MPQ and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

Enoc99

So, I have been thinking heavily about this game over the past week. I have been playing for a few months, and have had a lot of fun with the game so far... but I am not sure that everyone in the community shares this perception of the game.

Since most of you likely don't know me, I will tell you where I am within the context of the game. I currently have 4 maxed 2* characters, and have several 3* characters ranging from 1 cover to at most 5 covers. I am eagerly trying to build up my 3* characters and look forward to the day at which I have one I can max out. I only hope that this transition will be as fun and fluid as the 1* to 2* transition. So far it doesn't seem like it necessarily will be, but I can always hope. From a monetary standpoint, I make enough money to be able to justify a bit of expenditure on a F2P game here and there, and have spent approximately the same on this game in the past few months that I would otherwise have spent on a Triple A game. I feel that I have gotten my money's worth so far, so I am not resentful of what I have invested.




Now that you hopefully know me a bit better, I will get to the point of my post:

I presume many of you are familiar with the Sunk Cost Fallacy principle of economics. It is where you invest something (be it time, money, another resource, or a combination of the three) into something, and feel that since you have an investment in it, you have to continue your use of it, else it feels like you have wasted your resources... and this holds true even if you have to commit more resources to it in order to continue using it. For example, let's say you purchase non-refundable tickets to a show that you later decide you really don't want to see and likely won't enjoy. Since you have already invested the money, the Sunk Cost Fallacy would dictate that you would probably still go to that show and spend your your time seeing it, because if you did not, it would feel like you wasted the money spent on the tickets. As a result, you now have wasted time in order to not "waste" the money you spent on the ticket. When looked at empirically, this is a very irrational behavior, as the money was gone whether you went to the show or not, so using your time in that way was an irrational behavior. Interestingly enough, this very psychological behavior is common among us humans and many businesses are set up to take advantage of it.

The genius of the free-to-play game industry is that they are essentially a Skinner Box. They encourage us to perform a repetitive behavior for a (low) random chance at getting a desired reward. The random part is the most important. If you give the reward after a set number of repetitions, then those in the skinner box will only perform that number of repetitions each time they want the reward. If you never give a reward, then those in the skinner box will not perform the behavior at all. If you give the reward on a random number of repetitions, then those in the skinner box will continue to perform the action on the hope that every single next repetition of the behavior might be the one to give them the reward they seek. Furthermore, they can't stop performing the repetition, as the next one they do may very well be the one that gives them the reward they desire. Gambling addition works on this same principle.

For all of us, we have likely invested a significant amount of time into this game, and for a number of us, we have invested money as well. As such, we feel we have a vested interest in the game itself. The Sunk Cost Fallacy would state to us that in order to justify those expenses in time and/or money, we have to continue playing the game whether we are still enjoying it or not, even though from a rational standpoint, as soon as we cease to have fun with a game, we should stop playing it. I personally am still having fun, though I have noticed my fun declining. As such, if it continues to decline, I will stop playing it, cut my losses, and move on.

What we, as a community, need to do, is to assess our own behaviors and determine what we are getting out of this game. If you are having fun with the game, then by all means continue to play it. I, myself, am still having fun and will continue to play until said time at which that is no longer true. From what I can ascertain from many of the forum communications as of late, is that several individuals may no longer be having fun, and are playing the game from a standpoint of the Sunk Cost Fallacy, in that they need to keep playing the game as if they stop, then their time and money spent playing has been otherwise wasted.

I am not trying to either encourage or discourage people from leaving the game, but I consider it healthy (both physically and mentally) to take a mental step back and determine why it is that you are continuing to play the game. Make sure it is because you are having fun, because if you are not, you probably should reassess your participation in the game. I want to see this game prosper, and the more people who are having fun with it, the better the community will become, and the more fun it will be for everyone. If the opposite is true, then the game may slowly be ruined for those who would otherwise legitimately have fun with it.

Unknown

As I posted over here, I'm in the same boat, and to be honest, I was actually thinking of making a post discussing how to make a proper Skinner Box earlier. The unfortunate reality is that the game is becoming a really bad example of a Skinner Box, since to win a good 3* roster, you have to have a good 3* roster. I'm not in a top alliance, I don't have any 3* characters with all 3 covers, I can't pay to win. I can't win events, and have an extremely hard time competing for rewards. When I do win tokens, I end up getting a slew of Hawkeyes and Bagmen. If I decide to buy some tokens to hope to win the featured character, I get a slew of Hawkeyes and Bagmen. Of the 13 3* characters I've managed to scrape together so far, none have more than 4 covers, and most have only one.

The transition from 1* into 2* was fun and rewarding, as I could work towards my goals, and when I got the cover I needed for a character I wanted to use, I was pleased. I haven't had a chance to feel that in quite a while. Even winning an Invisible Woman left me feeling sort of bleh about the whole thing, since just a single cover is completely unusable. There's no benefit for me having won that.

At this point, I don't even know if a 2* to 3* transition is possible for newer players, since even the 3* players say that getting the covers they need has become almost impossible.

Unknown

Enoc99 wrote:

Since most of you likely don't know me, I will tell you where I am within the context of the game. I currently have 4 maxed 2* characters, and have several 3* characters ranging from 1 cover to at most 5 covers. I am eagerly trying to build up my 3* characters and look forward to the day at which I have one I can max out. I only hope that this transition will be as fun and fluid as the 1* to 2* transition. So far it doesn't seem like it necessarily will be, but I can always hope. From a monetary standpoint, I make enough money to be able to justify a bit of expenditure on a F2P game here and there, and have spent approximately the same on this game in the past few months that I would otherwise have spent on a Triple A game. I feel that I have gotten my money's worth so far, so I am not resentful of what I have invested.

I wanted to respond to this, but it's not directly applicable to the Sunk Cost Fallacy, so I'll stick it in a spoiler box:

Right now, you are in the 2* phase, hoping to start the 2*->3* transition. I'd define the transition thus: you start the transition when you have one 3* that you use on a regular basis, and you end the transition when you no longer use any 2*s on a regular basis (special circumstances, like particular pvp events or heroic pve events are exceptions). You were probably in the middle of the 1*->2* transition when random drops of 1* and 2* covers were added to pvp nodes--this was a *huge* deal, and a massive acceleration of the 1*->2* transition compared to prior experience.

Hate to break it to you, but the 2*->3* transition will be long, won't be fluid, and you'll have very little control over which 3* is your first usable character at that level. As you head into the transition, the vast majority of your 3* covers will come from progression/placement rewards in the pvp/pve events. A small minority will be random drops from various tokens. That means that your 3* roster development will be heavily dependent on how the devs decide to schedule 3* rewards, and it may take three cycles of a given character showing up before he's usable, since you need about 10 covers to make a 3* character that's better than a maxed 2*. You should never buy tokens, and buying covers directly is inefficient in the short term, and should only be done when you have a sizable stock of HP and need 1-2 more covers to complete an essential ability and max a given character. You probably know this already, but where you're at, HP is for roster spots first--almost every 3* cover will have some value eventually--and then shields, in order to start pulling in 3* placement rewards in pvp.

Hope this helps; good luck.

Enoc99

fidsah wrote:

As I posted over here, I'm in the same boat, and to be honest, I was actually thinking of making a post discussing how to make a proper Skinner Box earlier. The unfortunate reality is that the game is becoming a really bad example of a Skinner Box, since to win a good 3* roster, you have to have a good 3* roster. I'm not in a top alliance, I don't have any 3* characters with all 3 covers, I can't pay to win. I can't win events, and have an extremely hard time competing for rewards. When I do win tokens, I end up getting a slew of Hawkeyes and Bagmen. If I decide to buy some tokens to hope to win the featured character, I get a slew of Hawkeyes and Bagmen. Of the 13 3* characters I've managed to scrape together so far, none have more than 4 covers, and most have only one.

The transition from 1* into 2* was fun and rewarding, as I could work towards my goals, and when I got the cover I needed for a character I wanted to use, I was pleased. I haven't had a chance to feel that in quite a while. Even winning an Invisible Woman left me feeling sort of bleh about the whole thing, since just a single cover is completely unusable. There's no benefit for me having won that.

At this point, I don't even know if a 2* to 3* transition is possible for newer players, since even the 3* players say that getting the covers they need has become almost impossible.

That is very true, in that the game is becoming a poor skinner box. In that the "rewards" for performing repetitions of the behaviors are coming so rarely, that many are becoming aware of the fact that it is a skinner box.

A good skinner box is one that people don't realize they are in one until it is too late. World of Warcraft is an excellent example of this. How many times do people go through a dungeon or raid hoping that this time, as opposed to every other time, that the one purple drop they need will finally drop. There are enough rewards spread among a variety of methods that progression feels possible to everyone, despite the fact that only a very small minority will actually reach the pinnacle of progression within the game.

Unknown

Enoc99 wrote:

That is very true, in that the game is becoming a poor skinner box. In that the "rewards" for performing repetitions of the behaviors are coming so rarely, that many are becoming aware of the fact that it is a skinner box.

A good skinner box is one that people don't realize they are in one until it is too late. World of Warcraft is an excellent example of this. How many times do people go through a dungeon or raid hoping that this time, as opposed to every other time, that the one purple drop they need will finally drop. There are enough rewards spread among a variety of methods that progression feels possible to everyone, despite the fact that only a very small minority will actually reach the pinnacle of progression within the game.

The best ones, and the ones I personally find so enjoyable, are the ones where you get a series of minor rewards and occasionally a major one. In this game, the frequent rewards are always 100 or 250 ISO, and your occasional rewards are the opportunity to spend HP on increasing your roster for no return.