This is my new favorite phrase: perverse incentives!
I never knew that this concept had a label, but now that I know it, I simply love it. This falls under the umbrella of unintended consequences, another concept which I bear in mind while designing quests. As I had mentioned in a previous entry, I tend to be cynical in my review of designs and look for ways which quests and items may be exploited. Now these exploits have a name. Perverse incentives!
One quest that I had really wanted to do was a variation of the "escort the NPC from point X to point Y." The variation that I had in mind was that the path taken would be laced with ambush points, and customized monsters would attempt to attack the defenseless NPC. Players would need to fight the monsters to protect the NPC. If the NPC died, then the quest ended in failure.
My idea was that this quest would be difficult, and this difficulty would be reflected within the rewards. While drafting the quest, I started to think "well, what's the incentive to complete the quest compared to the incentive to deliberately fail the quest?" If the ambushing monsters gave particularly good experience, then it could be conceivable that a group of five players could escort the NPC through all but the last ambush points – vanquishing monsters along the way – and finally allowing the NPC die so that the quest may be repeated. And repeated. And repeated.
Perverse incentives.
One day I'll get this quest working without the perversions.
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Just make the ambushing monsters worth 0 xp and give 0 coins and give all of the experience they would have given at the very end when the NPC is saved.
ReplyDeleteIt's what games have done for ages.
Well, the problem is... how do you know how much exp each person would have gotten? Higher levels get less (or no) exp on certain monsters compared to lower level exiles who get boatloads. Unless you track every kill silently, behind the scenes... if that is even possible.
ReplyDeleteI would just make sure that there is a long 'respawn' time for the NPC if they fall during the quest. That way people can't 'farm' the quest, as it might be only available once a day (or whatever, times can be changed).
Also, if the quest was failed, you could add a very small (1/100th of a rank?) "• You lose experience." Players *hate* losing experience, no matter how small. They would very much avoid losing experience if they could just complete it and get bonus completion experience instead.
i only see the problem in the mosnters attacking, how much health and how far does the NPC have to go?
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