User blog:Thepeopleseason/Why there should be no Drop Cap

Over in The Gatehouse board, there's a poll from January asking about the drop cap and how HabitRPG handles it with regard to subscriptions.

Deilann responds:

"I'd like to see an increased drop cap, but lowered drop *rates* all around. I get all my drops in the first 5-7 tasks I click. There's no incentive whatsoever. But I like having my PER that high for the gold."

As someone who tries to get a Perfect Day every day and has a wealth of morning-bound dailies, I, too, have seen the drops dry up after the first few tasks I click. And while I don't necessarily agree that there's *no* incentive, as the day wears on, my interest in what I gain from completing tasks wanes.

How, then, should drops work in HabitRPG to maximize enthusiasm?

Let's talk monkeys for a second
Wolfram Schultz is a neuroscientist at Cambridge University. Aside from having a way cool name, Schultz spends his days hanging out with monkeys. He studies these monkeys and how their brains react to a certain set of stimuli: He plays a loud tone for them, waits a few seconds, then squirts a few ounces of juice into the monkey's mouth.

Initially, the dopamine neurons of the monkeys only fire when they get the juice, responding only to the actual reward. After a few trials, the neurons start firing when the tone sounds, predicting the reward. If the monkey regularly hears the tone, but receives no juice, the neurons will start to fire at a low rate, serving as an "error signal." If the monkey gets juice unexpectedly, however, the neurons will fire enthusiastically--a surprise reward is beyond compare.

If we look at this study in the context of gambling, you can easily figure out why some people become addicted: for gamblers, the dopamine "prediction neurons" are trying to decode the patterns happening in front of them, trying to predict potential rewards. Haphazard payouts generate increased dopamine because the reward is a surprise, and the neurons are unable to discern and adapt to a non-existent pattern.

A slot machine of drops
Knowing gambling can generate enthusiasm because of the haphazard reward schedule, we can use slot machines as a model for drops. There is no payout limit to slot machines (some are programmed to return 100 percent of wagered money over time). Some random number generator emits digits, and when those numbers qualify, the machine issues coins. There's no discernable pattern or algorithm to how they pay out.

The random nature of the payouts compels you to play again, hoping the next pull of the arm will give you both coins and a dopamine rush.

Thus, I propose HabitRPG adopt a slot machine model and remove drop caps to generate haphazard rewards.

How things might change: a bit of math
The base percentage chance that a drop will happen should be reduced to something small, such as 5% (perhaps we should poll users to determine what's the average number of per-day dailies & todos and find an appropriate percentage that would give the average user 5 drops a day). From the base percentage, perception, streak, subscription, and task value multipliers might increase the chance of a drop (like playing multiple lines on a slot machine), but not over a certain threshold.

Other benefits
I've drawn up a methodology page on The Habit Loop, detailing how experimenting with different routines and rewards can help a player re-form a bad habit into a good one. With a more compelling drop system, HabitRPG play itself can be a reward.

Pitfalls
This could introduce the potential for abuse from unscrupulous players who might overload their dailies and todos with dummy tasks simply to have a greater chance of landing a drop, but as LadyAlys says in the same poll:

"HabitRPG is not a competitive game, no matter how much it might look like one. It cannot possibly be truely competitive when the playing field is so uneven because of widely different to-do list management processes. The only competition that matters here is the one between you and your own tendency to procrastinate. :)"

I'm sure others who were involved in the original drop algorithm might have some objections, and I'd love to hear them.

Thepeopleseason (talk) 02:56, February 25, 2014 (UTC)

Sources:

"The Neuroscience of Gambling ," Jonah Lehrer