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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5167897" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't know, why would it be essential?  I'm curious, because so far as I know, you are the only one who has suggested such a thing.I think you have a really bizarre understanding of what delayed gratification means if you honestly think any of that is what is being talked about here.Since you bring up classical music, I'll go with your own self-inflicted bad analogy.  Keep in mind, this is your analogy.  I would have prefered not to go there.  In classical music, consider the way Mussorgsky's 'Pictures at an Exhibition' builds up the listeners excitement over the course of the peice with the various Promenade sections finally leading up to a grand crescendo.  Now, it would be quite possible and indeed satisfying to just listen to the promenade and crescendo movements in the peice.  That's the 'big payoff' where Mussorgsky is putting his most compelling, memorable, loudest, most intense music.  Taken on its own, it's still a great peice of music.  But, taken in context along with the interludes leading up to it, the excitement of the peice is even greater.   Mussorgsky continually wets the appetite of the hearer by foreshadowing his big finale, but then he withdraws into side themes for a while, temporarily cooling the excite.   This provides delayed gratification to the listener.Delayed gratification is not about doing nothing for a while.  Delayed gratification is about not getting the 'big win' for a while so that when you do get the 'big win' its more meaningful.  Every game uses delayed gratification of one sort or another.  Even a game with a structure like 'God of War' which brings the awesome in the first act, has a structure that involves delayed gratification.  That wetting of the appetite in act one with an epic scene, makes you greater anticipate getting back to full strength when your powers are (temporarily) lost.Delayed gratification is about doing something with a less immediate payoff for a while so that the payoff is bigger in the end.  Mechanically we might think of a delayed payoff as being, "I'll take an penalty on attacks for X rounds, so that I can get a bonus on attacks of 2X in the following round."  or "If I take damage for X rounds in a row, I get a big bonus in the following round."  I'm not saying that is good mechanic nor am I saying that its a good analogy for every sort of delayed, but it is at least an example of delaying gratification.  Sitting around doing nothing is not an example of delayed gratification.</blockquote>

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