Posts made by hooby

According to the self-determination theory and the so-called overjustification effect, offering extrinsic rewards does hurt intrinsic motivation quite a bit. This of course requires that the task at hand does have at least some intrinsic motivation to begin with.
Truly engaging with a community and looking forward to game release can be rewarding in and of itself. When linked to external rewards through, that feeling of something being it's own reward, vanishes quickly.

See: https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/1971_Deci.pdf
and: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12712628_A_Meta-Analytic_Review_of_Experiments_Examining_the_Effect_of_Extrinsic_Rewards_on_Intrinsic_Motivation
and: https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2001_DeciKoestnerRyan.pdf

BUT, if the task at hand is trite and uninteresting to begin with - then and only then - can extensive reward structures motivate people to do it anyway - which typically leads to people "grinding" their rewards. And that's exactly the effect that many F2P games - especially mobile F2P games - exploit expertly, with gameplay that's intentionally boring, but linked to dopamine-optimized reward structures and audio-visual flourishes previously only seen on slot machines.

@maze said in Best mmo features:

but to also buy from that region since rare+ would be harder to find.

When combined with local markets, northern iron would be cheaper in the north and more expensive in the south - and vice versa for southern iron.

Players then could become traders, by building some mule cart or something and transporting goods north to south.

@Xzoviac said in Best mmo features:

What are your favourite mmo features

• a persistent open world
• ALL the items being player made, plus item degradation. having to repair stuff is slightly inconvenient - but a small price to pay for the wonders this does for interdependency, the economy, and equipment diversity, etc.
• a progression system where veterans and newbies can group up and play together in a meaningful way
• local markets and regional pricing. no auction house pushing prices so low that crafted items are worth less than materials needed to make them...
• in-world player housing
• clan cities, with their own tech progression
• the game world having different regions/biomes that come with different resources. like - every place could have iron, but the iron mined in the north comes with somewhat different attributes than that mined in the south. that would allow every place to craft every item - but for getting specific bonuses you'd have to get the specific type of iron
• player tools for creating your own events. I want barn dances, marriages, bingo nights, theater troupes, music performances, sylvester parties, poetry recitals, cooking contests, harvest festivals... you name it.

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@dj35
The answer to that question can be found in my very first post above.

I did go back later, and read the more interesting ones - especially the design journals. I skipped the stuff an Alpha tests, Kickstarter campaigns and the store. The articles tell you some things about the game world, races, the character progression system, combat and other game mechanics. But all of those things - combat, character progression, races, story etc. - could equally be part of a themepark or a sandbox, and don't tell you much about what strategies the released game will employ to drive player retention, engagement and conversion rates.

The Foundation on the other hand is pretty much a textbook example of a specific such strategy.

@Xzoviac said in First Impressions:

this also has lots of info
https://forum.fracturedmmo.com/topic/1612/a-compilation-of-everything-we-know-about-fractured/75

Thanks - that is a VERY helpful thread. Most of it is combat stuff, and/or very specific details, but a few things do relate to the "sandboxy-ness" of the title:

• There's no global bank, auction house or market.
• It's possible to play as a crafter-only character.
• Items will lose durability and eventually break.
• A bit of info about governing a town.
• Info about quests.

@Shivashanti said in First Impressions:

I believe it will be a true sandbox like you want. Maybe with some modernisation but i'm pretty sure you will get the freedom you need. I don't see where the devs create a community which follows carotts. The Foundation thing is just a nice thing to have while we wait and a pretty nice way to let the word of fractured spread over the internet. It has nothing to do with ingame mechanics.

I wish I could believe that too...

Can you throw me a link or point me to something that would support such a belief?

Well, I digress.

Let me try once more to get my original point across... it seems I've done a bad job of explaining myself so far...

I'm hungry for a specific type of MMO. I call it "sandbox" - but you know, the term "sandbox" means many different things to many people. If you were to ask "what is a sandbox?" to random gamers right now, the most prominent answer would probably be "Grand Theft Auto" - because that's what millions of people associate with the term "sandbox".

But when I say "sandbox" - what I think of are games like Ultima Online or Star Wars Galaxies. What differentiated those games from other MMOs in my eyes, is that you could be pretty much anyone. Of course you could be an adventurer, a combatant - but you could also be an Entertainer, or a Crafter, or a Trader or a Mayor, or a Barkeep - including roles that were not even specifically designed for by the developers. That level of freedom is what I associate with the term "sandbox".

For me personally, a sandbox MMO is diametrically opposed to a theme-park MMO. A theme-park offers you "rides" which you can take - often repeatedly. And they tell you "go here - to that" - "at level X go there, do that" - etc. - and the core principle is, that you get rewarded for doing what the game tells you to do. Following the carrot on the stick is absolutely central to that type of play.

What I am looking for, what I really want - is a true sandbox MMO. And to me that means, that no such carrots are waved in your face. That you are not "supposed" to this, or that - but that you have to find your own way. And whatever you choose to do does come with intrinsic rewards rather then extrinsic ones. To me, a sandbox is decidedly NOT about doing my daily quests and weekly quests, earning my points, getting my loot boxes. It's pretty much the exact opposite of that.

What are the chances that Fractured is that kind of game that I'm looking for? I mean, aren't they already creating a community of people who like following those carrots? Why would they build such community features, when their game was for an entirely different target audience? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense, to have the game appeal to exactly the same crowd, that they are already attracting to this community?

So, considering what I am looking for - do you really think that this game will deliver what I desire from a sandbox MMO? That more free-form play experience, that's totally not about reward schemes and repeatable quests and such?

Because my first impressions say, this is highly unlikely to be exactly that sort of game, which I am looking for...

I hope I managed to get my point across this time.