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Daily Rewards - Do they work?

laxielaxie Member RarePosts: 1,118
I'm in the process of designing a Minecraft server, wondering if daily rewards work.

Login rewards, quick daily tasks, repeatable daily quest chains. They seem extremely popular with developers, to the point where almost every MMO has a 'calendar' which rewards you with daily gifts.

Do these actually really work? Do they boost player retention so well that it's a must have?

For me personally, I feel like games can often become a chore. You learn to log in for the 'errands', losing meaningful interest in the long term.

Comments

  • SephirosoSephiroso Member RarePosts: 2,020
    Depends what you mean by player retention. Is player retention logging on to collect the daily reward then logging off almost immediately after? Then yea that probably helps slightly. But if you want people to actually engage on the server and play for awhile and enjoy themselves, then it's not going to have that much of an effect.

    Daily rewards does help player satisfaction for the people who were already gonna be logging on anyway though. It also makes some people who probably are getting bored feel like they "have" to log on just to get the reward but they don't feel like doing anything so they get off right away.
    Kyleran

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  • AlbatroesAlbatroes Member LegendaryPosts: 7,671
    edited February 2019
    laxie said:
    I'm in the process of designing a Minecraft server, wondering if daily rewards work.

    Login rewards, quick daily tasks, repeatable daily quest chains. They seem extremely popular with developers, to the point where almost every MMO has a 'calendar' which rewards you with daily gifts.

    Do these actually really work? Do they boost player retention so well that it's a must have?

    For me personally, I feel like games can often become a chore. You learn to log in for the 'errands', losing meaningful interest in the long term.
    They don't 'work' from a developer that actual cares about their game sort of way, they work in the publishers want to raise numbers for shareholder kind of way. Think about it like this. Wow has a bunch of easy daily tasks you can do that even your 5 yr old can accomplish, yet they stopped sharing subscriber numbers. Why? Because that doesn't really keep players. Companies like Acti-Blizzard/SE/etc love big numbers because they believe the typical person thinks big numbers = success. So instead of throwing out sub numbers, they through out hours played or activities done, etc. These are just tactics to get people in, not really to retain the ones they have. SE does a different tactic by saying they have X million 'adventurers' world wide, while leaving out that the game is f2p in china and korea, which also factors into those numbers. Aeria games and some other publishers used a different tactic by saying how many registered accounts they had. These are all just tactics to lure people in while making the current playerbase question less because if they see 'xxx thousand players' forums will light up saying 'well the game used to have x million back at this time' or 'this game has x million so obviously they are doing something better.'

    If you're a developer lucky enough to not have to be a publisher slave, just make the game you're proud of. I bet half of these developers dont even play the games they make now or even if they do, not for very long. That is the thing that drew people to mmorpgs in the first place, feeling connect to the development team and being surrounded by people that may not have liked certain aspects of a game but at least respected the development team behind them showing passion and looking like they actually played the game they were making.
  • anemoanemo Member RarePosts: 1,903
    They've gotten me to stop playing Mabinogi.   Mostly with the mind set of "I missed everything else this week, might as well do something else".

    Though they obviously work on the average person.   It's not like all the creepy tracking analytics would fail at seeing daily log in amounts, and subscription lengths going up from it.
    Kyleran

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  • rojoArcueidrojoArcueid Member EpicPosts: 10,722
    Depending what you actually give players.

    The best log in rewards i've seen are in Warframe with the Platinum discounts. Getting a 75% platinum discount when you have spare money on your wallet is a blessing.

    Daily rewards don't bring me back to games, but when i play them i take full advantage of them. Specially in Warframe (MTX discount) and GW2 (experience scrolls).




  • iixviiiixiixviiiix Member RarePosts: 2,256
    What you give out depend on your content and gameplay , i don't play minecraft so idk
  • Octagon7711Octagon7711 Member LegendaryPosts: 9,000
    SWL daily rewards were needed because they actually gave items that could be added to weapons and leveled them through crafting, making going through content a lot easier.  But it was the only way I would have gotten to the last zone because the grind was insane if you didn't group.

    All the other games I've played with daily rewards were just icing on the cake, nice but nothing that actually made me want to login over a long period of time to get.  It's like logging-in to get a few extra drops.

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  • AmatheAmathe Member LegendaryPosts: 7,630
    Daily rewards start out as a way to accomplish something, albeit something small, for a modest investment of your time.

    But then, in my experience, they become annoying. Like other things you end up doing every day - shaving, taking out the trash, etc. /yawn
    Kyleran

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  • MendelMendel Member LegendaryPosts: 5,609
    I think they work entirely too well to do things like fill up limited inventory space with useless junk.  The daily rewards are frequently not worth the effort, and seem like a sneaky way to increase sales of backpack space.



    Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.

  • SovrathSovrath Member LegendaryPosts: 31,937
    Sephiroso said:
    Depends what you mean by player retention. Is player retention logging on to collect the daily reward then logging off almost immediately after? Then yea that probably helps slightly. But if you want people to actually engage on the server and play for awhile and enjoy themselves, then it's not going to have that much of an effect.

    Daily rewards does help player satisfaction for the people who were already gonna be logging on anyway though. It also makes some people who probably are getting bored feel like they "have" to log on just to get the reward but they don't feel like doing anything so they get off right away.
    That's exactly what I think daily rewards do. People quickly log in, get it and log off.

    I know that I don't even care about daily rewards other than I'll take them if they are offered. But I don't log in "Just because" I get them.
    Kyleran
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  • WargfootYVWargfootYV Member UncommonPosts: 261
    When a game offers daily rewards that is a little flag reminding users of the need to head over to MMORPG.COM to begin the search for a new game.
    Kylerananemo
  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,786
    They might get people to long into the game who don't want to log in, but is that a good thing.  If someone does not want to play the game do you want them logging in?  My guess is at best, it is a short term solution to people leaving the game. 

    If something is fun to people they will play.  If it is not they won't, well at least not for a long time. 

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  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,435
    Being a completionist at heart having daily tasks to achieve on a short time frame adds stress and is more likely to drive me from a game.

    They detract from personal goals and I often feel the same about holiday content and other short term promotions.

    CCP started doing this crap a few years back and I disliked it. 
    WargfootYV

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  • SephirosoSephiroso Member RarePosts: 2,020
    Kyleran said:
    Being a completionist at heart having daily tasks to achieve on a short time frame adds stress and is more likely to drive me from a game.

    They detract from personal goals and I often feel the same about holiday content and other short term promotions.

    CCP started doing this crap a few years back and I disliked it. 
    Don't ever start GW2 lol. Fun game, but my god trying to keep up with the dailies. The achievements alone will keep you running ragged forever too.
    Kyleran

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  • KyleranKyleran Member LegendaryPosts: 43,435
    edited February 2019
    Sephiroso said:
    Kyleran said:
    Being a completionist at heart having daily tasks to achieve on a short time frame adds stress and is more likely to drive me from a game.

    They detract from personal goals and I often feel the same about holiday content and other short term promotions.

    CCP started doing this crap a few years back and I disliked it. 
    Don't ever start GW2 lol. Fun game, but my god trying to keep up with the dailies. The achievements alone will keep you running ragged forever too.
    LOL, I did actually try GW2 back at launch as my son bought it but set it quickly aside. 

    It is "the game" which cemented my eternal dislike of dailies, as well as level scaling, action combat, jumping, no Trinity, and I tossed it aside around level 15.

    I had forgotten how many game designs it had that are an anthemia to me, almost like green kryptonite or something. 

    ;)
    ScorchienCaffynated

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  • SephirosoSephiroso Member RarePosts: 2,020
    Kyleran said:
    Sephiroso said:
    Kyleran said:
    Being a completionist at heart having daily tasks to achieve on a short time frame adds stress and is more likely to drive me from a game.

    They detract from personal goals and I often feel the same about holiday content and other short term promotions.

    CCP started doing this crap a few years back and I disliked it. 
    Don't ever start GW2 lol. Fun game, but my god trying to keep up with the dailies. The achievements alone will keep you running ragged forever too.
    LOL, I did actually try GW2 back at launch as my son bought it but set it quickly aside. 

    It is "the game" which cemented my eternal dislike of dailies, as well as level scaling, action combat, jumping, no Trinity, and I tossed it aside around level 15.

    I had forgotten how many game designs it had that are an anthemia to me, almost like green kryptonite or something. 

    ;)
    Yea, they made it even worse now, and it's partially due to the level scaling of the zones. They'll have a daily to do 4 world events in say Zone XYZ. That zone in particular might be a lvl 14-20 zone. So the lvl 14-20 people that are trying to just level get their day wrecked because you have an absolute horde of lvl 80s killing every single mob in a few hits and instacompleting all the events before you have time to even get to them because you don't have a mount yet.

    Makes the game really un-fun during the daily horde rush.
    Kyleran

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  • KellerKeller Member UncommonPosts: 602
    In most games the daily quests (and weekly) will turn in something mandatory, that a player has to do. Sure you can skip them, but you will loose out on a reputation boost, a key for a lockbox, special armor/weapon token, etc.

    Personally after a month or two I will burn out on the game; most games will let me do the dailies/weeklies on my alts aswell. Weeklies would work better, but then again those usually consist out of doing 5 times Dungeon YXZ or kill 20 players in pvp. Quests that want me to participate in different game activities I usually don't like playing.


    For example I do enjoy the Archaeology bi-weekly quest in WoW and I do like the daily Emissary quest. For different reasons though. The rewards didn't matter to my that much. WIth the Emissay, you ran into other players and sometimes these players were social enough to have a conversation with + you would do some more worldquest with. Archeology is a scavenger hunt, which any game can't have enough. 
    Kyleran
  • ScotScot Member LegendaryPosts: 22,823
    If you create a game for casuals that they can run through without difficulty they rapidly reach the end, so what do you then do? Create dailies, even smaller bite sized chunks of play. But is that small enough, will gamers brought up on dailies not demand an even smaller nibble?

    "I used to need half an hour to do my dailies, why can't I do it all in 15 minutes? Where is my meaningful play for 15 minutes spent in game?" they will ask and the gaming companies will pander to them.
  • laseritlaserit Member LegendaryPosts: 7,591
    Doesn’t work for me, dailies and login rewards have always been a turn-off for me. Makes things feel cheap.
    ScotWargfootYV

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  • LithuanianLithuanian Member UncommonPosts: 540
    My two cents: for me they partially work.
    Example on Lotro.
    1) Daily gifts: I don't care. Mostly vendor trash, very rarely something usefull;
    2) Daily missions: where they are crucial - yes, I did them. Some were favourite, some were avoided;
    3) Weekly missions: did some of them, was not too interesting grind.

    My thoughts: login rewards may look cheap and disappointing (Worn trousers of combat? Again?). Daily/weekly missions could be nice if done correctly: have some lore behind them or be part of valuable reward (example: In Lotro, you could get Black key every 2 days and Black key opened most valuable lootboxes).
  • aummoidaummoid Member UncommonPosts: 82
    They work better than having no incentive to log in at all.
    They do not work as well as having fun content that I want to play whether I'm getting a virtual reward or not.
  • DauzqulDauzqul Member RarePosts: 1,982
    I've always hated the idea of daily quests. Cheap mechanic, IMO.  It's like trying to save a poorly designed arena shooter map by adding in portals.
  • PalebanePalebane Member RarePosts: 4,011
    edited February 2019
    That kind of stuff turns me away, tbh. If I do something every day, I either enjoy it or am obsessed with it. Never met a daily quest that I enjoyed more than two or three times.

    Daily quests are kind of like commercials. Some are sort of entertaining the first few times, most are ignored, and many become unbearable after the 10th time. All of them are manipulative and fake af.

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  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    I dont like having daily rewards in game because it only encourages me to play a short time then wait for tomorrow to play a short time again.
  • dave6660dave6660 Member UncommonPosts: 2,699
    I don't know if they work as a whole but they don't work for me.  I don't pay much attention to them or care if I miss them.

    In many cases they seem like desperation on the games part.  As if the game can't stand on it's own merit, they have to give you free stuff too.

    Sovrath

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