Some thoughts on motivation

Over at Alternative Chat, there is a post that I wanted to talk about. I'm not done with this post but I want to get it up now and come back to it.  Be sure to check the comments too. I generally agree with both of them.

First of all, she tricked me into thinking that she knew there was a patch about flying coming tonight. I should have known better but, alas, no flying yet.

But since I enjoy reading her blog when I can (need to add that to my list on the side), I read on. The thing is, there is a sentence that I feel misses something. Or maybe it’s that it misses me.

“The many who complained about not being motivated to leave their Garrisons were kept there by rewards that involved little or no effort at all…”

I’ve seen this idea bandied about and I’m curious how accurate it is. It isn’t for me and I’m not convinced it is that way for others. I’m sure there are some that feel this way but I’m not convinced it is a huge number of people.

This is just as anecdata as anything else but, there are a lot of reasons that I haven’t done much outside of garrisons and easy rewards and free materials are pretty low on the list.

1) Time – Both in order of importance and size of impact. It takes me a while to process the garrison chores. I don’t use Master Plan or any similar add-ons, so before the latest patch, I would have to wait for the animation to process through each mission. If I had stuff done at the dwarven war bunker, I would go and see what upgrade pieces I had and perhaps start the next work order for those. Then upgrade and reassign followers and send them back out, which took a little while as I was trying to find the best combinations for my missions. Then, I might want to go process my salvage, sell stuff, mail stuff to DE or auction. After that I might do a pet battle or perhaps my crafting. After those were done, off to collect my mine and herb garden. Okay, done! Now off to repeat on 4 more 100’s and 5 more lower garrisons.

2) Story – Yes, the stories in the areas while leveling tended to be good but overall, the story for this expansion is not very engaging for me. It is Siege of Ogrimmar, part 2, now with more Orcs! Blizzard has never been great about making their story flow for non-raiders, but this expansion is every worse. Stuff happens and I have no idea why. I really do try to read the quests and such but, in game, there is so little explanation of why we are doing anything.

3) Flying – I miss it. It made the content more fun at max level and it gave me something to look forward to. The lack of flying really killed my immersion. And when Blizzard, originally, said that there would be no flying ever in Draenor, I had little motivation to move forward. I never posted about it, but the biggest impetus to start blogging may have been to try to explain how flying helps immersion for me and my complete and utter bafflement at others that said it hurt theirs. I wasn’t discounting their view (although they often discounted mine), I was just trying to understand it. It wasn’t purely about flying at that point. It was also about how I felt in the game, as a player. This conversation over on Tome of the Ancient hits on it pretty well. (I was Lurking reader way back then)

The rest of the quote above is a different problem for me too.

“…and this is probably part of the reason why Ships now have a destructible element worked into the algorithm. Because a lot of people are now addicted to the notion of the 100% success rate, Blizzard have a problem. That means anything below 100% becomes pointless, and by definition this could include a fair proportion of all normal gameplay.

Fixing this problem however should be simple with the right rewards.”

One problem for me is that this is, essentially, out of my hands. It’s gambling at less than 100% which I don’t have a problem with, but that’s not why I play WoW. For the game mechanics of WoW, I want it to be about my skills and abilities, not random number generators. It isn’t about failure and losing things. It’s that the investment of time and resources that I’m gambling isn’t worth it.

Look at it this way. If I go to LFR, I can fail a lot of times, especially as I’m learning the fight. But, I can keep trying. I can look at what went wrong, pay my repair bill, and try again. With follower missions, if I fail it, I don’t get to try again. It’s gone. And the thing is, the only real control I have over that outcome is if I get my success rating to 100%. Beyond that, it is all up to the RNG. Not my skills or abilities or anything else. Just an algorithm.

When people say “Oh, you just want an ‘I win button’ ”, no I don’t. I want to learn and improve and earn. What I most decidedly do NOT want is a button that determine what I can do in game, is random, and I have no real influence over.

The shipyard just magnifies that problem. At least with followers if I fail, I don’t have to get a completely new follower, who will have completely random stats too.

Isn't this what she is saying?  Yes and no.  The point isn't that I have to have 100% success.  It's that we have two different games. The one I like to play and want to play is, mostly, based on my abilities. The one that I don't enjoy but am being forced to do if I want to get back to the one based on my abilities, is mostly up to an algorithm, and that isn't fun for me.

(just found out I can't change the permalink name.  Learning new things all the time)