Idea for avoiding burnout.

HailMary

ZenBrillig wrote:

Moon 17 wrote:

Well, yeah. Words have meaning. Like, the #1 definition of "work" even on a **** online dictionary is "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result." Placing in an event is "work" in this sense in the same way that lifting a remote control is "work" in physics--regardless of whether it's easy or enjoyable.

I like how you truncated the definition in that **** online dictionary.

The full citation:

exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.

Of course, including words like "labor" and "toil" would undermine your ludicrous assertions, so I can see why you'd omit them.

Carry on...

Sigh.

Definition 1a: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/work
Definitions 1 & 3: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... ork?q=work
First listed synonym: http://thesaurus.com/browse/work

Pedantry is somewhat better than outright asshattery only when you're actually right.

Unknown

ZenBrillig wrote:

Moon 17 wrote:

Well, yeah. Words have meaning. Like, the #1 definition of "work" even on a **** online dictionary is "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result." Placing in an event is "work" in this sense in the same way that lifting a remote control is "work" in physics--regardless of whether it's easy or enjoyable.

I like how you truncated the definition in that **** online dictionary.

The full citation:

exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.

Of course, including words like "labor" and "toil" would undermine your ludicrous assertions, so I can see why you'd omit them.

Carry on...

Oh, no, I included the entirety of the first definition that Google gives for work. And I would never dream of pretending that "labor" and "toil" aren't synonyms for "work." But synonyms are different words because, as you so accurately observed, words have meaning. If I had used the word "laboring" or "toiling" instead of "working" you could have rightfully accused me of being melodramatic or overstating my case. Because those would have been the wrong words.

I will admit that I could have said "playing" instead of "working" and it would have been fine in context. But "work" conveys the sense that effort is being expended toward a goal, and that is 100% correct in this context. Over the summer I was "working" toward 100% trophy completion in Skyrim; there was definite and deliberate effort expended on my part and I had a real goal in mind. That doesn't mean it wasn't fun.

Also: I'm sorry I've wasted so much time on this point. I over-reacted to what was probably a pretty casual comment. But I don't know of a better word than "work" to describe this kind of focused, goal-oriented gaming, and I'm frankly a little surprised that anyone would take issue with it. This is a conversation about in-game burnout, though, and I think trivializing or glossing over the amount of effort that goes into placing in a PvP tournament (especially for newer players, doubly especially since season 1 started) only obfuscates the issue at hand.

HailMary

ZenBrillig wrote:

And linking is so much easier than having an actual argument, isn't it?

God forbid you should actually indulge in thoughtful consideration.

Oh, I just wanted to avoid even more childish, misguided sniping about "truncated" definitions and "****" dictionaries. I find it strange that you consider such sniping to be "thoughtful consideration," but hey, nobody's perfect.

Feel free to actually address my earlier on-topic comment... or not. Your choice.

Clintman

Afternoon all,
I would like to ask that we squash the definition argument as the derailing of the primary topic led to the topic being locked.

As per the new guidance I will monitor the thread as well as the moderators and ensure we maintain the peace in order to keep meaningful discussions alive.

Sorry for the delay in getting the thread unlocked, had some work going on that demanded my attention. As always free exchange of ideas is great and I will only request keeping rowdiness down in order to maintain an on topic thread.

Unknown

Ok so I'll pull the suggestion from that temporary thread over here.

Basically, what if we removed alliance standings from seasons. Allow alliances to compete for prizes in each event but make the season an individual thing, possibly non bracketed, that let the try hards like me and beeee and Clint etc etc etc to go at it freely without dragging the entire alliances in.

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

Ok so I'll pull the suggestion from that temporary thread over here.

Basically, what if we removed alliance standings from seasons. Allow alliances to compete for prizes in each event but make the season an individual thing, possibly non bracketed, that let the try hards like me and beeee and Clint etc etc etc to go at it freely without dragging the entire alliances in.

Works for me.

P.S. Your rep (155) is currently 1/10 of your posts (1550). Weird. It's like when the mileometer on your car hits 33333.

Clintman

Psykopathic wrote:

Ok so I'll pull the suggestion from that temporary thread over here.

Basically, what if we removed alliance standings from seasons. Allow alliances to compete for prizes in each event but make the season an individual thing, possibly non bracketed, that let the try hards like me and beeee and Clint etc etc etc to go at it freely without dragging the entire alliances in.

That is an interesting idea. I could be happy with season ranking being purely individual.

Unknown

Clintman wrote:

That is an interesting idea. I could be happy with season ranking being purely individual.

The problem there is that Demiurge seems to want the big shiny prize to be an alliance reward. They certainly could have made it a top (1,2,5,10) reward in the player rewards instead, but chose not to.

Unknown

I've always thought that making every single thing an alliance event was a mistake, so sounds good to me.

NorthernPolarity

Another viewpoint for you guys to consider: looks like klingsor and some 5dvs are retiring from competitive play:

klingsor wrote:

On a final note, I am announcing my retirement from competitive play as soon as season 1 ends. This game has been fun but it's a second job to me and I prefer to keep my hobbies as hobbies. I will stop playing for a month at least as a well deserved vacation. If season 2 starts right away, I want no part of it.

I want the devs to know that the daily pvp, pve, season, alliance, etc....has has 2 net effects. 1) It's making people spend more in the short term (increased shields, etc) and 2) its making people quit playing (which will drop my spending to 0)

I will move from venoms to omens or curses and will cede all management duties to the 5DeadlyCouncil. Season mode has been the worst thing to happen to this game since boosts started costing HP. Ultimately a Fury, or Daken or whatever lazy character is released is clearly not worth the amount of man power invested into their pursuit. A lot of the other Venoms will also take a break, although how long their leave is is up to them.

Effective immediately I will no longer push the Venoms for top scores. You will notice this effect tonight, in the Loki PVP. Xmen can have the #2, we will not spend any extra income on shields. I will no longer encourage people to buy more shields and to shield hop to add 100 points to their score. We aren't going to go casual, just sane. Good luck to those that still enjoy this game and the intense competition. Also, I will probably retire from the forums after the season ends.

Opponents against the original post might use the argument that the system isn't the problem and that it's their faults for pushing so hard, but I don't think we would have seen nearly the same result if Season 1 was limited to something like one out of every four events. It's on the players themselves to determine how hard they push, but the system obviously has a large influence on the playerbase's perception on how much they should, and can directly lead to players burning out, as whats just been seen.

reckless442

I really like the idea of removing the alliance result from seasons. We're already seeing some late swaps as alliances recruit people with high season scores. That seems to defeat the whole point of competing over a season as a team if the winning team is a group of high-scoring players who did not compete together over the season. Somebody in the suggestions thread about alliance swapping analogized swaps to a team traded for a star soccer (football for you Euros) player in the middle of a match and the new team instantly getting credit for the goals the player had scored before the trade.

Puritas

walkyourpath wrote:

Burnout for the top 3 alliances is definitely exacerbated by our own tendencies. We've definitely pushed ourselves in this first season and the need to win is responsible for some of this burnout on our end.

I'd just like to point out
that burnout in the top25 alliances is at least as bad if not worse
especially for those of us who were top 3 before deciding we don't hate ourselves enough to keep it up with these rewards

mohio

I read through the thread, but it was several hours ago, so forgive me if this has been mentioned before.

My biggest issue leading to burnout is not simply the amount of playing required, but the amount of playing at specific times of the day, which tend to be the same times every day or two. For me to do well in PvP and not spend an inordinate amount of HP on shields I need to set aside 2-3 hours either 5 or 10 hours before the end of the event. This then happens every 2-3 days. In addition, I need to be playing an hour or two every 12-24 hours at pretty specific times in order to do well in the current PvE and whatever sub-event is running at the time. If these times are at all inconvenient (and with 2 small kids that go to bed right when events end at 9pm pacific, it is certainly inconvenient) then that can easily lead to burnout when you have to play at these times every day.

So - what if they simply added a day to every PvP event, so they lasted 3.5 days instead of 2.5? We'd have just 2 every week instead of 3. On top of that they need to come up with a way for people to choose their own event end times based on the bracket that they enter, or at the very least change event/sub end times so they aren't the exact same 9am/9pm pacific every tinykitty time. For me, this would change things up enough that I wouldn't get burnt out. As it is, I'm not sure I can last another 2 weeks playing at this rate, and I'm barely in a top 50 alliance.

edit: I realized at the time that 2/3 the amount of PvP being run pretty severely cuts down on the amount of 3* being added into the system. This could be fixed by either changing the rewards of the events that are run to be more generous, or I would be fine with doing as others have suggested and just make 2 of every 3 PvP events be "season" events. That way people could still compete for the rewards they need, but without the added pressure of the individual and alliance season rewards. I would even suggest that these events have no alliance component whatsoever so people aren't even pressured to play so their alliance mates can get the rewards they need even if they don't need them personally.

Spoit

Making the events longer wouldn't help, because like you said, the only play that matters is right before the 8/3/0 hour windows

reckless442 wrote:

I really like the idea of removing the alliance result from seasons. We're already seeing some late swaps as alliances recruit people with high season scores. That seems to defeat the whole point of competing over a season as a team if the winning team is a group of high-scoring players who did not compete together over the season. Somebody in the suggestions thread about alliance swapping analogized swaps to a team traded for a star soccer (football for you Euros) player in the middle of a match and the new team instantly getting credit for the goals the player had scored before the trade.

THat's working as intended. Pretty sure there was a post by a dev saying that they wanted alliances to be treated like a fungible commodity, and for people to switch around

Twysta

Yeah but the devs also said the introduction of alliances weren't going to take anything away from the solo player and were just going to be a little thing on the side, so that the solo player could carry on without suffering any effects of not joining an alliance.

Unknown

Twysta wrote:

Yeah but the devs also said the introduction of alliances weren't going to take anything away from the solo player and were just going to be a little thing on the side, so that the solo player could carry on without suffering any effects of not joining an alliance.

Gee, what a relief that didn't happen.

Unknown

I'll make the same suggestion I make every time one of these conversations starts, and probably have people imply that I'm weak or playing the wrong game for it:

Not everything has to be competitive. If PvE were just extra chapters being added to the story (with mission and progression rewards--and maybe even alliance progression goals) without any competitive aspects at all, a lot of the stress in this game would just disappear. You'd still need to balance your PvP competition, but PvE would be a more casual animal, at least. (Not to mention that scaling wouldn't need to exist anymore, but that's quite another conversation.)

As for making season placement entirely personal: Big +1 to that. I want to play this game with my friends and wife, regardless of whether or not they have the same crippling Puzzlequest addiction that I have.

Unknown

Some of you may think that casual play is a couple hours a day, but I would argue that a couple hours a day, every day, is a lot to expect from someone who wants to play casually. Between work/school/exercise/chores those couple of hours of free time are very precious. To have to play the same game that much over a long period of time is not for everyone. I have other games I want to play, but in order to be somewhat competitive in MPQ I have to make it a priority. Granted, that's pressure I put on myself because I am a competitive person, but it does lead to burnout. At some point a person comes to the realization that MPQ is just a game and those few extra covers or hero points or bragging rights just are really not that important in the grand scheme of things. We play games for enjoyment. When a game becomes more of a chore than a game then it's time for a change.

The question some have argued is it the developer's fault for burnout a lot are experiencing? I believe some blame should be directed at the developers. A big part of games is the satisfaction of accomplishing something. The devs gave us a goal to shoot for in the form of a Nick Fury cover. The problem is that they made it so that to achieve that goal you have to put in considerable effort over a long period. Players balk at PvE events lasting 10 days. How could the devs think that running an event over twice as long would be well received by most of the player base?

TL;DR While burnout is in large part what we do to ourselves, we wouldn't be doing it to ourselves if the Devs didn't create seasons in the first place.

Edit: It effects gamers at all levels of play, btw. Not just those at the top.

Unknown

Puritas wrote:

I'd just like to point out
that burnout in the top25 alliances is at least as bad if not worse
especially for those of us who were top 3 before deciding we don't hate ourselves enough to keep it up with these rewards

I'd like to point out that that it's not actually so bad in the top 25. A lot of people in Misfitrightin aren't really pushing super hard, these last few tournaments have been garbage, and the past 4-5 tournaments have had at least 3 or 4 members all going "Pbbbttt" and getting maybe 3-500 points before dropping it. The burnout is a lot less once you realize you only need top 100 for Nick Fury, and anything past that is just fighting over pennies.