Sigh

[Clay]

lol, wow.

"I go home and get drunk after work, **** it, I work hard all day and deserve it."
"So what if I do a little coke every day, who is he to say I have a problem. He needs to mind his own business."
"Im not hurting anyone but myself by doing a little hard, why should he care??"
"I go to work, have a job, take care of my kids. Who cares if I do X to blow off a little steam."
"I don't have any responsibilities, I can afford(monetarily or time) to do X."

Heard it, seen it, said some of it myself before. Just kinda shocked to see some of this stuff on a MMO. :P

Playing an MMO is like doing coke?

[Ratnix]

Wow, I bet their quality was real high with guys on their 15th hour who hadn't had a day off in 150 days...

Plus the overtime pay must have been a killer.... Not very good management....

Wait, now they're back to TWO 8 hour shifts?? Why not just one 16-hour shift since it worked so well for them in the past?

Well obviously because working the people that many hours was an issue.

They had to work those hours because of the high turnover due to the constant 12 hours shifts of the Prog Presses, which was the standard operating hours for many different reasons. One of the main reasons gives to us was it was cheaper for them to work 2 12 hour shifts than it would be to hire a 3rd shift along with management for that shift with Insurance. Plus the fact that when they didn't have as much business as they did right then, they didn't have enough work to sustain 3 full shifts 5 days a week. Assembly and the single stroke presses along with the entire welding department only worked 5 10's with the occasional 6th day. It was only a small part of the factory that actually had to work the killer hours.
Believe me, all of us that were there at that time wanted them to get a third shift working. Management wouldn't.

It was a crappy situation, and no I was not a T&D person so I didn't work the 16 hour shifts. I was an operator working 12's, which I bid off of after 10 months due to the lack of any time off.

As for quality, it is a Metal Stamping Factory. The machines do all the work. The reason for the 12 hours shifts was due to all the downtime necessary for T&D to keep the parts in specifications. All the operators do is stand there and watch the scrap fall out and put up new coils of steel as needed.

[Braegan]

I'm of the firm belief that if you spend hours everyday trolling the forums and then go home and log in and play "casually" you are in no position to criticize how much time someone else spends their "free time."

The only difference is, all the time you *think* about DDO someone else is doing it. So in summary you are just as guilty, don't hate, and chose not to be a hypocrite.

And to the OP, yeah double TR xp grinds are the le suck.

[BoolZ]

... Internet Addiction Test ...

I was a 30. Though I'm paid to sit in a office all day 'just in case'. A think it'd be higher if I couldn't type this at work.

Anyway, about the topic. I'm just going to start a new character past 20. Keep the first for loot runs, but play with an entirely second to avoid that much grind. I've resigned myself to knowing some aspects of this game are simply off limits for me due to my casual nature. Fact is I'm level 16 and still havn't done a single raid unless you count the Mabar event. Just somthing about possibly being surrounded by a bunch of geared TRs or twinked alts on my first is a bit intimidating.

About the thread. About all I got out of it was even 4 hours of game time a day is a lot. Figuring in 8 at work, 8 at sleep, we'll call it 2 for getting ready/driving/eating, that only leaves 6 hours for recreation and chores. Yep I'm losing all my game time at work.

[lekkus]

Those extreme examples have nothing to do with my post. I can find hundreds more of mothers/fathers abandoning their children for a myriad of other things... bingo, alcohol, shopping, gambling... whatever. They are examples of poor parenting.

Of course these are also examples of poor parenting. Internet addiction is rarely an isolated problem. The other way around happens too. In 2007 a teenager in Ohio shot his parents because they took away his Xbox. On a pound-for-pound basis, the average gamer junkie undoubtedly represents a much less destructive social force than the average meth head. It’s not extreme anecdotes that make the spectre of Internet addiction so threatening; it’s the fact that Internet overuse has the potential to scale in a way that few other addictions do. Studies have shown 3 percent to 6 percent of Internet users “have a problem.” A recent Stanford University national survey [1] found that 14 percent of Internet users find it hard to stay away from it for several days at a time; 9 percent try to hide their “non-essential Internet use” from their loved ones; 8 percent admit they use the Web as a way to escape problems....

Playing an MMO is like doing coke?

Escape problems... there is where it becomes a potential problem, the same way like abusing other substances. So yes, you really don't need to stick a needle in your arm to get away, there are different ways to to screw up.

I repeat again, just because you have different interests, or play style does not give you the right to be so judgmental.

Digital technologies are ubiquitous, and digital skills are virtually required in order to function in most productive ways in today’s western economies.Why do we then blame the skilled user for using their skills when everything from buying underwear, to ordering a pizza, to finding a mate, to yes even counselling, is done online? Well I don't. Skill sets learned through gaming can transfer to real life, and online learning can also transfer to real life behaviour.

I quoted your first post not because I am being judgemental but to point out there is a real problem concerning internet use. Excessive Internet use should be defined not by the number of hours spent online (imo) but 'in terms of losses'.
It is a loss if you are not getting to work, family relationships are breaking down, you're missing sunlight, obese and or missing out on descent meals, being moody.Where this healthy line is I leave to everyone's own judgement. There's this whole culture of competition that sucks people in with online gaming, at the expense of everything that was a constant in their lives. Once again, if you have it under control, more power to you but reading we should "learn to step up our game or accept the fact that some people can do something you cannot" and are therefore judgemental and have no right (?), when we point out our personal preferences not to play like this just does not compute.

ps Clay, this isn't personal even though I used quotes that are yours, it just made the point I wanted to make easier. Rock on!

[Tom318]

(never mind... )

[Taimasan]

Playing an MMO is like doing coke?

Heh, sure it can be. If you are unfamilar with cocaine i can try and break it down for you in the best and simpliest way i can without you having to do some. Cocaine stimulates a area in your brain called the "reward center". It is not necessarily a physcial addiction but rather a mental addiction. You find doing cocaine pleasurable and "rewarding" so thats why you keep going back for more. When you grind and grind for the red armor thats a "reward"; pulling a +4 tome is a reward. People will go out into the street's 20-30 times a day to score that next sniff or smoke. Often like hitting a desert chest 100+ times for that bloodstone. When you stop doing coke you feel a crash or letdown and you think about it frequently. Similiar to being at work or on vacation and can't wait to log on, or having a computer die and not being able to log on. There are even psychologist's who actually work on MMO's to help set up this complex "reward system" that is often labeled as "the grind". If you don't think that MMO's can be just as addictive, and crippling as a addiction to a scheduled drug in the US, I would have to disagree. Please keep in mind I am not directing any of this at you, just trying to answer you in what was seemed you trying to make a fallacy of my last post. A common psychological tool politican's use...wait......your not a politican are you??

[Clay]

Lekkus the posts that prompted my post in this thread were passing judgement on people who cap a TR2 in a week. They made judgement that demeaned anyone who plays X hours or levels so fast. While neither are problems for me--I scored 23 on that internet addiction link someone posted--I can respect that under certain circumstances some people can power level very quickly.

I don't think that everyone should be able to do this... but I do feel that before insulting anyone for doing this, one should either learn the skills to be able to do so or simply accept that some people can put the power in power game.

Taimasan, I am fully aware of addiction, reward and the Skinnerian attributes of the grind. One however can put you in Jail and the other not. Your inclusion of "so what if I do a little coke everyday" as a comparison to capping a TR2 in a week is a fallacy.

[Taimasan]

Taimasan, I am fully aware of addiction, reward and the Skinnerian attributes of the grind. One however can put you in Jail and the other not. Your inclusion of "so what if I do a little coke everyday" as a comparison to capping a TR2 in a week is a fallacy.

I don't think the criminal status of the situation was really the point I was trying to make here. Destructive/Addictive behavior is still unhealthy whether it is legal or illegal. But I believe I was trying to point out that the reward systems were indeed similar. Furthermore in my experience reading the post it seemed to evolve past the point of simply power leveling a toon. Yet was talking a turn towards addressing the whole issue whether you can be addicted to a MMO due through certain behaviors playing a MMO, which shows symptoms manifesting that addiction. If I am wrong in what I felt the post was starting to focus on (not the initial issue of power leveling), I sincerely apologize.

[Thrudh]

They had to work those hours because of the high turnover due to the constant 12 hours shifts of the Prog Presses, which was the standard operating hours for many different reasons.

Pretty smart of them to increase to 16 hours a day 7 days/week to resolve the problem of high-turnover caused by the long 12-hour days...



Interesting story though... thanks for explaining.

[Thrudh]

I'm of the firm belief that if you spend hours everyday trolling the forums and then go home and log in and play "casually" you are in no position to criticize how much time someone else spends their "free time."

The only difference is, all the time you *think* about DDO someone else is doing it. So in summary you are just as guilty, don't hate, and chose not to be a hypocrite.

Heh, zing! Point taken...

[Gunga]

/signed. Makes me look sane and reasonable.

Not really.


This conversation is pretty interesting.

It reminds me of that random cocaine test that they performed on mice..I forget the name of the test. They gave one test mouse access to as much cocaine as the mouse wanted. It stopped going back for more. It gave another mouse access to a door that may or may not contain cocaine (ie slot machines). The mouse gave up everything else and just sat by the door, opening it over and over waiting for cocaine to appear. It died.

Applied to our DDO addictions, you might say that the longer you spend playing the game, the more epic scrolls you'll accumulate. Maybe that's a bad example, but try to keep up (). If DDO just gave us everything we wanted immediately we'd get bored, say the end game blows and stop playing. It's Turbine's job to make sure they don't give us too much cocaine so that we sit by the door (chest) and keep opening it with hopes that we get the thing we need.

Some of us rats have less to ignore in our real lives than others, affording us the time to open the door endlessly hoping for our cocaine to appear. I don't think we should necessarily be proud of capping a TR2 in 7 days, but we certainly shouldn't chastise others because they have the ability to walk away from the coke door to do some laundry and feed their kids.