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对《暗黑破坏神III》战利品机制的3个心理学建议

作者:Jamie Madigan

最近我一直在玩《暗黑破坏神III》这款游戏。我想任何玩过这款游戏的玩家应该应该非常熟悉我所反复经历过的场景吧。玩家需要在游戏中到处奔跑并避开AOE的攻击,想办法帮助死去的队友复活,并横扫那些无用的暴徒们;你同合作者们最终将让boss耗尽生命值,并立即围绕在尸体的旁边观察自己是否能够从中获得一些有益的战利品。

暗黑破坏神3(from addicted-gamers.com)

暗黑破坏神3(from addicted-gamers.com)

《暗黑破坏神III》是一款关于玩家拿武器攻击怪物,并在杀死怪物后获得更强大的武器的游戏。在这类游戏中玩家将通过有效结合角色的技能和装备而尝试着扩大系统的产出。

所以玩家首先需要做的便是获取新装备(特别是当你达到60级时或你开始挑战Hell或Inferno难度级别时),但是与早前的游戏系列不同的是,《暗黑破坏神III》通过使用拍卖屋(游戏邦注:即玩家可以在此购买或出售自己的装备,从而让掉落的战利品不再是武装自己的唯一方法)而增加了这一过程的复杂性。

我一直在思考着有多少心理理论能够解释我们在拍卖屋中的购买意愿以及在游戏中的刷任务行动。游戏开发商暴雪可能有2个目标:首先,让玩家愿意花费自己在游戏中的金币去保持游戏经济的发展(或者在拍卖屋中用真钱换得金币),其次便是采取早前的方法让玩家反复地在游戏中寻找某些内容。

为了实现这些目标并考虑到心理元素,我想对暴雪以及其它致力于开发相同系统的公司提出三点建议。

1.通过买入价格(从高到低)对拍卖屋进行分类。

我们需要考虑到以下两个问题:

最高的红杉的高度是超过还是低于1200英尺?

你猜最高红杉的高度到底是多少?

你又是怎么想的?这是研究者面向旧金山探索馆的参观者所提出的问题。而其他参观者遇到的也是类似的2个问题,只是在第一个问题中关于红杉的高度换成是超过180英尺而不是1200。

很明显这是两个极端的数字,180太低而1200又过高。但是这些参观者给出的第二个问题的答案却让我们相当惊讶。总体来看,那些听到1200英尺的参观者认为森林里最高的树木达到844英尺,而那些听到180英尺的参观者则会给出282英寸的答案。虽然人们看到的是相同的树木,但却因为第一个问题中的数字不同而给出了不同的答案。

这便是心理学中的“心锚”(anchoring),也就是说一些不相干的数字可能会改变我们的估算。就像单看1200或180时,人们的内心便会记得这些数字然后相对地去估算他们心中最高的树,然后根据一个合理的出发点调整自己的估算。这种效应总是无处不在。这便是低价推销的基本原理,即先提供一个较低的价格再慢慢抬升。这也是为何许多快餐店总是先在菜单上列出较贵的饮料的价格;“等等!还有其它选择”这般信息广告会先打出较高的商品价格,并在一定时间内再慢慢降低价格。

即便这种心锚不具有任何意义或者是随机的也仍会发挥一定的影响力。行为经济学家Dan Ariely及其同事展开了一项研究,在拍卖过程中使用心锚,让投标者将自己的社会保险号的后两个数字写在他们的出价表上。比起那些保险号后两位数在20以下的人来说,那些数字在80以上的人更愿意支付超过346%的钱去换得像酒或巧克力等商品。

这也是我为何会认为如果暴雪想要玩家在拍卖屋投入更多钱,它便需要掌握这一原理而预先分配收购价格,以便玩家在一开始能够搜索到一些较大的数字。如果先看到的是较大的数字,我们心中便会不知觉地夸大商品的价值。而如果暴雪真的想从中谋取最大利益,它便需要为玩家呈现过去7天中最高售价的商品。

search results(from gamasura)

search results(from gamasura)

当然了,精明的购买者便会领悟这些信息而避开心锚影响。例如在拍卖屋过滤器中设置价格范围将能够缓解这种情况。就我本身而言,我便经常使用过滤工具去设置价格范围,然后通过价格抬升方式(而不是降低)进行分类。所以我更倾向于低价心锚。

而早前游戏那样通过刷任务而获得战利品的机制又会涉及何种心理元素?暴雪该怎么做才能推动着玩家不断进行刷任务?这便引出了我的第二个建议。

2.通过使用“Phat Lewt”告示激活可得性启发法。

在《暗黑破坏神III》中玩家总是能够知道好友什么时候获得了成就。例如当你的好友在Hell难度首次打败游戏并获得相关奖励时,你便能够在聊天区域中看到相关告示以及图标。这是一种精明的社交系统,能够推动着玩家为了获得更加稀有或神奇的道具而不断刷任务。

我将列举一个例子进行解释。1973年Amos Tversky和Daniel Kahneman创造了一个带有39个名字的录音带。其中的19个是名人的姓名,而剩下的20个则是普通人的名字。后来当他们进行调查时发现66%的人认为比起普通人,他们更容易想起名人们的名字,而80%的人甚至错误地认为这个录音带上的名人超过了普通人。

研究人员认为之所以会出现这种结果便是可得性启发法所致。简而言之,我们能够很容易回想起记忆中的某个事件或某类事物,并会因此将它们当成是频繁出现的事物。在著作《Thinking, Fast and Slow》中,Daniel Kahneman深入挖掘了这一问题,并以此解释我们头脑中的哪个区块(“快速”区块)狡猾地将较简单的问题换成了较为复杂的问题。

推动我们更容易记住某一事物的元素其实有很多。举个例子来说吧,可能它是以一种戏剧化的方式呈现出来,可能它是不久前才出现的,可能它已经影响到你个人的想法等。可得性启发法是人们在1999年哥伦比亚屠杀后将校园枪击事件看成是一种更加普遍现象的重要原因;也是大多数人认为高曝光率好莱坞夫妇具有较高离婚率的原因;并且也解释了为何用户在Xbox 360中遇到过一次“死亡红环”(游戏邦注:即机器当机)后开始认为这种情况会频繁出现。

暗黑破坏神3(from gamasutra)

暗黑破坏神3(from gamasutra)

这也是我为何会认为《暗黑破坏神III》中的成就告示是一个良好的开端的重要原因。因为它告示的是近来发生的事件并且是玩家周围的人所遇到的情况,所以用户心中便会自然地将获得成就的人数扩大化。我们还可以根据这种影响而让玩家相信游戏中将会频繁掉落上层的神奇道具——如果他们每次都能够看到好友获得这一道具的告示;这将推动着玩家为了获得相同的掉落道具继续游戏。暴雪同样也会贴出一些关于锻造高端宝石或锻造道具的类似告示;或者一开始便呈现出具有1万DPS的游戏道具。而观看了这些告示后,玩家便会觉得如果自己能够坚持玩游戏,那么这些事件便有可能且频繁地发生在自己身上。

到目前为止我们一直在讨论拍卖屋中的情况,以及玩家是如何从游戏中获得掉落奖励。而思考这两个元素的迭代便是我的最后一点建议。

3.以绑定拾取道具促使玩家大脑释放多巴胺。

作为一名神经心理学家,Wolfram Schultz一直致力于帕金森病的研究,其某次偶然发现启发了暴雪鼓励玩家为获取新道具而持续刷任务。Schultz的研究涉及了大脑中的多巴胺以及多巴胺受体。多巴胺是一种化学物质,并且是当我们遇到某些愉快的事物(如在《暗黑破坏神》中遇到Barbarian所拥有的非常强大的神奇道具)时才会放射出来。该化学元素将直接影响着人类的习得行为以及坚持于某一任务的动机——因为当我们的头脑中放射出这一化学物质时其它特定的脑细胞便会失去控制,而促使我们感觉良好,甚至是心情愉悦。

这便意味着多巴胺受体与模式识别有关,并让我们去想如何在生活中获取更多好东西的系统的组成部分。Schultz及其同事发现将一些水果呈现在猴子眼前将会引起它们的多巴胺神经元的跳动。他们还发现当用灯光或声音去引诱猴子时,它的脑子中便会开始放射出多巴胺;但是之后当它再看到水果时就会显得较不活跃了。他们所发现的这一系统的核心是关于生物的预感,即尝试着根据周围环境的变化去预测自己能够获得何种奖励。

更重要的是这也证明了多巴胺放射的不可预见性也能够左右我们的情绪。难以预测多巴胺的出现会突出我们预测系统中的失败——而这一系统能够帮助我们了解为何自己难以发现生活中的美好事物以及如何在未来生活中挖掘到它们。这也是许多游戏中的随机掉落战利品能够有效地推动玩家继续游戏的重要原因:利用玩家的大脑尝试预测那些不可预见的事物。

由此可见,掉落的战利品毫无疑问就是《暗黑破坏神》和《暗黑破坏神II》的核心体验。听到一个轻微的“ting!”声并看到一个五彩的文本阐述着自己将获得何种掉落道具,这能够有效推动玩家继续玩游戏。

但这种体验在《暗黑破坏神III》中将被淡化。

因为游戏中的拍卖屋远比掉落的战利品更加有效,并且比起打败敌人或找到宝箱而获得的随机道具,这种方法更具有预见性,且能够帮助玩家找到更适合角色的道具。就我个人的经验而言,玩家很容易在这款游戏中购买到合适的装备,这便导致了“ting!”声失去了原有的功效——因为玩家不再将随机掉落的战利品当成是一种奖励。就像如果玩家获得的是难以随身携带的金币,他们便不得不将其卖给他人或在拍卖屋卖个好价钱。实际上,拍卖屋系统阻隔了游戏中随机掉落的战利品带给玩家的多巴胺放射体验。的确,在拍卖屋中出售高质量的道具也就意味着更大的回报,但是在整个挂牌,销售和交易过程中玩家的大脑中却很难再产生这种多巴胺放射。

我真怀疑暴雪的经营管理层是否是太忙了,所以只能投入更多的钱去“抄近路”,即采取与现实中类似的拍卖屋形式,但是这种方法却会降低游戏的核心吸引力。不过这里也存在一些折衷方案,也就是游戏中的装备可以绑定一些超级道具。

在大型多人在线游戏中,当玩家角色帐号通常会绑定一个“绑定拾取”(BOP)道具。也就意味着玩家不能够卖出或转让这种道具。你可以装备它们,将其分解以锻造材料或只是将其储存在自己的库存中。所以此时找到一个强大且华丽的BOP道具便能够带给玩家“ting!”的感觉并促使其大脑释放多巴胺——因为这是玩家在拍卖屋所买不到的道具。同时,BOP道具也是一种明显的奖励形式能够影响到玩家释放多巴胺,我们甚至还可以提供不同效能的BOP道具,从而让玩家在面对每一次掉落道具时能够有所期待。如此看来,这不正等于掉落道具的回归嘛!(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

The psychology of Diablo III loot

by Jamie Madigan

Oh man, you all, I’ve been playing a lot of Diablo III lately (click click click click click…). I’m sure that many of you who have played have been through the same scenario I have time after time. After running around avoiding AOE attacks, dashing in to rez fallen teammates, and swatting aside trash mobs, you and your co-players finally deplete some boss’s health and immediately gather around the newly created digital corpse to answer that all-important question: Did it drop anything good?

In some of the most important ways, Diablo III is a game about hitting monsters with weapons until other, hopefully better, weapons pop out of them. That is, it’s a game where you try to maximize the outputs of a system through optimal combinations of your character’s skills and equipment.

This puts acquiring new gear first and foremost (especially once you hit the level cap of 60 and start running Hell or Inferno difficulties) but unlike previous games in the franchise, Diablo III complicates that process by having auction houses where you can buy and sell equipment so that loot drops aren’t the only way to deck yourself out with phat lewts.

As is my habit, I’ve been thinking about how different psychological theories explain our willingness to buy things in the auction house and grind for new equipment from in-game drops. The game’s developer, Blizzard, probably has two goals among others: First, to get people to spend their in-game gold to keep the game’s economy moving (or real money in the case of the real money auction house), and second to keep us playing the game over and over again in order to find stuff the old fashioned way.

In pursuit of these goals and in light of certain psychological phenomena, I have three suggestions for Blizzard or anyone else developing a similar system.

By default, sort the auction house by buyout price, high to low.
Consider these two questions:

Is the height of the tallest redwood more or less than 1,200 feet?

What is your best guess about the height of the tallest redwood?

What do you think? These are questions that researchers asked of some visitors to the San Francisco Exploratorium. Other visitors were asked a similar pair of questions, except that the first one asked whether the tallest redwood was more than 180 feet instead of 1,200.

Both limits are pretty extreme, in that 180 feet is obviously way too short and 1,200 feet is crazy tall. Nonetheless, the answers to the second question, which was consistent across both groups, were pretty amazing. On average, those who had been primed by the 1,200 feet figure said the tallest tree in the forest had to be 844 feet, while those who heard 180 feet off the bat thought the tallest had to be only 282 feet. These were the same people, looking at the same trees; the only difference was the figure in that first question.

This is a clear cut example of what psychologists call “anchoring,” one example of which is presenting us with a number to change our estimates of an other, possibly unrelated number. Simply seeing the numbers 1,200 or 180 caused people to anchor on that number and to then adjust their estimates of the tallest tree instead of picking a more sensible starting point. This kind of effect shows up everywhere once you know to look for it. It’s the basis of lowball sales pitches that get you to anchor on a low price and then negotiate up. It’s the reason why many fast food restaurants list bigger, more expensive drink prices first on their menu. It’s why the “But wait! There’s more!” brand of infomercials list absurdly high prices for their wares first before slashing them down for a limited time if you act now.

And anchors can still have an effect if they’re nonsensical or random. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely and his colleagues conducted a study where they used anchoring in an auction simply by having bidders write down the last two digits of their social security number at the top of their bid sheets. Those whose numbers ended in the 80s and above actually were willing to pay up to 346 percent more for things like wine and chocolates than were those whose social security numbers ended in the 20s or below.

This is why I think that if Blizzard wants more money spent in the auction houses, one way to effect this is to pre-sort the buyout prices so that we see the big fat numbers first in our search results. Even absurd ones like where that one numbskull obviously just held down the “9″ key for 30 seconds. Seeing larger numbers will prime us to inflate our estimates of what that item is worth to us. If Blizzard wanted to get really sly about it, the company could show you the most that an item has sold for over the last 7 days.

Of course, savvy auction house shoppers can use this information to avoid the anchoring effect. Setting price limits in the auction house filters would mitigate it, for example. Me, what I typically do is set some price limits with the filtering tools, then sort by ascending price rather than descending. That way, I anchor on the low prices instead.

But what about getting loot the old fashioned way — by grinding for it? What can Blizzard do to keep us grinding? That brings us to the second suggestion.

Activate the availability heuristic with ‘Phat Lewt’ notifications
There’s a setting in Diablo III that lets you see when someone on your friends list pops achievements. For example, when your buddy beats Diablo (OMG SPOILARZ!!) for the first time on Hell difficulty and earns the associated achievement, you get a little notification near the chat area, along with an icon. It’s a neat social system that I think could be expanded to make people keep grinding for super awesome Rare or Legendary item drops.

To illustrate why, consider a simple, 1973 experiment by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman where they created a tape recording of 39 names. Nineteen of these names belonged to famous people, and the remaining 20 did not. When asked, 66 percent of the subjects were able to recall more famous names than non-famous, and the vast majority –80 percent — incorrectly claimed that there were more famous names on the list than non-famous.

The reason for that last result, the researchers argued, has to do with what’s called the availability heuristic. In short, it refers to the fact that to the degree that recalling instances of an event or class of things from memory is easy, we will judge them to be more frequent or more numerous. In his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman digs even deeper into the phenomenon, arguing that it’s an example of how part of our mind (the eponymous “Fast” part) will slyly substitute an easier question (How easy is it to recall an example of this phenomenon?) for a more difficult one (How frequent is this phenomenon?).

There are many factors that make an event or thing easier to remember. For example, it may have happened in a very dramatic manner, it may have just happened recently, it may have affected you personally. The availability heuristic is the reason people thought school shootings were more common right after the 1999 massacre in Columbine, Colorado. It’s the reason most people overestimate the divorce rate in highly visible Hollywood couples. It’s why you think the Xbox 360 “red ring of death” failure is more frequent after it happens to you.

This is why I think that the achievement notification in Diablo III is a good start. It makes the number of people getting the achievement seem larger because it happened recently and to someone you know. The same effect could be used to make players think that the upper tier of Legendary item drops are more frequent if they saw a notification every time it happened to a friend. This would motivate players to keep playing in the (perhaps inflated) hopes of getting a similar drop. Blizzard could also post similar notifications about crafting high-end gems or blacksmith items. Or cracking the 10,000 DPS threshold for the first time. Seeing notification of these events will make them seem more frequent and thus more likely to happen to you if you just keep at it.

So far we’ve talked about the auction house and about getting loot drops from playing the game. Thinking about the interaction between the two brings us to the final suggestion.

Create dopamine rushes with bind on pickup items

Instead of Tristram, let’s head to Sweden to begin. Wolfram Schultz was working there as a neuropsychologist studying Parkinson’s disease in lab monkeys when he almost accidentally started a line of research that ultimately suggests a way that Blizzard could encourage us to keep grinding for new loot. Schultz’s research involved dopamine and dopamine receptors in the brain. Dopamine is a chemical that’s released when we encounter something pleasurable, like a piece of fruit or a Legendary Mighty Weapon for our Barbarian. The chemical is hugely important for learned behavior and motivation to persist in a task, since when it’s released certain brain cells go bananas and make us feel good — maybe even euphoric.

What this means is that dopamine receptors are part of a system that’s about pattern recognition and figuring out how to get more good things out of life. Schultz and his colleagues discovered that presenting a lab monkey with a bit of fruit caused the creature’s dopamine neurons to light up. They also discovered that when they repeatedly preceded the treat with a light or a sound, the neurons would start to fire when the monkey saw the light or heard the sound, but then remain relatively inactive when the fruit showed up. The system they had discovered was, at its core, about anticipation and trying to predict rewards based on what was happening in the environment.

What’s more, it turns out that unpredicted gushes of dopamine really get us fired up. This is because unexpected dopamine rushes highlight failures in our predictive system, and it’s a system that’s designed to help us figure out why we didn’t see life’s good things coming and thus how to find them again in the future. This is why the random nature of loot drops in many games is so effective at getting us to keep playing: it capitalizes on our brain’s attempts to predict the unpredictable. (See here for more on dopamine and loot drops.)

Loot drops were indisputably core to the Diablo and Diablo II experience for all these reasons. Hearing the little “ting!” sound and seeing the beautiful, colored text indicating that a unique item had dropped produced a rush that every player looked forward to.

Only, not so much with Diablo III.

The reason is that the auction house is actually a far more effective but much more predictable way of finding better gear for your character than hoping for good loot drops from fallen enemies or treasure chests. In my experience it was super easy to buy equipment so good that the magical “ting!” sound soon lost its effect because the loot that dropped was no longer a reward. It was just gold in a slightly more inconvenient form, destined to be sold to a vendor or at best on the auction house for a little more. In effect, the auction house system excised the entire dopamine rush, loot drop appeal of the game. Yes, high quality items still mean big returns on the auction house, but the whole process of listing, selling, and transferring the money is too far removed to elicit the same dopamine rush.

I suspect that the execs from Blizzard are too busy cackling and having money fights with the cuts that the company takes from real money auction house transactions to care, but this seems like a huge part of the game’s core appeal is now lost. I think there’s some middle ground, though, which is why I think the game should have a class of super items that are bind on equip.

In MMO parlance, “bind on pickup” or “BoP” items are treasures that bind to your character’s account once they’re equipped. This means they can’t be given away, sold, or otherwise transferred. You can just equip them, break them down for crafting materials, or just sit there and stare at them in your inventory. Finding a really good, color-coded item that’s BoP would restore some of that “ting!” feeling and dopamine rush, because it will be something that you won’t be able find on the auction house. Making the best items in the game BoP would go a long way towards creating those familiar dopamine rushes because they would signal a clear and strong reward, but even making them run the full range of quality would probably still work, since seeing one drop would signal the tantalizing possibility of something otherwise unobtainable. Suddenly, the loot drop would be back, baby.

So there you have it: three suggestions for tweaking Diablo III loot based on psychology. If you’re a game designer I’d love to hear your thoughts on these, especially if you’ve experimented with anything similar.(source:GAMASUTRA)


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