There is nothing wrong with instant gratification

[jdnyc]

If you achieve everything with little to no work, there is no sense of accomplishment. You will get bored and move on to do something else. There is everything wrong with instant gratification and it is what has destroyed the genre.

[Daragust]

In addition to what has been said, instant gratification causes you to want the next thing even faster and easier. This means that over time you get less and less out of each gain and need either larger gains or more of them to be happy. Many MMO's have burned out because they simply can't keep up with the gratification cycle they have instantiated and people get bored/numb. There have been studies, not gonna go find one but there have been several, that prove that people take better care of and feel more pride in objects they worked for than those they were given. I agree there is a tedium point where the reward isn't worth the effort, but little to no effort means a worthless reward. Aim for the middle of that curve and you'll be a much happier person.

[Freakiie]

In addition to what has been said, instant gratification causes you to want the next thing even faster and easier. This means that over time you get less and less out of each gain and need either larger gains or more of them to be happy. Many MMO's have burned out because they simply can't keep up with the gratification cycle they have instantiated and people get bored/numb. There have been studies, not gonna go find one but there have been several, that prove that people take better care of and feel more pride in objects they worked for than those they were given. I agree there is a tedium point where the reward isn't worth the effort, but little to no effort means a worthless reward. Aim for the middle of that curve and you'll be a much happier person.

This is a very good point I've seen in F2P games over and over. The people that didn't spend thousand of dollars (myself included) to get high lvl, well geared characters have a lot more attachment to those characters than the ones that just smack thousands of dollars at the game, sit around instantly in top gear and then go like "so what should I actually do in this game?". A lot of those super heavy cashshoppers quit just as fast as they got their gear and give their accounts away, while the people that worked hard are a lot more attached to their characters and you wouldn't see them part with them anywhere near as fast. Unfortunately with how easy some games become you don't really get that attachment to your characters anymore since it just feels way too easy and there's no sense of accomplishment. Your character isn't something you poured hours of work in anymore, it's just there and it seems almost logical it's max lvl and everything.

Now people will go on about skinner boxes and how that's bad etc, but lets face it, working towards a goal is a lot more fun than just sitting around and instantly getting your top gear. It's why so many people don't like private servers, there's just no sense of accomplishment. While I can't deny having to run the same dungeon over and over isn't very good design, especially when there's a lot of potential dungeons SE could make viable, instant gratification is even worse.

Getting endgame gear should feel like an accomplishment, but the journey towards that gear should be fun too. Unfortunately too many people nowadays can't see the journey anymore and just want the goal right now, which considering how straightforward the journey SE has made is, isn't such a big surprise. With the rebalancing of tome drops with the next hotfix I hope this changes and we actually get multiple viable dungeons to run. That way there doesn't need to be an instant gratification, but the journey isn't the same dungeon over and over either.