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That reward is a good one, but it should not be the only reason. Look at how most other games operate
- Large monster hunts/quests for your guild to compete in, with rewards or items gained after completion.
- A level up system or prestige system to break up the monotony, with stat boosts or cosmetic rewards gained alongside your levels.
- Weekly "seasons" or tournaments to compete in, with monetary or cosmetic rewards.
- After certain achievements players will get a "shout-out".
- Victory brings more items, better armor sets, increased stats, cosmetics, badges and awards, cash(real or in-game), and so much more.
What do all of these things have in common? They all incentivize the player to compete and play... I appreciate the argument of "you play for the pure enjoyment of winning,". It's how I wish things could operate, but the thing is is that it doesn't operate well under that format. Games don't, they aren't meant to(at least MMO genre games).
I will attempt to entirely defeat that argument now, I hope that I can convince you.
Lets talk about game design.
Remove us for a second... What is the logical reason for not having rewards for competition? All it does is remove a sect of the game who actively play and participate regularly... That's bad for the game's activity, which is bad for revenue(you HAVE to have noticed the decline in activity). Moreover, I would be willing to bet that those player spend more money on the game than average, by a large margin. Why would we not want to cater to those players?
MMOs should be designed around retention of players, if a large players are not playing the game or are complaining about something, what is the reason to not do it? Just because they don't have a forums account doesn't mean that they shouldn't be represented, just like what you and 4-Lom do with bug catchers and other players.
Aside from that, Graal might've been fine should it never have had rewards from the beginning... But it didn't do that. Players are used to rewards, should they be blamed somehow for this? No, because they took what the game gave them. It makes sense that once the rewards left most of the people did...
More proof of the lack of activity if you're unconvinced:
Current tower-owning guilds member counts:
7/25, 5/25, 6/25, 8/25, 6/25.
That's very low, and it can't be denied that a 2 years ago they would've been higher. This is less then a year removed from the rewards... What about when we hit two years(I pray we won't). Will towers be contested at all? probably by guilds rocking 5 people.
We aren't even doing what you are appearing to ask for now... Classic offers plaques for players who compete in these activities. Are you saying that staff should remove these, because players should only be playing for pride? We can't sit in a middle-ground between no-rewards and full-rewards... And staff have made clear that they would like rewards to add incentive to playing their game, they just haven't had the time for it. Unrelated to my other points, but still.
Getting the upper-hand should be the "end-game" reward, when other rewards like cosmetics don't interest you, if you get what I mean. That should be for players who are bored with rewards and other aspects of the game, not for everyone... How can we bring new players into the activity without rewards? Why do you think people have been complaining about singles sparring activity for ages? There is little reason to do it, so new players don't... That can largely explain why sparring is so dead. Singles Sparring perfectly follows the "play for pride" system you are asking for... And look how it is doing. It revives after its parent activity(the gst, something with a reward) comes around, and dies shortly thereafter for 2 months.
But with rewards look what took place; many a player joined a tower guild and became invested in the game... They not only became interested in towering, but in Pking too. The rewards drew them in and gave them a reason to play at first, and then their own self-interest and passion let them enter into an activity without rewards. Do you see how that works? We need the rewards to get new players into the competitive side of the game. Removing the rewards basically means removing the reason for new players to do it, outside of not understanding what they're doing. This isn't just about us older players, this is good for everyone.
That's why we want the new system; to add all that back and more(hopefully for bug catching and other causal activities, so that guild competition almost becomes a natural part of playing the game) and to fix the issues 4-Lom nicely summed up.
If very few other games operate on that system of play, why should Graal try and be different? (I ask this because I really want a response to this specifically).
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