Intermittent Reinforcement

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aimlessgun wrote:

Problem with this is that it isn't correct saying GGG does itemization/droprates based on the market. GGG balances droprates/orb effects around an average time it would take for you to completely pimp out your character, and making that time quite long, so that someone could continually strive to improve their characters for years. {GGG cares about Time to Pimp Gear-TTPG}

You have a point and could be right, and since we can't read their minds (and they rarely post here, so perhaps you should ask on reddit); regardless, TTPG is related to market value, at least indirectly if not directly. Also, why would they mention how much a white item is worth if that wasn't part of their thinking? Furthermore, GGG have posted several statements about the in-game economy. It's not hard to deduce from those statements that they are very much focused on market values.

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aimlessgun wrote:

2nd problem is that self found is not untenable, just that people are either not good enough at the game or are playing bad specs, or are playing melee, or are very unlucky. The 'playing melee part' is a legit issue, and the 'very unlucky' part is what this thread is about, but I bet that the first two issues account for most people who think self found is somehow broken/impossible.

Perhaps I was exaggerating a bit in saying that self-found is untenable, although there's a difference between that and impossible. My opinion is that self-found is broken because it is much more time consuming than trading for decent (not necessarily godly) gear.

The previous points you've made, I somewhat understand, but to claim that most people simply are not good enough or are playing bad specs is incredibly presumptuous. Give me a break--PoE is NOT very difficult to play. What's hilariously ironic is I've used a slightly modified version of one of your (aimlessgun) builds after realizing that creative specs tend to fail. Well, it worked okay compared to some of my other characters, but I ran into the same sort of problems with orbs/luck. LOL

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UnderOmerta wrote:

I think you'd be surprised how many of those "bad specs", with better gear, suddenly become viable and very good specs. Some specs are more gear dependent than others. Others have more severe viability curves (extreme viability at high level of gear, mediocre at lower levels).

Very true. Build diversity is severely limited by RNG within RNG ontop of RNG gear checks. This is compounded if you do not trade because crafting is a joke. Many people, like myself, hoard orbs to trade (i.e. knowing the odds of gambling versus buying is a huge disincentive to using most orbs).

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jeois wrote:

The previous points you've made, I somewhat understand, but to claim that most people simply are not good enough or are playing bad specs is incredibly presumptuous. Give me a break--PoE is NOT very difficult to play.

What is truly presumptuous is some complaints I see from people who have played for like a month, or only have a couple lvl 50 characters or whatever, and they assume they they have somehow learned all they need to learn and are playing as well as they can be playing, and that it is totally the game's fault that they are failing (not saying this is you, just that I see this around the forums).

If you're playing self found, PoE is difficult to play :) Not just talking about the mechanics of clicking on stuff, but the knowledge of what you can do to improve your character, the knowledge of what every enemy does, what to expect in every zone, how to deal with all the enemy abilities, and further how to react to those enemies in a way appropriate for you build and current gear.

And for builds, even if you have a good build, the knowledge of when to take which passive points, the knowledge of when to change your planned order to adjust to gear drops, when to take a shortcut to a priority and then do a respec back, etc. Even something as seemingly skill-free and copyable as a build is not mindless.

Er anyways this is a huge tangent, sorry :/

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jeois wrote:

You have a point and could be right, and since we can't read their minds

No, I can't read minds, but I do feel that after following these guys for nearly three years I would have at least some insight on how they do things :) But nobodys going to take my word for it I guess haha.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Er anyways this is a huge tangent, sorry :/
...
No, I can't read minds, but I do feel that after following these guys for nearly three years I would have at least some insight on how they do things :)

Yeah, we got a little off-topic about difficulty and self-found stuff.

Anyway, I believe randomness could affect difficulty, but if it is the primary factor, then we're not talking about difficulty or effort involved; instead, we're talking about the role of chance/luck.

This is a very interesting thread which delves into the psychology of gambling in PoE, and OP (moosifier), in my opinion, gave excellent analysis and suggestions.

You may have followed GGG for 3 years, but from what I've seen them accomplish in 3 months (since OB), this issue is highly unlikely from being addressed in any significant way. That was my original point: the development direction is based on their arbitrary ideology--something that is hard to comprehend for many rational players.

For what it's worth, I deeply respect that GGG have principles, and I like most aspects of the game because of that. However, if your focus is too narrow-minded, the result is you overlook constructive feedback like OP. Everyone should be mature and self-aware enough to reevaluate viewpoints/beliefs/opinions which could possibly be mistaken.

Now, I'm getting too abstract and philosophical... my bottom-line is I'm disappointed this thread will most likely be ignored like all the others about this topic, and I'm fairly certain many other players feel the same.

Something that bothers me about threads like this is when people say things like "the game is not rewarding enough." However, the game rewards have no use outside the game, nor are they (legally) convertible to anything outside the game. What I'm saying is that game objects rewards have neither intrinsic value nor convertible value, their only value derives from the acceptance of the game construct. So what basis is there for saying that the game's rewards are not enough when they cannot be compared to anything else?

I would argue that what makes a game rewarding has nothing to do with a character's progress within the game. Rewards have to do with emotional investment. Emotions are not concerned with the mathematical nuance of how much your character has progressed. The game needs to have more than just leveling up and loot progression to maintain emotional interest.

There needs to be excitement and drama to keep players invested. Instead, this game demands players always think ahead and plan- very cerebral actions. This works fine for a while but the problem is that we humans are too intelligent. Eventually we will figure out the best solutions. Since we are fighting against an AI instead of other humans, the progression will eventually end no matter how cleverly GGG tries to extend the game to last longer. Once the cerebral side of the game (which includes all the leveling, gear upgrades, and other kinds of progression) has been solved- and it will eventually be solved no matter what- the only thing left to keep players attached is the emotional investment. IMO, POE's focus on being "hardcore" has sabotaged the degree to which players can become emotionally invested in the game. Things which should be exciting are not. Events which have the potential to be dramatic are not. Instead, the game's relentless focus on punishing mistakes as harshly as possible causes players to avoid experimentation and instead repeat predictable content (in other words- boring) as much as possible. Imposing boredom upon your players is one of the best possible ways to reduce emotional investment.

So if the game is not rewarding, it is not because of the lack of progression. That is an unavoidable reality that must eventually be confronted by all players. It is not rewarding because the game lacks drama, excitement, variety, or anything else to keep players emotionally invested.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

Something that bothers me about threads like this is when people say things like "the game is not rewarding enough." However, the game rewards have no use outside the game, nor are they (legally) convertible to anything outside the game. What I'm saying is that game objects rewards have neither intrinsic value nor convertible value, their only value derives from the acceptance of the game construct. So what basis is there for saying that the game's rewards are not enough when they cannot be compared to anything else?

I would argue that what makes a game rewarding has nothing to do with a character's progress within the game. Rewards have to do with emotional investment. Emotions are not concerned with the mathematical nuance of how much your character has progressed. The game needs to have more than just leveling up and loot progression to maintain emotional interest.

So if the game is not rewarding, it is not because of the lack of progression. That is an unavoidable reality that must eventually be confronted by all players. It is not rewarding because the game lacks drama, excitement, variety, or anything else to keep players emotionally invested.

When people say the game isn't rewarding enough, at least in the case of this game, they're usually referring to the ratio of time and effort put into the game to an expected outcome (the reward). In ARPGs, it is a genre convention to expect that killing a ton of monsters will produce the "reward" of gearing up in an amount of time that feels appropriate, and doesn't make the player feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall; this is making progress, which is also a key aspect of any RPG.

Everyone knows that the progression will end eventually, and in it's own way that is sort of the point; having some sort of incremental progression towards the finality of having the best gear, being the highest level, beating the final boss, is a large part of the drive to play in RPGs. The problem with POE right now is that drops are stingy, when things do drop there is so much multi-layered RNG, combined with garbage stats, and the overtuned nature of merciless, all narrowing what stats are even really desirable/useable, that you often find yourself thirsting for anything that feels like progression; this game is VERY prone to extreme peaks and valleys, and many people are either barely scraping by, or ridiculously rich, there is little middle ground.

I agree with you about the game lacking "drama, excitement and variety" in ways, but arguing that lack of character progression in an RPG has no meaning, or value in regard to keeping people invested in the game, is pretty off target.

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Obsidus wrote:

When people say the game isn't rewarding enough, at least in the case of this game, they're usually referring to the ratio of time and effort put into the game to an expected outcome (the reward). In ARPGs, it is a genre convention to expect that killing a ton of monsters will produce the "reward" of gearing up in an amount of time that feels appropriate, and doesn't make the player feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall; this is making progress, which is also a key aspect of any RPG.

Everyone knows that the progression will end eventually, and in it's own way that is sort of the point; having some sort of incremental progression towards the finality of having the best gear, being the highest level, beating the final boss, is a large part of the drive to play in RPGs. The problem with POE right now is that drops are stingy, when things do drop there is so much multi-layered RNG, combined with garbage stats, and the overtuned nature of merciless, all narrowing what stats are even really desirable/useable, that you often find yourself thirsting for anything that feels like progression; this game is VERY prone to extreme peaks and valleys, and many people are either barely scraping by, or ridiculously rich, there is little middle ground.

I agree with you about the game lacking "drama, excitement and variety" in ways, but arguing that lack of character progression in an RPG has no meaning, or value in regard to keeping people invested in the game, is pretty off target.

I did not say that progression has no meaning- I said that its meaning is for the cerebral part of the brain and not the emotional part of the brain. The reason that's a problem is because we fight against an AI. The AI can eventually be solved, and then there is nothing else to entertain the cerebral side of the brain.

Once you get to the point where all you need is chaos resist on your gear or something like that ("the game is not rewarding anymore")- then you already know solution, there are just a few hoops to jump through to execute that solution (ie. actually finding the gear). At this point, there is nothing left for the cerebral side of your brain to work on while you are looking for that last piece of chaos resist on gear. This is what I am getting at: the game needs to engage players emotionally to motivate them to continue the search. You have already transcended the point where the game is cerebrally challenging, and now the game is no longer emotionally rewarding either-- the game no longer pleasurably engages the brain in any fashion.

The emotional investment is what gives one the drive to keep looking for that chaos resist on their gear. The reward is that the journey brings excitement, drama, variety, etc. Actually finding the piece of chaos resist to complete the gear re-activates the cerebral challenge in that you can now look for a flaw in the new thing and identify a new gear objective. But that only lasts for a short time. The vast majority of the time is spent grinding away the monsters to jump through the hoop of actually finding the gear. The only way the game can engage the player through this is by having some kind of emotional pull. Unfortunately the emotional pulls of POE are weak at best.

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PolarisOrbit wrote:

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Obsidus wrote:

When people say the game isn't rewarding enough, at least in the case of this game, they're usually referring to the ratio of time and effort put into the game to an expected outcome (the reward). In ARPGs, it is a genre convention to expect that killing a ton of monsters will produce the "reward" of gearing up in an amount of time that feels appropriate, and doesn't make the player feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall; this is making progress, which is also a key aspect of any RPG.

Everyone knows that the progression will end eventually, and in it's own way that is sort of the point; having some sort of incremental progression towards the finality of having the best gear, being the highest level, beating the final boss, is a large part of the drive to play in RPGs. The problem with POE right now is that drops are stingy, when things do drop there is so much multi-layered RNG, combined with garbage stats, and the overtuned nature of merciless, all narrowing what stats are even really desirable/useable, that you often find yourself thirsting for anything that feels like progression; this game is VERY prone to extreme peaks and valleys, and many people are either barely scraping by, or ridiculously rich, there is little middle ground.

I agree with you about the game lacking "drama, excitement and variety" in ways, but arguing that lack of character progression in an RPG has no meaning, or value in regard to keeping people invested in the game, is pretty off target.

I did not say that progression has no meaning- I said that its meaning is for the cerebral part of the brain and not the emotional part of the brain. The reason that's a problem is because we fight against an AI. The AI can eventually be solved, and then there is nothing else to entertain the cerebral side of the brain.

Once you get to the point where all you need is chaos resist on your gear or something like that ("the game is not rewarding anymore")- then you already know solution, there are just a few hoops to jump through to execute that solution (ie. actually finding the gear). At this point, there is nothing left for the cerebral side of your brain to work on while you are looking for that last piece of chaos resist on gear. This is what I am getting at: the game needs to engage players emotionally to motivate them to continue the search. You have already transcended the point where the game is cerebrally challenging, and now the game is no longer emotionally rewarding either-- the game no longer pleasurably engages the brain in any fashion.

The emotional investment is what gives one the drive to keep looking for that chaos resist on their gear. The reward is that the journey brings excitement, drama, variety, etc. Actually finding the piece of chaos resist to complete the gear re-activates the cerebral challenge in that you can now look for a flaw in the new thing and identify a new gear objective. But that only lasts for a short time. The vast majority of the time is spent grinding away the monsters to jump through the hoop of actually finding the gear. The only way the game can engage the player through this is by having some kind of emotional pull. Unfortunately the emotional pulls of POE are weak at best.

I see what you're saying now; your other post made it sound like you were trying to form an argument for people to get over complaining about the shitty item progression in this game, which rubbed me the wrong way, because there is an awful lot of sophistry on these forums that is well written, but is essentially a sophisticated rationalization to hand wave away the games dire flaws.

Unfortunately, I agree with you that PoE is not a game that encourages much emotional investment. Granted, it's a monster mashing ARPG, so there's only so much we can expect, but yeah.

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Obsidus wrote:

When people say the game isn't rewarding enough, at least in the case of this game, they're usually referring to the ratio of time and effort put into the game to an expected outcome (the reward). In ARPGs, it is a genre convention to expect that killing a ton of monsters will produce the "reward" of gearing up in an amount of time that feels appropriate, and doesn't make the player feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall; this is making progress, which is also a key aspect of any RPG.

Although I guess this is all true from the character's point of view... what about the player?

The player also puts in time and effort, and expects reward at a certain ratio. So why has it become "a genre convention" that his reward is... a bigger sword? All that's good for is killing more monsters, for which the reward is... an even bigger sword! Infinite regress. The grind.

What works for the character does not necessarily work for the player.

This whole Skinner-box "intermittent reinforcement" movement is premature enlightenment, aka putting the cart before the horse. I'm not saying there's no science to it; I'm sure that people have done perfectly valid studies of slot players at casinos or maybe even Diablo 2 players and came up with psychological observations that would stand up to peer review. However, that doesn't mean that you can add intense RNG spikes to just anything and produce the same results.

A lot of these "intermittent reinforcement" types forget a key assumption: that they are intermittently reinforcing. That isn't the same thing as intermittently handing out nearly-useless crap the user doesn't desire with a cheesy smile. I'm sure those casino observations would have turned out different if the slot machines were paying out Monopoly money.

The reason these psychological effects were prominent in a game like Diablo 2 was that you became much more invested in your character. Their lows were your lows, their scares were your scares, their triumph was your triumph. This (or something like it, I don't know, D2 was a long time ago for me) allowed intermittent reinforcement to work; it was not intermittent reinforcement that caused player satisfaction. Cart, meet horse.

Intermittent reinforcement is the last step in polishing a great ARPG. Simply put, it magnifies the feelings players feel about the game, and is capable of turning a group of relatively impressed followers into rabid fanboys. In the same way, it is capable of turning a group of mildly dejected gamers into a forum lynch mob. Instead of focusing so much on virtual slot machines, it would be better to deal with more important matters first -- like making us care about our characters in the first place.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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Obsidus wrote:

When people say the game isn't rewarding enough, at least in the case of this game, they're usually referring to the ratio of time and effort put into the game to an expected outcome (the reward). In ARPGs, it is a genre convention to expect that killing a ton of monsters will produce the "reward" of gearing up in an amount of time that feels appropriate, and doesn't make the player feel like they're banging their head against a brick wall; this is making progress, which is also a key aspect of any RPG.

Although I guess this is all true from the character's point of view... what about the player?

The player also puts in time and effort, and expects reward at a certain ratio. So why has it become "a genre convention" that his reward is... a bigger sword? All that's good for is killing more monsters, for which the reward is... an even bigger sword! Infinite regress. The grind.

What works for the character does not necessarily work for the player.

This whole Skinner-box "intermittent reinforcement" movement is premature enlightenment, or more specifically putting the cart before the horse. I'm not saying there's no science to it; I'm sure that people have done perfectly valid studies of slot players at casinos or maybe even Diablo 2 players and came up with psychological observations that would stand up to peer review. However, that doesn't mean that you can add intense RNG spikes to just anything and produce the same results.

A lot of these "intermittent reinforcement" types forget a key assumption: that they are intermittently reinforcing. That isn't the same thing as intermittently handing out nearly-useless crap the user doesn't desire with a cheesy smile. I'm sure those casino observations would have turned out different if the slot machines were paying out Monopoly money.

The reason these psychological effects were prominent in a game like Diablo 2 was that you became much more invested in your character. Their lows were your lows, their scares were your scares, their triumph was your triumph. This allowed intermittent reinforcement to work; it was not intermittent reinforcement that caused character investment and/or player satisfaction. Cart before horse.

Intermittent reinforcement is the last step in polishing a great ARPG. Simply put, it magnifies the feelings players feel about the game, and is capable of turning a group of relatively impressed followers into rabid fanboys. In the same way, it is capable of turning a group of mildly dejected gamers into a forum lynch mob. Instead of focusing so much on virtual slot machines, it would be better to deal with more important matters first -- like making us care about our characters in the first place.

Not to say I disagree with what you're saying, I just personally cannot see how one can become that heavily emotionally invested in an ARPG, since to me the sole entertainment factor, and drive, comes from becoming stronger via leveling and gearing up. Is it shallow? Perhaps. Does it have an end that will throw a bucket of cold water on you if that's all you care about in the game? Yes. But really, I don't expect much from an ARPG to be honest; my enjoyment DOES come from what would ostensibly be my characters enjoyment if they were real. I didn't play Diablo 2 all that much, so I don't have a clue as to what was done there that made the players have a deeper connection with their character that this game lacks.

But in any case, I'm willing to bet that it's probably easier for GGG to worry about tweaking the "virtual slot machines" in some manner that will to at least some degree appease the forum lynch mob, than it is for them to work some sort of x-factor into their game that makes people feel more connected to it beyond "ooooh a new sword, now I can kill things faster to get other new stuff, yay".

I know when I played Everquest back in 2001, I became probably unhealthily addicted to the game; and old MMORPG's like EQ were pretty much entirely based around grinding out EXP to level, so that you could go to a higher level zone to grind out more exp to level, hoping to get some sort of gear upgrade along the way, and then you reached level cap and started raiding, which essentially became an equipment rather than EXP grind, where you got new gear from Dragon A, to be strong enough to kill Dragon B, etcetera. But I was very much invested in that game, and you're right, it came from something that had little to do with me getting my pellets when I pushed the right levers, and had everything to do with how I, through my character, interacted with other players in groups and in raids. So I understand how I got hooked and became invested in EQ, but I just don't see how one can achieve the same thing in an ARPG.

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Obsidus wrote:

to me the sole entertainment factor, and drive, comes from becoming stronger via leveling and gearing up... my enjoyment DOES come from what would ostensibly be my characters enjoyment if they were real.

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Obsidus wrote:

I just personally cannot see how one can become that heavily emotionally invested

You already are. The trick is getting others to follow.