Of all the ways to encourage players to engage with an MMO, two of the most controversial are daily quests and login rewards. Used in everything from World of Warcraft and Star Trek Online to Guild Wars 2, daily rewards offer players tempting rewards for logging in each day and performing at least one task. Some players see them as handy bonus content that slots neatly into an otherwise hectic daily routine, but others have criticised their use of the same fear-of-missing-out mechanics that powered addictive games like Farmville. Dailies constitute an easy way for developers to get players to interact with the game on a regular basis, but the quality of that interaction is definitely up for debate.
This week EVE Online‘s developers revealed plans to add dailies to the game in the near future, starting with giving players 10,000 skill points for their first NPC kill in every 22 hour period. Some players have complained that this would give a roughly 17% increase in skill training to players who could log in every day, while others have pointed out that skill injectors allow any reward to be ultimately turned into skill points. CCP clarified its reasons for adding dailies in a feedback-gathering thread on the feature, explaining that there has been a decrease in recurring logins since the 24 hour skill queue limit was removed. Internal data suggests that people logging in every few days to change skills really did lead to meaningful interactions, and the devs hope that new daily login incentives will have the same effect.
