I have found in my long gaming experience that games with smaller proportional rewards for playing time are actually more rewarding overall (not to play on words). The paradigm shift in the video game industry towards group-play is in part thanks to the online medium but is largely a result of a realization of what I've said: People are more loyal to a game, and in the long run enjoy a game more when it is difficult to advance. And it's not hard to understand why: simply put, when you spend an entire week playing for a small in-game achievement, then you are less likely to walk away from the game at the end of that week, since you'd be throwing away "all of that work." If anything, the gradual reward system is therefore much more addictive than a quick-high system you might get otherwise; and the euphemism is intentional here. Drugs that give smaller-dose highs on average tend to be MORE addictive than harder drugs. Counter-intuitive but true.
- I was being unclear. My point was more against penalties than in favor of high rewards. Industry has definitely moved away from those. Some 15 years ago we had games where, if you died, you literally had to press the reset button in console and start all over. Then there was "lives" and game would save progress at the start of level. Then there was external saving and save slots in console. In games like Commandos: Behind the enemy lines there was compulsion to hit the save button every minute, because in spite of careful planning there was always something that could go wrong and cause mission to fail. Finally we've come to a point where players expect to respawn just a few seconds after death happens.
Failing should have consequence, but isn't not winning a consequence in itself? Some games have played it cool by letting everyone win, but some players get better 'grade' and there's always stuff where you can improve on. I think this is a much better system to circumvent negative emotions.
One round of false gods costs 30 coins. That's really twice the amount of average win at level 3. New players get their ass handed to them and on top of that they are even farther from good decks in spite of trying. Playing against good decks is a good challenge, but the money aspect is just arbitrary.
