Ok, so there are many ways to overcome this challenge. However I will cover ONE. The simplest and ALWAYS the solution to it.
Never make rewards more relevant than the activity. Make the activity the reward itself.
If people want a soft drink, don’t promise them gold, diamonds or a trip to the moon. Give them something that will quench their thirst.
Now, what if I want more people to buy my soft drinks? Ha! This is the hard part, you are trying to influence other people into behave in a specific way.
Remember first finding out what motivates your audience.
So identify your targets first.
Then, build a journey the players must complete in order to reach a goal connected to such motivation (please don’t use fulfill their dreams, an International Marketing Agency sells that crap and it just doesn’t work)
Then, using reverse engineering, plan out the order of the journey. Maybe they need to collect PET bottles to build a house, maybe it’s the label in the bottle. The key is to make EVERY ACTION COUNT towards the main goal and connect them together. Maybe somethings are big and need to be divided, maybe some are so small that can be achieved while working on the big ones.
Afterwards, review your strategy looking deeply into the challenge rating of each activity. Don’t put tasks that are too hard at the begginning and also don’t make it boring.
Make sure they have to BUY some bottles through the activities but DO NOT MAKE IT ALL ABOUT BUYING (or spending more money on each round). How would you feel if there are 100 tasks to be done and each and every task requires you to go to the bank and deposit 10 dollars more than the last time? Don’t make everything about money. That’s where the enemy is sleeping (and he has such soft sleep).
You want to sell. We all want to. Just don’t try to trik people into it by offering meaningless rewards. Make sure there is a big goal after some hard work and they will gladly work with you. Treat your players with respect and treat them all as if they were masters on the game.
Everyone wants to feel powerful and able. That’s why we are here.