I'm so sick of games that shoot themselves in the foot just to boost phoney player engagement numbers

Someone please take the shotgun away from in-game economy designers who are ruining the goodwill built up by the rest of the team.

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What would be really great is if companies could calibrate their reward structures based on what's going to make players happy to log on, rather than trying to trap them into racking up the maximum amount of time in-game.

I haven't played video games in awhile, so I don't think I'm burnt out on them, which may make this a matter of differing mentality...But might it not also help to reevaluate whether a game should rely on a reward system/structure to entertain people to begin with?

It seems like these reward system designs are largely unsustainable without constant upkeep, in some part given that the rest of a game built around them often lacks sufficiently entertaining gameplay systems independent of them.
- Give me good storytelling and gameplay instead
  
  Don't even need that. Good gameplay, community servers, and mods.
  
  Also when you no longer want to maintain it anymore you don't pull the rug from under your whole playerbase.
Stop playing AAA games. They are just going to burn you in the end, or the beginning, usually.
Hm, an industry prefering engagement and profit margins over actual customer satisfaction? Noooo, that would not happen in the free market
Literally Goodhart's Law in action.

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