People don't know what fun is. (Destiny)

by Jabberwok, Sunday, October 12, 2014, 22:21 (3694 days ago) @ Riceamike

And that's the major sin of player investment systems. People like being rewarded. It is scientifically based methods on how to make people 'addicted' to things.

What gamers instead take this manipulation as is having 'fun'. They don't realize that what they're having fun doing is 'getting things handed to them', and that ends up being the main motivator to play more, because they want to get more rewards. If you stripped Destiny of all player rewards, no one would play anything. The game is too bare otherwise to be enjoyable.

And that's why I stopped playing a few weeks ago. An awareness of whether I'm playing the game because it's enjoyable, or because I'm simply being drawn in by progression and rewards systems. I must've played Assault On the Control Room hundreds of times, and Halo never needed to reward me to make me want to. In fact, if it had tried to keep me playing after I no longer enjoyed it, I may have come to dislike the game. Years ago, I sunk more hours into Unreal Tournament than a decent human ever should. There was no loot, no achievements, and no locked content. It was just fun.

I might play Destiny again if the urge strikes me, but not for gear. That high level weapon looks cool, and might be fun to play with, but there are also 20 other games in my library that will be fun right now, and not in a week or two. I'd rather focus on those.