Crash farming, health, and OCD.

MMO's bring out obcessive-compulsive traits in people. That is a known fact.

Now recently, with the polar bear incident for example, one's heard instances of people farming 10-30 hours straight.

There's a warning in game that tells people to take a break every hour. That warning isn't just for laughs I'd imagine. Prolonged gaming/ computer exposure does have adverse effects on health.

Now a friend of mine thought that farming that long is their own conscious decsion, while it is in a sense , many of those people do it out of obcessive behaviour, and are mentally compelled to keep farming in the hope that the the next time will be it.

- Regardless of the damage that they are doing to themselves.

Farming is good etc , but crash farming certainly is not. Remember when it was reported that people died through over gaming?

Now Anet cant force ppl how to play, but they can certainly help matters.

My message to Anet is simply out of consideration for their players physical well being , is to not have instances where people's inner obcessive compulsive behaviour gets triggered to that extent, and they arehighly motivated to farm for an entire day or more straight , causing anything up to significant damage to their health and maybe even death.

Agree? Disagree?

So that message that says take a break is really just a warning so if you die from over farming they can't be sued?!

Ingenious.....

How can you blame Anet for this? Seriously. Learn your limits. It's upto each individual to tell themselves when enough is enough. There's a health warning message every hour as said. But other than that, what else can be done apart from sending a doctor to every player's house that's been online too long?

Haijiibirdhead, I understand what you are saying... and I can see where this thread might go with the flames, but MMOG's are obsessive by nature. It has nothing to do with farming. It's the social environment. I can extend that further and say gaming by it's very nature is obsessive. Take anything from FPS to Strategy. I think I've killed enough brain cells in the last week alone playing Super Mario Galaxy on my Wii... which doesn't have any redeemable value at all and I can't even say "HEY! Look at me and all my loot."

I still wish I could disable that damned message....

You really dont understance Obcessive behaviour do you. There is no "learn your limits", because the compulsion becomes near irresistable. If psychological problems were as easy as "do this, or just dont do this", then do you think that psychologists would be paid so much or even exist at all?

What Anet can do , as I said in the Original post , is that Anet can not set up instances where OCD behaviour is triggered for people to farm 20+ hrs straight. They can make it so that people would be motivated to farm, but over a healthy period of time.

imo , being a responsible company is doing that. Lets say that someone died from the Polar bear thing who was under an obcessive compulsion. Perhaps some of the blame might fall at the person , but much of the blame imo , falls at the corporation for setting that scenario up I think.

It's the same thing that causes gambling addiction. They are finding the human brain is hardwired to gravitate toward repetitive behaviors. When you add an small reward or sense of accomplishment, a variety of situations in which the same behavior produces different results and an occasional jackpot many people get hooked.

The problem to what you suggest, however, is that it is those very features which make games enjoyable to the average, non-addictive player. If you take them out of the design of the game you will lose pretty much all your players.

Perhaps they can avoid the extremes like the polar bear but if they want to keep the game fun there will always be those who will become addicted to it.

And by the way, I have OCD and so I do understand what you are saying. But there really isn't much ANet can do about it. It's my responsibility to adjust to life - not the world's responsibility to adjust to me.

In the interest of discussion, what would be an example of, "not set[ting] up instances where OCD behaviour is triggered..."?

I'm in Inde's corner here, virtually anything could be construed as a trigger for OCD behaviour in a game.

- I want to finish that next mission
- I want to farm that next stack of ecto
- I want to achieve that next grind title

...and so on, and so on.

Short of programming the game to limit the length of time you can play (auto-logoff), I don't really see an applicable example for your suggestion here. I can only imagine the outrage if ANY gaming company imposed limits on how long you're allowed to play.

I understand the polar bear example where you've got a limited time to get a particular item, but I don't necessarily think that only people with OCD spent an inordinate length of time farming for it. Back to my comment above, if I was unable to (or perceived I was unable to) get a polar bear because the game auto-logged me off after XX hours of play, I'd be OUTRAGED.

Folks, this doesn't need to be flamebait - it could actually turn into an interesting discussion!

This is very much a case wherein it is on the buyer to behave responsibly. If an OCD individual is concerned about having this kind of thing happen, don't play the game.

I find it amusing that this is even a discussion surrounding Guild Wars, which isn't a true MMO in any sense. There's no underlying design decision to attempt to get the player to play for as long as possible, in fact in many instances it's exactly the opposite. If a mentally unhealthy person can't responsibly handle playing this game, I'd venture to say they can't responsibly handle RPG's of any stripe and would do well to steer clear of them until they've sought appropriate medical treatment.

Not sure there is an answer for this because OCD doesn't not really make logical sense. Somehow the fight or flight survival instinct seems to get attached to a non threatening situation or non-survival action. So there isn't any real "trigger" you can identify.

I think what the OP is really talking about is addictive behavior in which a repeated action is rewarded and that reward is magnified in the player's mind so that the player keeps depending on the "next farm run" to feel good (like the alcoholic needing that next drink) This is the nature of gaming though so I don't think it can be avoided.

Either way, now that I think of it, the Polar bear run does not really fit. It was too short lived. It probably did become addictive or even an obsession to some but it was over in less than 48 hours. Unless someone felt they absolutely had to have the bear and began farming some other place for the money to get it, the absence of the run makes it impossible for the addiction to have an effect for more than the 48 hours or so it was there. For a real addiction I think you would need a fairly short not too hard run with a generally small payout, a moderately good payout (say a gold weapon or two) every few runs and the possibility of a very rare jackpot payout - elemental hard mode runs outside Sardalac would probably fit the bill. Obsessive would be more likely to concentrate on a specific reward (say a perfect zodiac - and would feel the need to play until that drop was achieved) or feel compelled to repeat the run until some undefined sense of having done it "right" was fulfilled. Addiction would be less likely to focus on a single farming run and more likely to become addicted to the action of farming itself - or one or more aspects of the game. Obsessive, I think, would be more likely to focus on a specific run or specific goal of some kind - feeling they had get it right before being able to move on.

In any case - I don't see how ANet can really design the game in a way that would avoid those things and still keep the game enjoyable for the average player.

The only solution to this problem is a level 80 female only persuasion spell.

Some people death level, or set them selves AFK for over night sessions, or over work sessions. What about those people who are able, and do live "normal" successful lives? Would their client kick them, or whatever Anet decides to do, or whatever you propose as punishment for those who are connected to the client for extended periods of time?

I perfer that ISPs, and those who supply the servers for games be neutral. They simply supply the service. It is up to the person to decide what to do. Whiel I ackowledge that some do have some major problems. But it NOT us, ths third person, to step in the way, and provide our opinion or try and force them to be better. One cannot simply enforce others to do as they wish. People/governments, the establishment have tried this, and everytime, it has failed.

The person with the problem must first realize they HAVE a problem. This is the same for any pyschological disorder. It is the first step to treatment. Not only for these disorders, but also most medical problems aswell. The player must know, and decide to stop, or treat, their disorder. It is not up to us to force this player to stop, or seek help. It will fail everytime.

I gotten 3 on them warning atleast 8 hours but it does not mean I was playing for 8 hours...

those 3 times I left my GW on and people who has passed away from playing game for long time are stupid..

LOL - can I get one of those? (or, rather, two?)

If you would sacrifice your real life needs to play an online game that warns you to take a break every hour or so, then you deserve the consequences that come to you.

Polar bear incident?

Me too
I know they won't add an option to have it off though lol.

New mini discovered day before Wintersday ended*cough*

*Where* have you *been!?*

Nonetheless, ANet can't be held responsible - and they're actually trying to go against it. The mini does nothing besides walk around and look angry once in awhile. You won't deal more damage, get more loot, nothing.

People die from binge-gaming? just like the people that die from binge-drinking and binge-ect

Heres the answer to the problem : Learn a thing called "moderation"
If people really can't tell when they need to stop playing a game and eat/drink/stay alive that person is mentally ill and should be supervised anyway.

Why do i only find out about mini's after they are no longer availiable

I have heard of people that have died from playing WoW.....i think it was WoW at least.