Persistent content versus finite content.

[hulkgor]

- A list of quests that become available every day.
- A reward that can be obtained every few hours (ie it has a cooldown).
- Gear with random stats that can potentially drop better itemization if you keep playing.
- Multiple increasing difficulties of content (M+ system, raid system).

World Quests and M+.

Legion sounds amazing for you, check it out.

[Kilee25]

World Quests and M+.

Legion sounds amazing for you, check it out.

?? Not sure you read and understood the post.

[Deleted]

If you expand the definition out to multiple expansions, it's true that almost nothing is persistent, but that seems like another semantics debate to me. You're ignoring the main point of the topic by saying that the wording doesn't apply in a specific situation. The content of your post seems to agree with the sentiment and main point that I was making however. Adding incentives to do content over and over and over again gets annoying and just pads out the time you have to spend in the game trying to complete everything. And then you have to start picking and choosing which content to purposely ignore because you've no intention of "finishing" it.

"I have been thinking about this lately, and I wonder how other people feel about the differences between persistent versus finite content. "

I wrote how I feel about the differences between persistent vs finite content. I view it in the long run where I see timewalking or PvP as the best bang for the buck ratio when it comes to content development. How long does it take to create new BG and a new zone? What will be played more in upcoming years? The answer is clear (why arent they focusing more on these things is a mystery to me but they are slowly learning, thank god).

There is not black & white, we cant say persistent content is better overall. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. People who are forced to complete everything have probably some kind of disorder, there are psychology studies devoted to gambling and how its used in modern games (microtransactions are good example of this), I dont feel forced to do anything. I usually ignore pet battles and most holidays. I dont play timewalking dungeons too much because they drop lower gear but sometimes it is rewarding.

Warforging/titanforging does not force me to do the same stuff over and over just to get +5ilvl piece of gear. Also doing 3-4 raid difficulties is not rewarding to me, I enjoy the journey, once I see a boss defeated im not motivated to kill him over and over again (and im pretty sure im not the only one with this problem), today its even worse, once I clear last raid 3-4 times there will be no point doing that again, I dont need the gear for next raid and even if I did there would be some catch-up mechanics. This is clearly part of the game where persistent content (RNG gear) doesnt work. Its the same with legendaries, when this RNG turd drops you are like "finally, jesus...".

My position is that we dont have enough good persistent content, WQs would be amazing if we had like 10 new zones with them. Persistent content does not force you to log in every single day, or can you provide some examples? I for example managed to do maybe a dozen of mythic+ during whole legion expansion, I missed a ton of gear, artifact power, all this sweet weekly chest reward (I got maybe one or two of those chests). I dont care. I also missed dozens of emmisary caches. Its all in your head, if you feel forced to complete everything you have a problem. You might as well be forced to taste every type of alcohol when you walk into a bar. Its not the problem of a bar, its you.

[Deleted]

Im just gonna leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0f0hW2iKZw

Its a video about Operant Conditioning, which in broad terms is behaviour conditioning by using small rewards (or penalties).

[Kilee25]

@Naturalna

There was a "beer club" in the town I lived in a few years back. They had an achievement list in the club and set up in a phone app, to try every beer in every bar in town. It was amazing how many people got into it and joined the club just to do the challenge and get their name on the board. I think it's pretty hard-wired into most people that if you set some kind of challenge in front of them, they want to try to do it.

I think that sometimes what happens is that we realize that the effort to do the challenge will be too much, and that's when we make the decision to ignore it.

For me, the issue is not so much that I can't ignore it, but more that there is now a very massive number of "beer club challenges" put into the game, whether it comes from achievements, a bunch of daily quests, mythic keys, artifact weapon grinds, etc... it feels to me like the modern version of wow, and many mobile games too, seek to just bombard you with things to do.

I don't mind having lots of things to do, and I think achievements are fun. But the content that specifically bothers me is the type of content that keeps reappearing or refreshing or slightly changing once you've done it.

To continue using your analogy, if I walk into a bar, and I want to taste all the alchohol that they have to offer, at least there's an end to it. They don't roll in another crate of new types of alchohol while I'm trying to finish the first goal that I set for myself. That's the main difference to me and the type of content that I'm very suspicious of.

[Deleted]

@Naturalna

There was a "beer club" in the town I lived in a few years back. They had an achievement list in the club and set up in a phone app, to try every beer in every bar in town. It was amazing how many people got into it and joined the club just to do the challenge and get their name on the board. I think it's pretty hard-wired into most people that if you set some kind of challenge in front of them, they want to try to do it.

I think that sometimes what happens is that we realize that the effort to do the challenge will be too much, and that's when we make the decision to ignore it.

For me, the issue is not so much that I can't ignore it, but more that there is now a very massive number of "beer club challenges" put into the game, whether it comes from achievements, a bunch of daily quests, mythic keys, artifact weapon grinds, etc... it feels to me like the modern version of wow, and many mobile games too, seek to just bombard you with things to do.

I don't mind having lots of things to do, and I think achievements are fun. But the content that specifically bothers me is the type of content that keeps reappearing or refreshing or slightly changing once you've done it.

To continue using your analogy, if I walk into a bar, and I want to taste all the alchohol that they have to offer, at least there's an end to it. They don't roll in another crate of new types of alchohol while I'm trying to finish the first goal that I set for myself. That's the main difference to me and the type of content that I'm very suspicious of.

well they could roll in more types, or suddenly offer you mixtures, vodka+beer, juice+beer, etc...

I once said that blizz is capable of making an achievement "Jump 5 000 000 000 000 times in a row", promote it as content and still some people will "feel" forced to do that. They are using this psychology to siphon more money from people (most visible in mobile games, but arent you forced to buy crap from blizz shop as well?). If you know you have this problem then stay away from it. Simple as that.