RNG sucks, no one likes it, its stressing out the players, it makes content hard to enjoy and more and more stressed out ppl are starting a new threads everyday or the give up and play something else. How long before they "adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible for the players so they can experience this grand finale, the Seventh Umbral Era story, that ushers in 2.0." so far its all talk and no action. Rather have Yoshida tell us players who made 51432 threads he is gonna "adjust drop rates to reduce as much stress as possible" instead of telling some random interviewer who probably doesn't even play.

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Except that part where they talked about using a token system that you cut out...starting to sound like tv news stations :3