anti-fun systems

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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PleiadesBlackstar wrote:

After making my above post I realized that this is probably a hopeless debate for either side. Just like the p2w and pay for convenience argument over in general discussion and such, 2 sides simply have different definitions of "optional" that is making discussion pointless as all that is going to happen is both sides bickering about how the other side is wrong without ever fully compromising on the definition to clean up the debate.

Possibly.

But I do encourage you to read the edit I made to my post about 5 minutes before you responded to it.

Your edit just picks at semantics and is related to what I posted. When I or others say "optional" we intend it to mean what you put in your edit. Part of the argument is that we are leaving stuff unsaid that we didn't believe needed to be said where on the other side, you are taking the "optional" statement at face value which reads as more disrespectful.

So there is some mix of of accidental interpretation of disrespect and trying to be shorthand mixing badly together, as well as simple definition differences based on the context that is keeping the sides from coming to a conclusion. The former is a problem that can be cleared up easy enough but we are still fighting over the base definition in general (we may see roughly eye to eye right now but I can already foresee people who didn't read the whole thread so far to spark the fight from both sides again in the next few days.)

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PleiadesBlackstar wrote:

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gibbousmoon wrote:

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PleiadesBlackstar wrote:

After making my above post I realized that this is probably a hopeless debate for either side. Just like the p2w and pay for convenience argument over in general discussion and such, 2 sides simply have different definitions of "optional" that is making discussion pointless as all that is going to happen is both sides bickering about how the other side is wrong without ever fully compromising on the definition to clean up the debate.

Possibly.

But I do encourage you to read the edit I made to my post about 5 minutes before you responded to it.

Your edit just picks at semantics and is related to what I posted. When I or others say "optional" we intend it to mean what you put in your edit. Part of the argument is that we are leaving stuff unsaid that we didn't believe needed to be said where on the other side, you are taking the "optional" statement at face value which reads as more disrespectful.

So there is some mix of of accidental interpretation of disrespect and trying to be shorthand mixing badly together, as well as simple definition differences based on the context that is keeping the sides from coming to a conclusion. The former is a problem that can be cleared up easy enough but we are still fighting over the base definition in general (we may see roughly eye to eye right now but I can already foresee people who didn't read the whole thread so far to spark the fight from both sides again in the next few days.)

I'd say we are on the same page, yes.

And you are right to accuse me of picking at semantics. Sometimes it is necessary. "It's optional" is semantically a much broader statement than "The activities you list are not as optimal as you are representing them to be, and therefore their unfun nature does not impact the game's design as much as you claim." It may include the latter, but it in fact says much more than that, most of which is--as I described--irrelevant.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm quite salty that you all are still on the "optional" derail. I thought I totally killed with that post.

What's really important here is how GGG uses reward to motivate behavior.

For example, let's take OP's mention of the Chaos formula. As far as the 1 Chaos version goes, the design is motivating you to put random rares in your stash instead of simply vendoring them, which if you ask me is a rather deliberate part of their MTX plan. Doesn't seem that fun, but GGG gotta make those dollars somehow.

That doesn't bother me as much as the 2 Chaos formula though. The design is rewarding you for unloading your items without even figuring out how good they are first (so reward is really 0.1 Chaos + 1 Wisdom per item). The game's basically saying "hey you, put yourself on a looting treadmill where you only farm currency for trade/mapping purposes and never interesting gear... and I'll give you some candy." Really, really bad reward design, based on the "suffer for your pay" principle.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm not gonna lie, I'm quite salty that you all are still on the "optional" derail. I thought I totally killed with that post.

You spent about half of the post complaining about how people use 'mandatory', even though you were the first person in the thread to use the word mandatory.

If you bring up a new point in a discussion, you shouldn't be too surprised when people want to discuss it.

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What's really important here is how GGG uses reward to motivate behavior.

I agree! This was definitely the best take-away from your initial post. Thanks for stating it more clearly and succinctly this time around. :)

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For example, let's take OP's mention of the Chaos formula. As far as the 1 Chaos version goes, the design is motivating you to put random rares in your stash instead of simply vendoring them, which if you ask me is a rather deliberate part of their MTX plan. Doesn't seem that fun, but GGG gotta make those dollars somehow.

That doesn't bother me as much as the 2 Chaos formula though. The design is rewarding you for unloading your items without even figuring out how good they are first (so reward is really 0.1 Chaos + 1 Wisdom per item). The game's basically saying "hey you, put yourself on a looting treadmill where you only farm currency for trade/mapping purposes and never interesting gear... and I'll give you some candy." Really, really bad reward design, based on the "suffer for your pay" principle.

Pretty much nailed it - the only issue I think is that in reality, identifying items is *almost* never rewarding either. So it's not like you really miss out on that much by not identifying them. A lot of people don't even bother to pick up most rares, let alone ID them.

Deciding whether to do the chose recipe can often be a choice between interacting with that loot, or just not interacting with it at all.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm not gonna lie, I'm quite salty that you all are still on the "optional" derail. I thought I totally killed with that post.

What's really important here is how GGG uses reward to motivate behavior.

For example, let's take OP's mention of the Chaos formula. As far as the 1 Chaos version goes, the design is motivating you to put random rares in your stash instead of simply vendoring them, which if you ask me is a rather deliberate part of their MTX plan. Doesn't seem that fun, but GGG gotta make those dollars somehow.

That doesn't bother me as much as the 2 Chaos formula though. The design is rewarding you for unloading your items without even figuring out how good they are first (so reward is really 0.1 Chaos + 1 Wisdom per item). The game's basically saying "hey you, put yourself on a looting treadmill where you only farm currency for trade/mapping purposes and never interesting gear... and I'll give you some candy." Really, really bad reward design, based on the "suffer for your pay" principle.

Except many people look at that and say "why bother" then. That is where you end up at a divide where there is no clear conclusion that chaos recipe or simply playing is faster. Some people swear chaos recipe is worth the time and hassle, some swear that it is garbage no matter how you go about it. There is no proof that either one is vastly superior when you take into account average player efficiency with time and micromanagement so it all comes down to opinion. This makes it appear to be a subjective choice to choose to do the method you find unfun (and potentially p2w as you are alluding to slightly in regards to mtx) as you have a perfectly "healthy" alternative that you probably would find more fun, just vendoring and running maps faster in general and probably ending up with an equal amount of currency/item value as diligently doing the chaos recipe would net you.

So choosing either method their is risk reward scenario that has no clear winner without hundreds of hours of comparison. One person can choose to do the chaos recipe, iding every item for potentially good rolls burning time they could be farming the map rather than sifting through mod rolls, another could do unided and never know if they had a good roll worth selling for more than a chaos or so, and yet another could run maps with no regard to the recipe, id and vendor trash and move on, losing out on a steady paycheck so to speak of chaos orbs over time in favor of smaller loot cashins that overtime probably balance out if you are farming maps so much faster than those diligently using the recipe.

Same thing applies to vendor checks. Somebody could do them diligently potentially burning minutes of playtime to find nothing or something minor and luck out and get a good "vendor drop" like a 6l. Somebody else may just check the one in the town they end up in and move on, no other checking (probably the easiest balance of potential time waste and payout since you could return to actual "gameplay" almost immediately.) or you can ignore vendor checks entirely like I said before since vendor checks simply seem to be another "drop" so to speak and the odds of finding things worth the short time investment is minimal.

In both cases you have a few options to choose from with no clear cut best wealth generation per time spent on said activity choice. This makes them optional and complaining about these optional choices is kind of pointless as GGG isn't going to care as much because you are subjectively choosing to do one of the activities they give you to choose from while also deciding it is the unfun option. If you have roughly 3 equal choices and you pick the one you find unfun how is that GGG's game design problem?

As I said before, if doing the chaos recipe is objectively found to be flat out better/ GGG had designed it to be better, there is no problem labeling it unfun because the superiority of the method relates the the rewards system you speak of. In that scenario if you choose not to do the superior wealth method, you are risking falling behind too much to be compensated by the reward of regular drop rates. Thus the chaos recipe would become pseudo mandatory and therefore unfun because you are required to do it in order to gain a healthy amount of currency versus every other player and it severely limits you in "smart options", those you can do and still come out with equal reward rates as doing the chaos recipe. But when there is no clear winner as it is right now without some heavy hours of experimenting, if you find the chaos recipe boring and punishing - don't do it. Same as vendor checks.

Checking vendors is a waste of time, I'm pretty sure it is less efficient than not checking vendors. So there's the solution to that one, don't check vendors. In the time you spent checking the vendor, you could have done a couple dried lake runs, and probably gotten just as many 6S items, not to mention some fuse, alch, a chaos or two, etc. The only time it's worth it to check vendors, imo, would be early in the league IF you get lucky and have a surplus of transmutes/alts, and even then, ONLY if you want to sell chromatic orbs. So for most players, I think vendor checks are a waste of time.

Chaos recipe: As Pleiades said, some people swear by the chaos recipe, whereas some call it a waste of time. I don't think there's objective basis for either argument, so you can choose to find either argument persuasive. For me, I have plenty of stash space, and I just drop items in my 8 dump tabs until I'm ready to do a big sweep through and ID all the items, do chaos recipes, stone hammers, price-check whatever I'm going to sell, etc. And, I bank up 12 sets of gear before I even do the recipe (which takes about 2.5 tabs). And, I set a 1c buyout on all 2.5 of those tabs, and it often happens that people want to buy stuff from my "garbage chaos recipe" tabs. So for me, for my setup, it's worth it. If I had less stash space, or if I had a different method of sorting my stash, or if I just found it tiresome, then I would surely not choose to do the chaos recipe. Rather, I'd just ID and vendor immediately.

Master missions, ok you got me, some of those suck dog balls. But, it is viable to level your masters solo without doing rotations, it's just slower. You don't really lose out on currency, your gear is just worse for a little while. And, master rota's are one of the few reasons I ever talk to other players, so that's nice too. All in all, it doesn't bother me that much, but I can see why one would find master missions unfun.

Without getting into the "optional/mandatory" thing too much, the reason that I think the current systems are in place (at least with regard to chaos recipe and vendor shit) is that the rewards are all obtainable through other means, whether selling/trading for chaos/other currency, or through drops. Chaos recipe is intentionally time consuming, and the potential inefficiency involved in doing the recipe is the biggest reason many of us don't do it. I make 100+ chaos a day trading, easily, doing zero chaos recipes, spending as much time in maps killing mobs as I can, where I would make significantly less by doing the chaos recipe.

@char: you're bringing up a third point. I was talking about 1c vs 2c formula, you're adding "even pick up rare at all." Which isn't bad to bring up, but every relationship here is important, so 1c vs 2c is still important.

As far as "do I even pick this up?" goes, I feel what's important is that the correct answer to the question is a skill tester. For some rares, it should be worth it; for others, perhaps not, depending on things like clear speed, current wealth, etc. In any case, the difference should be trivial. The reason for this is that I don't believe the game should tell you "be a packrat" nor should it tell you "don't be a packrat" - balance means allowing multiple playstyles.

My point is: if you do pick it up, the reason to not identify items should be: using wisdom scrolls takes time (and scrolls), or perhaps a different type of currency is rewarded. It shouldn't be a situation where not identifying gives a strictly superior reward to identifying.

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Docbp87 wrote:

Without getting into the "optional/mandatory" thing too much, the reason that I think the current systems are in place (at least with regard to chaos recipe and vendor shit) is that the rewards are all obtainable through other means, whether selling/trading for chaos/other currency, or through drops. Chaos recipe is intentionally time consuming, and the potential inefficiency involved in doing the recipe is the biggest reason many of us don't do it. I make 100+ chaos a day trading, easily, doing zero chaos recipes, spending as much time in maps killing mobs as I can, where I would make significantly less by doing the chaos recipe.

This. Like Goodman says above you too. It is about choices and perceived efficiency. You are making plenty off trades so you don't bother. I have had the shittiest time making sales since Talisman (made 35 exalts that league. I have absolutely no idea why my average league currency at merge is like 10 ex max now except for easier trade accessibility due to public tabs) and I don't care about being super efficient so I do chaos recipe because I have space and find it fun. That doesn't mean either playing and trading or chaos recipe and trading is more or less efficient without studying it indepth and doing broad experiments, it just means different "gameplay" is more appealing to each individual person.

The difference between you and the OP is that I see you as somebody who said "this (chaos recipe) isn't fun, I'm not going to do it. I can still make currency anyway." and OP is saying more along the lines "This isn't fun for me, but I'm going to do it anyway even though I could still make currency without it. Why should I have to do this?" and then outsiders to the situation like me come in and say "ummmm... you don't have to you know?..." It apparently comes off as rude when the intention isn't to be rude but just to beg the question of why they don't just not do what it is they don't want or are required to do.

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ThatsSoGoodman wrote:

Checking vendors is a waste of time, I'm pretty sure it is less efficient than not checking vendors. So there's the solution to that one, don't check vendors. In the time you spent checking the vendor, you could have done a couple dried lake runs, and probably gotten just as many 6S items, not to mention some fuse, alch, a chaos or two, etc. The only time it's worth it to check vendors, imo, would be early in the league IF you get lucky and have a surplus of transmutes/alts, and even then, ONLY if you want to sell chromatic orbs. So for most players, I think vendor checks are a waste of time.

I check vendors when I want to find an item for skin transfer. The 6s and chrome items help make this process a lot more fun. :)