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Diablo 2 - Addictive, but is it fun? @ TechReport
- Thread starter Dhruin
- Start date
zakhal
SasqWatch
The fun you gain from addiction is like a really bad joke. Its fun at first but in the end you change your mind.
If you rate the experience as a whole from start to end its not somthing that you see as fun even though at first it was. It could even be horror instead incase of i.e methane addiction. Incase of games you might feel cheated.
But like any addiction the better you are able to keep it in control the less you will feel sorry later on. In anycase dont drop out from school or loose your job for computer game. Mmos like eq and wow have done it for som (dont know about diablo).
I think the term in mmos is "catassing". Som developers have tried to find counter-measures for it:
If you rate the experience as a whole from start to end its not somthing that you see as fun even though at first it was. It could even be horror instead incase of i.e methane addiction. Incase of games you might feel cheated.
But like any addiction the better you are able to keep it in control the less you will feel sorry later on. In anycase dont drop out from school or loose your job for computer game. Mmos like eq and wow have done it for som (dont know about diablo).
I think the term in mmos is "catassing". Som developers have tried to find counter-measures for it:
Perhaps threadmills can be fun but if you cross certain line they become somthing else.Catassing is the process of sequestering oneself at a computer and avoiding other day-to-day activity in favor of advancing one's character in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) whose game design makes heavy use of level treadmills or their logical equivalents.
Origin of the term
The term appears to have originated in a June 1, 2000 newspaper article called "The Surreal World" in which the author described a gamer who had become so addicted to Ultima Online that he had spent his waking hours playing the game, dispensing with other activities competing for his time including personal hygiene and changing the cat's litter box. As a result, he and his entire apartment reportedly had the "pungency of cat urine", which he then called a "Den of Cat Ass and Murdered Time". On June 2 the article was linked from Lum the Mad
, a popular MMORPG commentary site at that time, and was used by Jeff Freeman (aka Dundee) in the rec.games.computer.ultima.online newsgroup a week later.
The term has since spread, and as of mid-2004 has been spotted in use throughout the community of MMOG players.
Theory
Proposed countermeasures include:
* Steeply diminishing returns on advancement, aka "flattening the level curve", in which it takes longer and longer to obtain smaller and smaller incremental advances in power level. While this helps address the problem of power gamers being unable to play with their non-power-gaming friends, it instead seems to encourage catassing among the more obsessive players by requiring increasingly long stretches of marathon play in order to obtain meaningful advancement.
* "Soft caps", in which artificial limits are enforced on the maximum power attainable in some area. This can be difficult to balance: If the caps are too high they may have little impact, while if the caps are too low, players will reach them quickly, become bored, and may stop playing the game.
* Removing intersession advancement altogether. While this drastic step is unlikely to be taken by any current or future MMOG that wishes to remain solvent, this is the normal state of affairs for popular online first-person shooters including Counter-Strike
and the original Quake.
Case studies
Ultima Online
One of the first attempts at limiting catassing was the "power hour" in Ultima Online. With this mechanism, advancement slowed down if you played for more than one hour per day. This provoked outrage among some players, and the policy was eventually modified.
World of Warcraft
More recently, World of Warcraft has experimented with a "rest state" system in which time spent logged out or in town (especially at an inn) would earn the player additional experience on later kills. Many have argued that since Blizzard
games typically have a more mainstream appeal than other MMORPG
s, the "rest state" was a way of appealing to people who wanted to play a MMORPG but specifically wanted to avoid "catassing". Anecdotally, most of the controversy has come from more serious players, whereas more casual players see the "rest state" as a valid balance.
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