Quote Originally Posted by linay View Post
Please explain the part in bold.
Think of it like the more general concept it belongs to, content obsoletion. When rewards stagnate, by not growing with the new options presented or being integrated into new reward systems in some other way, their content generally dies out except over their course of leveling where they briefly remain the most efficient option to some set of players.

Now, that 'problem' is normal for any MMO. Each expansion spreads its prior content thinner and thinner. Many things will undoubtedly have to be sped up, made optional, or trimmed entirely. That on it's own isn't the problem, though. The problem is when something exists in such a way that it signals to the player that it isn't important in its own right; it's just a stepping stone to the real thing. We then go to the next stone, but it's shaped in such a way as to hint that it's not the real thing either. So on and so forth. The pre-cap game then becomes increasingly less about what you're doing, in any sort of way, as how you're doing it, and that "how" becomes increasingly narrowed towards speed. Anything that doesn't lend towards greater efficiency is then devalued, not because of any problem necessarily with the thing itself, but because it doesn't get you to the promised thing in the future (which we don't know, but have to assume, is coming and is better because of how watered down or thinned out what we're doing now is).

Now, only part of that can be fixed through later reward systems. It cannot fix how content feels the first time through. It certainly cannot fix how the early game combat experience amounts to so little of what it did before pruning. But it can at least make it feel like those past pieces of content are meant to be seen as part of the game's world, instead of just something to move past.

Both in ARR and HW, the game took more care to reinvigorate old content that would otherwise go obsolete. That seemed at least something of a design concern back then.

Now, that too was through shaped reward systems -- the same thing I've been critiquing the use of in my last few posts -- but there are differences in both context and application we should account for.

In ARR, for instance, relic books gave specific dungeons, raids, FATEs, and trials of greater value to a particular player. (That could have been improved by making you complete only the majority, rather than all, tasks per book, but at least it got the ball rolling.) ARR's Light system for later periods of relics then rotated densities of light, making it a community effort to quickly find out which few dungeons, couple trials, and which raid had bonuses for the two-hour period -- cycles of spreading and repeating that gave players plenty of reasons to group up and to socialize over shout and FC chats. In HW, Wanderer's Tail did basically what books probably should have done from the start -- their random choices gave more options in how to fit your random tasks alongside those of friend's while pursuing a row or column reward. Put simply, given where and how those systems were applied, shaped reward systems at that time benefited variance without detracting too heavily from player choice, all while encouraging social interaction. Though, as with nearly everything, it could have been improved upon, that's a fair sight better than we see now. Now, as with so much else, only the barest "essentials" remain, but they seem devoid of any larger purpose. They aid rare queues, and that's good, but the benefits could be far more and the negative effects nearly inexistant. Those benefits could include boons to social interaction and letting the player feel like they have 6+ years' worth of world to explore and enjoy. The negatives need not include, through systemically encouraged playtime intervals and durations, the relative discouragement of all else for anyone with little time per week; it needn't assert control without a plan to actually benefit the player's experience.

But that's what we seem to see so much of now: too much is given as if by obligation without an actual plan for how the player will benefit in the long-term and little caution for long-term consequences. "Dungeons don't matter because they're almost immediately obsolete." Design used to indicate a very different thought-process, even if it was mere coincidence to some plan to merely increase time played hours, and the game benefited for it.

To answer fully, though, content provision is just one many "other systems" that I feel has been shorted over the years. These also include things for which payoffs are increasingly diminished and therefore start to feel removed from the intended experience, like difficulty curves, combat complexity curves over class/job levels, positionals, crowd control, the (former) nuances of tanking, healing, and so much else. But the impacts of those things on the game -- save that most are not fixed with time or levels -- are surprisingly similar to the impacts felt in devaluing (or letting be devalued) past content or portions of the game world over time, and usually follow from similar design philosophies.

By stagnated rewards, do you mean there are too many contents giving the same reward? If so, how does that make them less a part of the intended experience because I would think the opposite is true as then you can choose what you want to do and it would still be a valid choice.
A stagnated reward is one which has stagnated; it has stopped growing -- or doing anything -- with or based on the circumstances around it. It's dropped out of the race, so to speak. It just... sits there forevermore.

As to how that makes it seem like less of the intended experience, read the above or the previous couple posts.

If stagnation meant balance, then yes, it would provide less pressure upon our choices, making them each potentially valid. The only demerit of such would be a less shared experience and longer queue times as players are less funneled into each other. Of course, those demerits are basically the only reason the devs would direct our actions in the first place. Thus, we should aim to strike a balance between the two based on our current player populations. (Of course, those funnels could probably be made more effective, too, by changes to our queue system.)

On the other hand, it's true that if every content gives the same reward, you can favor the content that is more efficient, but again that is your choice. If every content gives the same reward, you can still make the choice to do the content that you prefer and sacrifice some efficiency while still working toward the same reward.
If all content gives the same reward, no one is more efficient than the others. Reward, to anyone seeking its accumulation, takes into account the time spent achieving it. A piece of content is more rewarding when it provides the most over the time spent in and in preparation for it, not just per run; the last is generally irrelevant.

Yes, of course one can choose a less efficient choice. But as the disparity between, say, leveling content options increases in a game that increasingly signals to players that it doesn't really start until endgame, that choice is increasingly pressured. That's why the how much is so important. A difference, say, of 3% is going to the affect the decisions of more players than would 0.3%, and 30% far more than the 3%.