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NO grinding please.
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You know the worst thing aobut grind? That freaking experience bar that taunts you. Many a night I have started hopelessly at those bars hitting keys not even paying attention to what I am killing, instead just watching when I get that measly .005% XP increase. Maybe they should just do completely way with XP bars and leave you guessing, lol.
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
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MMO's just suck when it comes to that lol. The only compelling thing they have to offer is that little bar moving alittle more so you can "ding" and get a new skill and a higher number....like it means anything. In most games all it means is.......another empty bar to grind out. Thats why after all the games I've played over the years I stick with L2, at least it means something. At least the players impact the world. At least we are not NPC controlled drones...we can be heroes or villians.........we pay a heavy price in the grind for our freedom.
By the way neuronomad, here is a video to go with your quote
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUaZNoaM27A
Last time I checked, DAOC and Anarachy are western titles as well.
lol
Good job making no point whatsoever.
It feels so good being right.
Hmm did he ask no grinding--let me look on my desktop for a game i dont grind in that is well an MMMO
hmmm CS
hmmm Diablo 2
Hmmm WC3
WAIT
These arent MMORPGS you know why? No mmorpg has no grinding every game requires a lil time to sit down play some techno and kill the same mob over and over again till you see your screen flash and then you can go pee.
Simply put it this way i hear FPS's are fun nowadays
Not trying to flame just making a point: Personally only free game without grinding was well Guild Wars
Well for now I'll stick with playing WoW, NWN and AA. keeps me busy. Just got Wow btw, Graphics are pretty good.
What are the grinding factor for it? ne1 tell me?
Remember SEED? The totally failed mmorpg that tried the no grinding theme. Yea that one, you remember now huh. It's impossible to have a mmorpg without grinding, no sense of achievement = no players.
Yep, it tells you they're not singleplayer, beat 'em in a day games. Well, except for WoW. WoW IS a singleplayer game with a chat interface.
In WoW you can reach max level by doing quests ... there are so many of them, and they earn such good EXP, that most people do it that way and don't have to do any "naked grinding". But ... keep in mind that the quests are often "disguised" grinding a la "kill 20 of these" or "kill enough of those so that they drop X amount of this" and so forth, so you are in effect grinding mobs, but in a directed way for a quest goal, and when you complete the quest you get an additional boost of EXP and in some cases a quest reward as well.
The real grinding, however, starts at max level. Max level currently in WoW is all about "teh grind". Grinding for PvP honor, grinding instanced dungeons and raid instances for loot drops to improve your stats, grinding mobs for reputation with factions in order to unlock loot rewards to improve your stats. It's all a hellacious grind at mx level currently. Max level is being raised to 70 in January with the expansion, and it's not clear at the moment what that will look llke (ie, whether the level 70 situation will be comparable to the current level 60 situation).
Average playing time of a level 60 is 1400 minutes which translates to 1400/60= 23 hours a week.
23 hours a week multiplied by 52(weeks in a year)=1196 hours in a year/24= ~50 days a year.
Other activities:
121 days a year sleeping.
9 days a year doing housework
12 days a week shopping
38 days a year watching TV
15.6 days a year doing sports
2.88 days a year phoning, emailing.
8 days a year cooking.
18 days a year eating/drinking.
All results are approx. and are from various surveys around. The watching TV could probably vary as far as the amount of WoW playing.
In most mmorpgs grind is made into the dominant feature instead of story and playing your role in it. People that say that grind is an inherent part of the genre are mistaken. There is grind and there is progression. Progression is an inherent part of the rpg experience. Grind is not. Grind is just a way for devs to fill out a game that lacks story and event driven content or dynamic interactive worldly content. Progression is good and grind is really just filler. The option and ability to grind if you want to is good as long as it isn't a requirement or just substituting for quality creative content.
When people say they want an mmo without grind, what they are really saying is that they want an mmo that emphasizes the expected progression one would experience when playing a role in a game based on a story or immersive event type situation. Not mindnumbingly repetitive, noncreative, rote killing and sometimes crafting. They are not looking to kill the endgame bossmob at day one. They are simply looking for progression towards it (or a noncombat goal) in a way that is based on story or immersive events not on mindless repetitive same task every time grind. A game need not be single player or solo to achieve this.
In single player rpgs there is little to no grind. There is progression in the form of having enough quests to get to the end just doing the quests and nothing else. Furthermore the quests are usually story based not the kill-60-pigmen type. You don't just start the game and kill the lord of evil...but there is a more natural progression. This can be done in an mmorpg if the devs wanted to make such a game. That being said grind can be fun sometimes...but only if it never becomes a need and only when story driven or dynamic progression to the end or max are already in place and accounted for. Even if I was totally wrong, If a game came out based on this post it would pwn.
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
For me an mmo starts at end game. The lveling is for me just a prologe to get attached to the char and master it skills.
An MMO that has an "End" is pointless and not persistant. Might as well play a single player game if you look forward to ending it.
Novaseeker,
Your point is true but that just an excuse devs made up to cover lack of content. The quests need not be short or easy. If a dev team was comitted to extending the playtime with creative or dynamic content they could, It would just take more work and more labor and more thinking on the devs part. It would be difficult but not impossible.
I know about the business model you are talking about but just knowing that an mmo based on content and progression and not rote grind is possible and sustainable is really, deep inside, why players have now begun to demand it.
The old (current) business model works from a financial pov. I don't argue that. It allows maximum results with minimum effort (it's easier to put in crowds of mobs to kill than to put in crowds of quests to complete or interactive content to interact with). But gamers, especially older gamers are more sophisticated and are growing increasingly unsatisfied with games based primarily on rote filler. The model will evolve. At some point a game will come out that moves towards what I speak of to satisfy the sophisticated gamers and other companies will eventually have to make new games based on that model to compete. Mark my words.
edit: oddly enough, WoW is very popular because it comes the closest to being the kind of game I'm talking about. lvl 1-60 there is no grind if you are a grouper. Only soloers have to grind. That's because WoW has just enough content. And even WoW is a long ways off from what I'm talking about. To compete, future games must move in that direction to satisfy those of us who "know better".
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
You're absolutely right. The next generation of games will be forced to evolve into better and more interaction rather then what's generally defined as "grind". The only reason people view things as grind in an RPG is because they're not given a reason to do something or playing the wrong kind of games, levelling up is not the point of an rpg. The point is to play a role and if you do well you'll advance, a bit like a simulation of life if you wish to find a comparison. I just hope the next generation of mmorpgs will be here sooner then later or that the majority of people that think "end-game" and more specifically PK is the only point of an rpg rethink their opinion a second to broaden up their views.
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I have to disagree.
I actually enjoy the grinding. I find it very relaxing. Clears my mind.
What the problem is for me is when games ONLY have grind. That the quests aren't fulfilling or fun.
Also, I have no problem paying to play. I am a firm believer in getting what you pay for. Money has to come from someplace in order to support the game, new content, upkeep, employees, etc.
Guildwars has done what they have done becuase of the very nature of the game as well as the technology they use. They don't need to support servers for entire worlds.
But if we don't pay then companies are going to start relying on paying for items or advertising. And I hate advertising.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
I feel WOW made the first big leap towards quest based leveling.... while they disguise grinding tasks way too often there is a glimmer of originality with many of the quests you find along the way. I remember being sent to take a point-blank "photograph" of an elite turtle..who wasn't happy when I snapped it.
Or the short quest line where a warrior asked me to check in on his wife for him. I was a bit sad when I had to report back to him that she had been killed by raiders. Then there's the entire Victor Van Cleef quest line in the early game which starts out killing various levels of bandits..but eventually has you intercepting messangers, escorting traitors and leads you into the imperial capitol and various level of intreque. Wow has many more quest lines like this, perhaps not enough but I still think it is a step in the right direction.
That said, like several folks have mentioned here... some people hate questing. They grind through WOW and do few of the quests (if they can help it). I prefer them myself, but these games cater to a wide audience and its hard sometimes to please everyone.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Personally I think it would be more interesting for developers to create more well-made sandbox type games where the players can "make their own content" along the lines the way EVE has done. Ultimately that suits the business model of retaining player interest, while at the same time not requiring nearly as much development time and cost on the front-end in terms of content development, which makes it a relatively efficient development model. Trouble is that many people don't like sandbox designs and want a game with a lot of developer-provided content, unfortunately, and so the market for them remains a lot smaller than the market for content-based games.
As for WoW, I think in large degree the grinding is simply disguised during the levelling process. There are plenty of quests in WoW that are grinds with an extra bonus exp tacked onto the end. The charm of WoW is that the grinding is disguised like this, people do not think they are grinding, and the levelling curve is relatively shallow. If WoW had a steeper levelling curve, quest or no quest, in no way would it be as popular as it is now. The grind games tend to feature extremely sharp levelling curves as well, which tends to make them less attractive.
Eh, people will still be motivated by getting gear rewards. What is being changed is that the current system has a ladder that is graded on a curve, which means he who earns most honor relative to what others earn will advance (after the degradation factor is taken into account), whereas under the new system it will be a straight grind, so you don't need to worry about what your honor is relative to others, you can just grind against a set schedule of rewards. Blizzard has stated that their core philosophy is that people will do things that they are rewarded by, and in no way do they intend this change to take the "incentive" out of the PvP system in WoW.
Personally I think it would be more interesting for developers to create more well-made sandbox type games where the players can "make their own content" along the lines the way EVE has done. Ultimately that suits the business model of retaining player interest, while at the same time not requiring nearly as much development time and cost on the front-end in terms of content development, which makes it a relatively efficient development model. Trouble is that many people don't like sandbox designs and want a game with a lot of developer-provided content, unfortunately, and so the market for them remains a lot smaller than the market for content-based games.
As for WoW, I think in large degree the grinding is simply disguised during the levelling process. There are plenty of quests in WoW that are grinds with an extra bonus exp tacked onto the end. The charm of WoW is that the grinding is disguised like this, people do not think they are grinding, and the levelling curve is relatively shallow. If WoW had a steeper levelling curve, quest or no quest, in no way would it be as popular as it is now. The grind games tend to feature extremely sharp levelling curves as well, which tends to make them less attractive.
You are right. But devs should and ultimately must, put in more work and creativity to get subscribers paying in the future as the market gets more competitive. Gamers will demand more and better and reward the games that deliver. Even you will get to a point where you will decide you've had enough rote filler and demand content even if the devs have to achieve outrageous feats of labor to make it.
Guild Wars 2 is my religion