Saturday, May 5, 2012

Goals in Gaming

Since starting to play EVE I have quickly discovered the importance of goals. Goals help give you meaning and incentive to perform tasks, especially in Sandbox MMOs. 

For instance, I'm currently working towards owning more Blueprints (otherwise known as recipes in most MMOs) in order to increase my ISK revenue with manufacturing.  Profitable blueprints are incredibly expensive, especially for a newbie. So to get the ISK required I mine. Mining in EVE is INCREDIBLY dull. Yet, despite this, i find myself enjoying the activity, every mineral sell means I am better enabled to buy blueprints. So despite working on a normally incredibly boring activity, I feel great as I watch my ISK rise steadily towards fulfilling my goal.

What about you? Have you found a normally dull activity in a MMO that just feels satisfying when your using it to work towards a personal goal?


4 comments:

  1. Welcome to the NBI! Have fun and let us know if you have any questions!

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  2. Absolutely. I tend to choose an achievement, title, level, etc. and then focus on it. In WoW, I want to get all of my higher-level characters to the cap before the expansion. In SWTOR, I'm going for Battlemaster. There's a much greater sense of accomplishment when I set up an objective and work towards it.

    Also, welcome to the NBI!

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  3. Note about blueprints - "profitable" is something of an elastic concept. By that I mean a relatively cheap module blueprint may not make you much profit in a single sale - perhaps only 3-5k isk - but you can sell 100 modules in the time it takes you to sell 5 cruisers that net you 500k isk per sale.

    Fly safe :)

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  4. Exploration and salvage are the normal dull activity I sometimes do to make ISK, sometimes I make bookmarks also. I'm a PvPer, so the ISK I make from selling the salvage from exploration or salvaging and the ISK I make selling bookmarks to people keeps in the black.

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