Rewards Are Weird

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Rewards are an interesting part of games. They are one of the biggest drivers of player behavior, for better and for worse, and I thought it'd be worthwhile to look into how they work in a lot of games, and examine the ups and downs of any given approach because like all things game design, there is no perfect way to do it, but there are some ways that are cooler than others. So, yeah, let's talk about how rewards are kinda weird.

Second Channel: @razbutwo

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I'm back and calling things weird again. hope you're all well.

razbuten
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I remember when clearing Hyrule Castle at the end of the BoTW and climbing one of the towers and finding a chest that gave 5 arrows. It was hilarious

Liratan
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I love how the Breath of the Wild DLC’s reward is basically “you did a really long quest, so here is a literal motorcycle that shouldn’t exist in universe and it kinda breaks the gameplay, but it’s fucking sick so who cares”

maddiem
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Raz: A prime example I’ve talked about in the past, and will talk about again in the future, you can’t stop me, is-
Me: OUTER WILDS!!
Raz: Hollow Knight
Me: damn it

neverland_angel
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Me: "Hey, Razbuten hasn't uploaded in a while. I wonder what's been taking up so much of his time?"
Razbuten: [offhand mention of Factorio]
Me:

revanchistvakarian
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The real reward is the friends we made along the way.

Skywolve
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"It's not just about giving players something cool, it's about making them feel like they got something cool"-As a DM this hits so hard. You can head out dozens of magic items and get a meh and it gets written down on a sheet that's never seen. Tie it into their back story, give it some cinematic flavor, make it a personal quest reward and BAM they are using it every combat.

ryanekstrom
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Once again you completely alter a certain part of my brain that ignores these things in games, and now I am thinking about how each of the games I play keep me playing more by offering more and more rewards.

Renagale
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For me the most satisfying solution to this problem is receiving rewards that have nothing to do with progression or making the player stronger. I really like when a game gives rewards that are fun or interesting but have little to do with the actual gameplay. Tarry Town in BoTW is a great example. By doing the lengthy quest line the main reward you get is to see that you had an impact on the game world, you caused things to change and I love that kind of reward.

Interesting cosmetics can be very compelling for me too. I love the glider fabrics you can receive in ToTK. A lot of cozy games will give you cosmetics as a reward for exploration and honestly in BoTW and ToTK the main rewards I cared about collecting were all the different armors, not necessarily because they made me stronger. Even in a serious game it can be fun to dress my character up in goofy hats!

Something as simple as giving me a base of operations and then allowing me to find items out in the world to decorate it with is a great means of reward for me.

An added bonus is that adding a system into a game for these types of rewards adds more variety, fun, and interesting things to engage with, without having to finely balance or integrate it all into the main progression mechanics of the game.

ChillinWithTheCapuchins
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Perfect timing, I was just looking for my nightly video essay to fall asleep to (I'll rewatch it tomorrow to appreciate your glorious editing, promise)

boogiebong
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I love all of your videos, but this might be the first time I've disagreed with you on a point about a game. I went into Dave the Diver thinking it was a cute game about running a sushi shop, and that I'd be done playing after a few hours once the game loop got repetitive.

Instead, just as I was getting tired of serving beer, I got to automate part of it. And as I got more and more tired of the repetitive parts, I got to automate more and more, and the people I hired got better and better, which was incredibly satisfying.

Automating all of that was what made me realize what Dave the Diver actually was - A wacky and sometimes heartfelt story about preservation, finding your family, and helping your neighbors.

I played that game for 38 more hours than I expected to because of the mechanics you described. If there's anything I've learned from your channel, though, it's that different people will get different experiences out of games - sometimes just because of when in your life you played it.

EricClancy
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I think the way that Mario Odyssey rewards players is interesting too, where you never actually get more powerful. You just get moons for progression, but trying to get more moons means you just get better at the game. You could beat the entire game without learning many of the abilities and moves, but if a player is willing to invest themselves in the optional content they get better at the game allowing them to engage in more optional content, without Mario gaining abilities or powers in any way

rpghank
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Honestly, I really adore the "here's a thing, just have fun" rewards. When you're playing a game with items you need to craft or level weapons, rewards can start feeling kinda generic. And there becomes the balancing issues brought up.

I ended up getting that new Sly Cooper port on PS5 and I was brought back to the days where games were just fun. Here's a level, explore it. What's your reward for finding all the things? Here's an ability that probably won't help, but it's fun to use.

CrimsoniteSP
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As a person who has almost 200 hrs in dave the diver. Your opinion summed it up perfectly. I would spend ~45 min per run to have every fish I could want, but after the nursery, I was barely in the water. Yes I was tired of doing hour long runs just to run out of oxygen in the last 10 seconds, but it immediately took out any risk of diving deeper.

memeolade
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Babe wake up a new video that’s strangely chill but recontextualizes a video game structure/design element in a way that’s deeply interesting by a YouTuber I love just dropped!

Jell
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An underrated reason to pay attention to the lore in Souls games instead of just watching VaatiVidya is that it makes the rewards you otherwise wouldn't care about more meaningful. Every item you pick up has text attached to it, and though sometimes its just "This is a rusty sword" type stuff, the rewards you get from bosses/hard found items typically have some interesting worldbuilding or story attached. I might not care about picking up a spell my character can't use, but its still exciting to me, because I want to learn more about the world.

saulgoneman
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Hollow Knight's final boss dynamic is something I really noticed when I went for the speedrun achievements, because before I never went into the Hollow Knight fight without having made a lot of progression already, so the fight has always been super easy to me

But with next to nothing upgraded during a speedrun, the fight was genuinely hard and I had to take several attempts, and it was the first time this fight actually felt challenging

gumbarius
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Supraland had a great “reward” at the end of the game where you can basically fly around the map and attack with blindly fast attack speed. The dev then hid chests “out of bounds” to find for funsies. I saw a similar comment about the BotW DLC giving a motorcycle. Those are my favorite types of rewards. “Thank you for playing, now here’s some hilariously broken things to blast around the game and explore.”

doobsmcgee
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Transistor, a previous game from the Hades devs, has the single best progression (and difficulty selection) system I've seen so far, sadly it's been largely forgotten about

majorfallacy
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You are my favorite YouTuber of all time man. I appreciate the calm tone and insightful retrospect. Never change bro. You da man!!

Wetbread