Had a discussion on stream today about MMOs, started with one of the viewers saying that MMOs are usually pretty aggressive with FOMO and keeping you attached to the game. While it is a bit of a generalization and in case of MMOs it’s not as bad (except Korean and mobile MMOs), it is really bad with liveservice games and some MMOs are also affected. Technically from player’s perspective it is always bad when they are trying too hard to chain us to their game to keep playing, but I also think it might have negative effect in the long run.
My story with FOMO having the reverse effect on my started a long time ago in Heartstone. You used to get free card backs for doing some things and you had daily quests to get gold that you use to buy pack or to go to Arena to potentially get more value than from just one pack. Things maybe changed since then mind you, this story is from ancient times when Forsen was still HS pro player and name Trump had completely different person associated with it. I was playing it quite regularly, climbing ranks, had decent decks, but at some point I just got tired of it and took a break. I’d say what Heartstone back then had was actually really mild and not so FOMO inducing, but I never returned from that break, because subconsciously I realized how much gold and card backs I missed. And with time return became harder and harder, because there were more expansions, that missed gold would be way more useful to keep up with the meta and amount of missed gold was growing. I did return to try Battlegrounds at some point for like one stream and that’s it. Another two similar cases happened with HoYoverse games – Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, in both games around 2 months in I felt like taking a break and never returned because of that subconscious realization. In gacha games amount of daily/weekly/monthly chores is way higher, things to grind are way more and you miss on so much stuff by skipping a few days, especially if you are f2p. Can fail finishing the Battlepass if you miss too many days too, so that adds to the feeling that you already missed out and it’s better to not even try anymore.
I mean obviously not everyone functions the same way as I do, but if there is one player like this, there are probably many globally. Some people maybe don’t have such radical feeling about missing some chores, but at least about MMOs I heard that sentiment quite a lot that people avoid the genre in general due to those aggressive retention practices. Is it worth missing on potential new audience and losing some of the existing, because you are trying to make your game into job too much? Or abusing fear of missing out to the point people who missed out just feel left out and lose the drive?
Main feature of FOMO elements and chores is that when you play a lot, you actually don’t mind having them – doing some limited event feels good, dailies just finish themselves while you do some other activities in the game too. But problems start when you don’t want or can’t play a lot, then limited event feels like torture and dailies become annoying chores. Going to work just to get check marks in the list of chores is not exactly fun.
What are you gaining by having those elements in your game? You aren’t getting paid for every login or per hour of players time in the game, what’s the point of making them login daily to do some work. Sure, if you have subscription, then I guess making people go to work makes a bit more sense, weird work where they pay instead of being paid for doing work. But there aren’t many subscription access games nowadays, trying to force premium account or other bonus subscription-likes? I think there are more effective ways to promote that.
What are the better ways to do it? Rotating the events, knowing that you would be able to do it some other time will make it easier if you miss it. I can tell you more – in World of Tanks there were some Premium Tanks that you could buy only during some special limited events and people were saving and waiting for those events to return to buy those tanks. It was FOMO that was farmed multiple times, people who missed it weren’t bummed that it’s over now, they were preparing for the next time and there was always hope to get something you missed. Making sure you won’t miss it again, being more committed to spend next time it happens. In case of battlepasses and such it’s probably nice to have Helldivers-ish approach, when you can just grind any one that happened. At least that’s how I think it works there? Fallout 76 now returns old battlepasses so you can finish stuff you didn’t before, not the perfect system, but better than nothing. With dailies and weeklies I’m not sure what would be the best way to do them, probably more accent on weeklies and maybe even monthlies, so you can tune in when you feel like it to deal with it. Or maybe system that allows some delays/storing of quests, to later deal with them all.
I feel like people whose time is respected by the game will appreciate it more and stay around longer than if they were forced to login even when they didn’t feel like it. In current year when time is a very limited resource with lots of nice ways to invest it, spending it on something you don’t want to will only make you dislike that thing more. Letting people enjoy other games and take breaks from yours might also be beneficial and make players cry less about new content and other issues, because they entertain themselves in other games too.
When Fortnite had Fallout collab I went to play it because it was Fallout, not because it was time limited, knowing it will happen again or happened before already wouldn’t affect my decision. If someone wants to quit the game, they aren’t going to stay because they need to do their dailies. Maybe they would return for some limited event if it’s really interesting, but maybe non-limited interesting event or just regular permanent interesting content addition would return them for longer? And if someone likes the game, they will take anything anyway, no need to chain them in, might actually make them get tired faster.
Doubt any corpa will ever read this and small studios usually aren’t that bad with this kind of stuff, but I feel like some “standards” set by big games get into smaller ones. Then we might see some small niche MMO trying to get that FOMO going or having full checklist of chores for your daily visits. In small games totally don’t try to create any friction for your players, because when picking where to run – in their AAA hamster wheel that they run for 20 years already or on your new small treadmill, you probably gonna lose.