Massively Overthinking: Playing the game of timers in MMOs

Massively OP reader The Chief Turtle recently sent us a question that I think ties in neatly to the daily quests Overthinking we discussed a few weeks ago. What happens to dailies when you take away the quests? We get… daily login rewards.

“I play Firefall and WildStar and both have really cool daily login rewards which is a cool idea to keep players logging in daily collecting rewards. Maybe you want to do a comparison of loot and rewards in different MMOs? I’ve got 60 days now on both Wildstar and Firefall and got some really sweet stuff. Which other MMOs do this?”

As we kicked around ideas for this story, Massively OP’s Andrew Ross quipped that games that offer daily rewards just for logging in made him feel as if he was playing the “game of timers,” hence the title of this piece. So let’s talk about the MMOs that reward us for doing nothing more than logging in. Which games do it — and which games actually get you to fall for it? Is it worth your time, or just a habit you can’t kick? Do the tricks work? I posed these questions to the Massively Overthinking crew!

Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): Ugh, I don’t currently play any MMOs that do this, and it’s one thing that was driving me away from the genre. Yes, being able to slowly max my character in Neverwinter was actually getting me to log in throughout the day for small bonuses helped since I was quite busy at the time, but then realizing how much time I spent focusing on the timers ultimately killed it for me. WoW’s dailies had done the same.

I still fall for this though. I’m doing it with both Miitomo and previously Starfox Guard, but Miitomo is just a social game that’s tied to an overarching system for all Nintendo products, so it’s a little harder for me to ignore. SFG was tied to an achievement I’ve given up on. I do this with Hearthstone too pretty often, but prefer to wait a few days and finish them as a stack, mostly because the rewards help unlock packs and Arena play, something that generally takes a bit to grind out raw.

I’m going to try to avoid more praise of Animal Crossing (even though they handle it perfectly) and stick with HS’s system. Normally, the game’s just about playing a card game. That’s fine. It can be fun enough. Dailies get me to try new decks, and as inconvenient as it can be, the half dreaded “Watch your friend win!” quests do expose me to more deck types and strategies (thanks little bro!). However, there’s a certain kind of play I’m most interested in: arenas. I’ve gotten progressively worse with each released set, I still chug on and largely enjoy myself. What HS does is make the dailies give a fairly large boost to progression that can simply be bought, or (for those with limited time) quickly unlocks a chance at more interesting gameplay. I sometimes resent this, but truthfully, with all the gold I’m sitting on, I’ve learned to appreciate this design for non-MMOs.

Again, for me, MMOs aren’t bit-sized gaming. I’m an old man in terms of my MMO habits. Having territory to lose/gain as a group gets me logging in and doing activities usually with more enthusiasm than “I’ll be 6 coins closer to that mount and 5% closer to leveling per quest!” While having measurable gain does increase my motivation at first, with my experience, it just makes me avoid the mechanic more and more. It needs to be tied with an activity I already want to do, and preferably a social one.

Brendan Drain (@nyphur): We’re flooded with so many games vying for our limited gaming time now that just getting players to log into a game is a serious challenge. I think login rewards are very effective at what they do, which is simply to get the player to log in and engage with the world for a few minutes in the hopes that they’ll go on to play for a bit. I found Guild Wars 2’s log-in reward track very effective, as it was a reliable way to get time-gated resources like laurels so you get steady progress by logging in each day even if you don’t have much time to play. I think as long as the game has something fun to do once you’re logged in that has even a small chance of hooking you in, log-in rewards most definitely work.

EVE Online has just added a sort of log-in reward of 10,000 skill points each day, though it requires you to put in a tiny bit of effort by blowing up one NPC (any NPC at all, so it’s literally 5 minutes effort). This was added based on CCP’s internal data following the release of the infinite skill queue, which found that since people no longer needed to log in every day or so to change skills that they actually played less in general. It seems that simply forcing people to log in for a few minutes every day or so actually caused them to actually play more, which suggests that simple log-in rewards should definitely work.

Brianna Royce (@nbrianna, blog): Sooooo many games do this and do this well. The first I can recall was Ultima Online, seriously, which for a while had a “power hour” with fast skill gains to get people to log in daily. Now it has guaranteed skill gains every day. City of Heroes’ and then World of Warcraft’s rested experience was another cute trick for getting us to log in regularly. But of course, since those days, the winds have shifted, and now instead of rewarding us with faster progression, studios are using more tangible gifts, which might be more effective for getting more of us to log in (but less effective for getting us to actually play).

The games I’ve played recently that use daily login bribes are Guild Wars 2 and Marvel Heroes. I think Guild Wars 2 has actually gotten me in the habit of doing it, but that’s partly because logging in is so fast/easy compared to logging into Marvel Heroes (seriously, fix that first, so clunky). And sometimes it does work to keep me around, but usually only if I have the time and inclination to in the first place. I don’t really see them as a big problem, honestly. Don’t like ’em, don’t log in. Do play a lot, great, free stuff for you. Very rarely are they granting anything so amazeballs that I really feel I’d be an idiot not to log in (free characters in Marvel Heroes come to mind!).

Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre, blog): If I have to point out a game that does “daily login reward” right, I’d honestly have to point to Final Fantasy XI and its nigh-on perpetual login campaigns. Each day you log in and earn points that can be exchanged for a variety of different items… but the lineup of what you can exchange those points for is always changing, and you never know when you’re going to have one available this month that won’t be around next month. But even then, it’s a long-term thing, as a single login only nets you a small number of points. The point is to keep you logging in, but you aren’t just showered with gifts for logging in immediately.

I think daily reward for logging in aren’t a terrible idea, but far better are daily opportunities for logging in. Daily quests give me something new to do every day, and once I’ve done that I can find myself invested enough to go off and do something else. Just getting rewarded for logging in alone is the sort of situation where you log in and log off. There’s no time for the game to get its hooks in you; you bounce off almost as soon as you bounce in, and it doesn’t build up to any sort of excitement about your plans in the game for the next day.

So I don’t really dislike the system, but I also don’t particularly like it. It’s an approach, definitely, but I look at my daily login in FFXI as something I get in addition to what I was normally doing, not as a reward in and of itself. If a game gives me a reward when I log in, I’m likely to grab that and then leave; if it gives me stuff to do every day and I start chasing that down, I’m going to stick around, and any login rewards are just icing.

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): I certainly understand the theory behind daily login rewards — after all, if you take the time to get into the game, you might as well play it a bit and enjoy those rewards, eh? They’re small incentives that probably do a good job luring people like me to maintain contact with MMOs I don’t actively play just in case I might some day.

That said, you can get fatigued from trying to stay on top of several of these, especially since each takes at least a few minutes apiece every single day. Right now I keep it to a manageable two or three at a time, which is not too many to bug me but enough so that I rake in some freebies in the games that interest me.

Larry Everett (@Shaddoe, blog): How uncompelling does a game have to be in order to resolve to log-in rewards? I know the idea: “If we can just get people in the door, they will stay to play the game.” But the truth from my perspective is that you only get people to log in for the few moments that it takes to get the reward, and then they log out. This causes two symbiotic problems. First, it gives the developers and the publishers a false impression of how many people are playing the game. Second, the actual active playerbase becomes extra frustrated because they might see their friends come on but immediately leave. From my perspective, that’s more frustrating than if they would just not log in at all. My advice for any developer, if they listen: Don’t do it. It might seem like a good idea, but ultimately, you’re lying to yourself and your customers. If you find yourself turning to that as an option, then it’s likely that you do not have enough relevant content in your game. The appropriate solutions would be to make the content you have more relevant or develop new content. Neither are easy solutions, but maintaining a good, active playerbase isn’t easy.

MJ Guthrie (@MJ_Guthrie, blog): While my favorite games have daily systems that reward you for just playing as you normally would (EverQuest II and The Secret World both have daily quests that can be completed just through regular play), only two games I play regularly give you rewards for just logging in.

ArcheAge actually has two different daily log in reward systems — one for patrons only, and one for everyone. The patron one grants loyalty points just for logging in; I hadn’t made a pointed effort to log in daily until I started buying labor potions with those points to sell for gold. Even then, if I missed days I didn’t sweat it too much. However, the system that everyone can access has hooked me in quite a bit more. It also involves a smidgen of effort on the players part: You must open a window and click a button to get your reward! But these rewards have been potions, medals, merit badges, and other things worth collecting. And since I don’t have tons of gaming time, the fact I can build up a stash of these items to spend and buy goodies is nice. Each month the reward resets, so some months might be more desirable to me than others.

Black Desert also rewards you for logging in daily, but I log in or not with that one. I haven’t even redeemed about 30 days worth of the bonuses! The exception to this was when the special event came along that offered a pet reward if you logged in enough days. If the reward is pet or housing-based, you can bet your bottom dollar I will be making a point to log in each and every day!

So in effect, it really just depends on whether I think the actual reward is worth booting up the game for a moment or two. I’d tried to do it a bit with other games, like Marvel Heroes and even WildStar (when I don’t really even play WildStar!), but the effort wasn’t really worth it. I will get my Marvel Heroes rewards when I get them, and just play when I play. Occasionally I will pop in for a second, but I might manage that once a week outside of playing. Granted, I don’t have the really cool stuff yet, but I will get there — it’s just going to take me a while.

Your turn!