Simple question: if an activity is fun, would you still need a reward for doing it?

Rrramiriarn

RPG's have for a long time driven players to act for the pleasures of rewards (skill points, loot, quests, etc...), while almost any other type of game focused on making the basic action fun (immersive, interesting, staratigic thinking, adrenaline, etc...), and ofcourse, there is a lot of middle ground, such as adventure games, or campaigns that reward you with the advancement of the storyline, just for some basic examples.

here i am dicing it up and getting down to the most basics:

what do you think drives you (or drives you more then the other)? for which type of pleasure would you act?

examples:
if combat is interactive, tactical and interesting enough, would you fight for the sake of the fight?

if crafting was expressive and open enough for your creativity to go wild in your creation, or if gathering resources would have the adictive quality of a mini-game, would you do it just for its own sake?

Esorlleh

Your statement that there could be combat/minigame/crafting without reward is a bit of a paradox
Winning in combat alone could be considered a reward.. so is beating a minigame, or creating an item.
Games have rewards by necessity.

I understand what you mean though,.. you mean rewards that lead to a long-term goal ^_^ like a powerful character or high ranking etc.

In which case I'd say yes, I would do a long-term-goal-less action over and over for no reason other than the pure fun of it. Like DOTA on WC3 for example.. DOTA is a custom Warcraft game that has no connection with their ranking system what so ever. Yet I played it addictively few rounds a day for a while.

But I think the problem is that, even a fun minigame or a fun combat system, when placed in a MMO architecture, the fun loses its lustre and becomes a grind. This is the bane of all MMOs.

Imagine the funnest little minigame in the world. You would play it addictively every day just because it's fun.
Now imagine you HAD to play this game over and over whether you liked it or not in order to get that reward loot that the whole server is fighting for. After a few dozen tries you'll no longer be thinking 'fun' you'll be complaining 'grind grind grind'.
So the Option 1 in your poll, while it might hold true, will turn into Option 2 in an MMO.

I feel that this is because for MMOs, the main goal of the game can't help but be extremely large scale. Any multiplayer game, by nature of competition, creates a hierarchy. In MMOs this hierarchy involves few thousand people that you're at race against. Compared to this macro-goal, anything you accomplish will tend to feel minute and therefore grind-ish.

Could there be an MMO without a Macro goal that fabricates this grind?
No.. I don't think so. Put a bunch of people in a game together and they'll inevitably start comparing themselves to each other and will form a hierarchy nomatter what.

Existing MMOs try to combat this by adding complexity to the 'minigame' factor or by adding the illusion of short-term goals.

PvP is a good solution for complexity in most cases because human opposition is a lot more dynamic and interesting than AI, and many players enjoy the short-term competition. I would argue that it is PvP where skill comes into play, as opposed to time. Games like AO tried random generation of mission zones but the technology of it wasn't sophisticated enough to keep players interested. 
 
Some games try to give the feeling of short-term goals through instancing.. but I personally find this is a superficial fix.

Guildwars is an example of a game that tries to overcome the MMO grind fate by being made up entirely of these short-term goals. As we know, not only are most MMO players unhappy with segmented feel of the gameworld, but we don't even really consider it an MMO anymore.

I think the most interesting suggestion from your post is the crafting bit.
Crafting, i think, has great potential if it allows players a lot of flexibility and individuality.. which I have never seen as of yet in any MMO except maybe Tale in the Desert from what I've been told of the game. Destruction is a downward spiral. Once it's gone, there's nothing there. Wheras creation can grow upwards infinitely..

Sorry this post turned into an essay but your post made me think a lot and I was working out my thoughts as I typed
I'm still thinking about it in my head lol..

Good post ^_^

Volkmar

just wanted to point out that the poll question is a bit confusing.

Cause you ask "if an activity is fun, would you still NEED a reward for doing it"?

But the "yes" answer (so, yes, i would still need a reward) should be the "no" answer and other way around as your "yes" answer is "yes, i would do something without a reward in the end, if it is fun enough" .. and that means... "NO, i do not need a reward for doing something if it is fun" :P

Sorry to be picky but it is quite confusing :P

 

RemyVorender

lol, i've seen this exact thread of 3 different forum sites now...