10 Genius Ways Video Game Developers Outsmarted You
1. Rested XP Encourages Players To Play For Short Bursts - World Of Warcraft
World of Warcraft's rested XP system grants players an XP boost while they're offline, effectively incentivising players to play for shorter bursts and log back in later, where they'll receive 200% of their otherwise "un-rested" XP.
But rested XP actually came about in the first place because Blizzard's prototypical scaled XP system was largely rejected by play-testers.
Originally, the game was designed to gradually lower the amount of experience players received from 200% to 100% over a play session, to encourage playing for shorter periods of time.
Play long enough and your XP would bottom out, incentivising players to log out before then and return later.
But players loathed it, and so designer Rob Pardo came up with the idea of making everything in the game effectively take twice as much XP to achieve, while rested XP would grant 200% XP gains until it ran out and returned the player to 100%.
The idea is fundamentally the same as before, that you're encouraged to exploit the bigger XP gains and log out when they're gone, but framed through the logical lens of rested XP it seemed infinitely more acceptable to players. That's some incredible meddling with human psychology right there.