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Alternatives for Grinding in MMOs
pur3.5ync
Member Posts: 55
I personally just don't like the idea of sitting at your computer making & watching your character do the same thing over and over again (in most games killing monster after monster). It is to me a big waste of time but you do it for the advancement of your character in order to experience the unique or better parts of the game.
There's a few MMOs that have strayed from this norm but it is still the trend and main component of most games. I don't think it'll go away very soon and that there will always be these types of games.
So my question is what alternatives can you think of for this?
Comments
a party system, is the best way to get rid of a grind, there is nothing more fun then talking to people while you EXP. IMO questing is just as bad- (if not worse) then grinding mobs.
I find the grouping helps to alleviate boredom as we crack jokes and so forth.
If you are not being responded to directly, you are probably on my ignore list.
I can "group" in chatrooms. And there's no fee to pay!
My method of removing grind would be to give the game a bunch of offline actions. Your "instert items into box and press magic button to create item" crafting? It takes 8 real hours to make one sword. It just happens while you're asleep. This actually makes crafted weapons not common as cheap tricks around the local street corner!
However, you could be doing so many other things with your offline time, like gathering coal or ore for that smith. Or making tools for him to use. Or training your own skills (guess what a lot of people will be doing with their offline time?) for some nominal expenses like equipment or instruction, training guildmates, providing equipment repair services for players, gathering materials for other crafts or performing those other crafts.
Bam, there you have it. A game where you can craft, kill stuff, or do whatever suits your fancy. And the actual gameplay? Managing your assets, for a crafter. Or adventuring and completing dungeons or real quests (not collect 10 bandit scalps) for most everyone else. Not big enough to tackle a particular dungeon? Get a guildmate to train you and let the game simulate the grind.
As a bonus, "offline" actions could be performed simultaneously while in certain locations, such that the player does not need to truly be offline, but can be enjoying some find chat if they so desire instead.
Aww when I saw this thread I thought YOU had alternatives hehe.
Well basically my idea is jampack your mmo with tons of interesting quests. I mean INTERESTING not go kill 50 sewer rats or deliver this message to X. Also to have a good party system so people can enjoy grinding when they have to. I like you idea Mylon with having fun online while the more boring stuff being done offline(if thats what your getting at).
Well I hoped that this thread will eventually have many alternatives to grinding.
I do have my own ideas since the point is to remove grinding as the main factor to the advancement of your character. This means that you don't do & watch THAT EXACT SAME THING for like an hour every day for your character to be better for more experiences (because you "should" spend that time in the real world with real skills where it's needed and put to real world uses).
So that being the point, my main idea is that the advancement be assorted so as not to just one thing (and heck you can even have grinding PART of the process).
So please feel free to share your imagination.
ps. yes I do love the concepts in Darkfall as well
t0nyd , a very nice way
of putting it thank you
The fact isn't that it's leveling up or doing anything, the fact that makes it grind is that it's stuff that doesn't and won't matter. some nice examples are games with raiding end games(everything before matters very very little), and stuff like honor grind.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
At the end of the day FOTM will ruin it. People will compare the time it takes to hit lvl 50 or 60 or 128, and will find that healing people randomly or crafting bronze flat arrowheads is the fastest way. Suddenly everyone is trying to heal some else and no one is getting hurt, or the OOC channel is flooding with "WTS 1 trillion bronze arrowheads, 1 copper for them all".
At the end of the day, its the behaviour of the gamers that make or break the game. What will happen next? "Nerf the healer", "why can someone hit lvl cap crafting that cheap arrowhead" ... what else do you expect on the forum?
If you dont like to play games by killing mobs go play sims online.
But best way is remove lvl system and xp,just build up your skills on mobs or players.
MMo,s mostly are designed to enter a big world and kill the mobs in it, but becouse its in most cases a static gameworld its boring to play.
When they make it more dynamic like never spawn on same spot or mobs walk around move to other areas so you never have same mobs at same spot ever, and they have there own agenda like lions go on hunt for prey or wolfs same thing well many possibillitys here.
But i have feeling most of you coming withtopics about grinding becouse they want just be instant uber so they can compete with hardcore.
That will never happen hardcore will always have a advancement over you casuals just play damn game and have fun:P
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Crafting and player housing.
Combine the two to create harvest moon features. More than that: expand a single house to a yard/garden/livestock, furniture, decorations, fencing, barns, sheds. Then one house becomes many, and soon a town and additional utility buildings (lumber mill, blacksmith, town hall, barracks) are built. Then the town in turn grows a market, expands to consume local resources (lumber from trees, ore from mines, food from fishing and farms), then with the resources you secure the town with a wooden palisades, NPC and players hired as guards,
You construct watch towers, build stronger walls and buildings and soon the town hall has become a keep and your town is a fortress. Expand it further with greater riches and become a castle city.
This will naturally be in a persistent world, with limited pre-determined lots of land to build as to create conflict over limited space. This gives into two additional aspects of playing, PvP and socializing. You can trade, barter, forge alliances, offer services, be free to act/play however the hell you like.
At the end of the day FOTM will ruin it. People will compare the time it takes to hit lvl 50 or 60 or 128, and will find that healing people randomly or crafting bronze flat arrowheads is the fastest way. Suddenly everyone is trying to heal some else and no one is getting hurt, or the OOC channel is flooding with "WTS 1 trillion bronze arrowheads, 1 copper for them all".
At the end of the day, its the behaviour of the gamers that make or break the game. What will happen next? "Nerf the healer", "why can someone hit lvl cap crafting that cheap arrowhead" ... what else do you expect on the forum?
You do have a very good point assuming that it's the overall level of the character. And, that level difference makes the whole difference enjoying the benefits of the game, therefore making people take the advantages of going to the top as fast as possible.
gameplay
Two major cause of the "grind":
1) Boring game play
2) Character "progression"
Get rid of one or both of these and you'd have MUCH less of a grind.
What if I want to chat? Roleplay? Or heck, what If I'm a guild leader and I'm spending a lot of time organizing large tasks and coordinating people? Or if I'm just an officer handling these tasks for someone else? What if I'm just buying and reselling crap and playing the market?
That's why I would suggest the off-line actions as above. Reward all players roughly equally for the "boring" things without requiring them to do it. Like Eve Online's advancement system, only skill ups _could_ still happen in game and skilling up isn't the only choice for offline actions.
Or.. you could have a system where you gain xp in different skills as you use them... no matter if it's against mobs or players or crafting or social skills or...
that way, you are rewarded for doing the things that you want to do, and you get better at those things AT THE SAME TIME.
Wait, isn't that a "skill based advancement system?"
Didn't old SWG have that? I think it did....
Problem is, it still becomes a "grind" because people end up only doing one thing. They want to be good at killing stuff, so all they do is "grind" up their combat skills...
The only alternative is providing players with... wait for it... CONTENT!
And in order for content to be successful, to properly hide the grind underneath a little thing called "fun," the player has to care about the content.
A quest to kill 30 rats for the sake of killing 30 rats is not content, it is a grind. A quest to kill 30 rats because the Queen of Cheeseville is having a crisis trying to get ready for the anual Cheese Ball and is in desperate need of help to clear out the pesky creatures so that...
Just an example.
There will always be a "grind" in MMORPG games. Fact.
The ONLY thing you can do, is provide fun, operational game systems with depth and variety, as well as content that is interesting, varied, and entertaining in order to HIDE the grind underneath a little thing called "entertainment value."
If you are doing something JUST to get to some end goal some where down the road, you are probably grinding.
If you are doing something because you enjoy it, and it's fun and interesting to you, you'll reach that end goal and it won't feel like grinding.
Point is,
It's only a grind if YOU make it a grind.
Unless it's a Asian game with NO content except killing monsters over..and over... and over... for no purpose other then watching your XP bar slowly inch up... that's a grind no matter what you do.
Here's a thought. HIDE you XP bar, and just enjoy the game for what it is. READ the quest text, explore the game world, take TIME off from questing/killing to socialize, dance, play music, craft....
Kelathos i like that idea, got me thinking one more step. A game where all the players comes to a new unexplored massive world where the players can build there future from scratch. What if all the citys , towns , outpost, farms, forts was player owned and created. You have this massive world, just some natives, dungeons and monsters populates it at first. The incentive to work togheter is there. first you will have the tents and nomads roaming the world to explore then some will settle down to build a town. and it will expand from there.
I question myself.
Do we realy need to save the world all the time in every game?
do we need to have npc quests to make a game fun to play or can it happen naturaly from player needs and wants?
I think that if we make it player driven and each and everyone can build there skills from trial we might not kill grind totaly but it will atleast make it feel usefull and rewarding in its own.
oh and do away with numbers for everything. I know the leets like numbers so they can make excell spreadsheets and work out the best way to go about the game. I would love a game where those specs are hidden it makes for bether emersion and more diverse gameplay. figuring out good ways to go about the game is still there but its just not so obvius and static. (point is make the art show the condition as much as possible not numbers)
open up the world to many possiblities so every player can benefit from the populations deversity.
you will not be the master from day one but the work you put in to get bether will show and is rewarding.
the point im trying to sell is that a population of gamers proud of the world they created and them playing the part they want in that world makes a bigger impact on gamevalue then saving the world for the 12e time.
I think the feeling of grind commes from not feeling that what you do have a real purpose to you, or that the tasks needed to reach a set goal are just not making sence. EX: If i kill a Hog, give me the chance to skin him and sell the hide to a tailor , or make food out of it. Thats how you involve the player in a bether way then collecting 10 wulven tusks to npc x to recive 100g and 1000xp.
now if you sold the 10 wulven tusks to a player making a neckless, wouldent that be more fun?
Beside all this, give me state of the art 3D candy a battle engine that makes sence (where the sword strikes it strikes) and all the community tools we have come to love.
RPG style gaming can be fun. And we can see this in a lot of single player RPG’s. The problem is no one has figured out how to make a good MMO yet.
The “grind” you speak of is just bad and boring gameplay. All games do the same thing over and over, the only difference is some are fun and some are boring.
Another issue is the number of hours people put into MMOs. Anything 10 hours is a grind.
One way to make leveling more fun is open pvp with full looting. Or interactive dynamic role-playing.
If you guys don't like the "grind" character progression there are games that exist that don't have it already called first person shooters. I myself like character progressive games and feel levels are given too easy now in games as it is. There is too much focus on getting the the finish line. Levels should be long long long and dungeons to explore with trolls, dragons, goblins at each level. Most people should never reach the end of the game before an expansion is about to come out, about a year or so. That is a MMORPG, a long last experience. The focus doesn't have to be how fast can I finish this game, you are paying monthly to be part of the world for godsake.
If you don't like character progression go play a first person shooter. World of Warcraft is too shallow and easy as it is. They only have interesting content at the very end where everyone rushed to. They have already made it even easier to get there in the last patch I believe I read which is sad. It should be harder to level, to make levels mean something or just remove them and make World of Easycraft the first person shooter of the MMORPG world. If they are saying levels mean nothing already by making them even faster why not do what I just said remove them since apparently it is only in the way of the final goal of envious players who can't stand someone being higher level than them.
I don't like quest either, I don't need some npc making my adventures, give us interesting dungeons to explore, castles, etc etc and put neat items on big baddies along the way .. .let the players decide what monsters need to be killed. Giving XP for quest was the stupidest idea ever in these games, which about has made it REQUIRED for you to follow their stupid linear game play. Make MMORPGs a world again .. not single player rpgs online. I can play that offline.
Yeah, but when you join the game a year late everyone is still 30 levels above you, the servers which were once packed have too many people to be merged but not enough to make for a fun "massive" experience, and there's no one around to help. At least if the "grind" is short, it doesn't take long to catch up with everyone else.
Stop the mindset of grind, and start getting involved with a game, truly play it, stop pretending it's grind, go for the story line, if the story line is thin use your own imagination...but grind ...is for me a mind set of people who simply don't want to put any effort into the game and only seem to want to lvl and become rich, and yes then a game becomes boring, so try it, get into a game but really play hte game and all it's feature's
id accturly like to do away with the focus on lvls.
sure have lvls in weapons you use , and things you do beside fighting,, tailoring ets as natural progression of the things you do with your character.
that said I dont want the game to tell me and all observers that im a lvl 47 paladin or even have my name hovering above my avartar, I want my armor and weapons combined with the way i behave and how ppl know me to reflect how i want to present my character. EX a kind holy warrior with a big shining sword that cuts down hordes of undead or a shady mecenary that is known in the underworld for his skills in poison brewing.
if lvl are more flexiable then just a number that tells ppl you played the game for X hours and probably slayed alot of enemies then yes else it serves a poor purpose in my opinion.
I agree on that a few singleplayer games have made it right but im still waiting for a mmorpg that can delviver the same feeling of roleplay.
I play Guildwars alot but it is no way near my vision of a true rpg nor is WoW that i tried for some limited time. There are more mmorpgs out there but they lack in gameplay, have pointless missions and often a bulky feel to the battles.
in short im still waiting for the RPG part of MMOs with good controles and grafix
when that day commes i will happely chipp in 15 dollars a month to play it.
It's not about grinding, exactly, but since people have mentioned levels ...
http://mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/157692
What you say is true; however, the simple fact is that getting a group together, travelling to the group venue, operating as a group and dividing the group spoils presents major problems indeed. Most games, perhaps even all, MMOs have not yet cracked those challenges which is why 'Soloing vs Grouping' remains such a hot topic on almost every game board.
Several games have promised to make RPGs more immersive, but so far, none have delivered (as far as I know). I too would love a game with a persistent world, where MY actions make a difference and my impact on the world is there for others to see. I get bored with killing stuff very quickly, so I tend to do quests and crafting after the first week. After a short time, persuading myself to launch the MMO becomes a task in itself because it is so boring.
I liked "A Tale in The Desert" for the refreshing world persistance and actual player skill importance, but the low quality graphics put me off eventually. I'd enjoy playing a game, where I create the world along with all the other players, build the cities, gather all the building materials and crafting the subcomponents required and knowing I don't do it just to advance my crafting level or because some NPC needs 25 Iron Nails or some other random item.
I can't stand levels and their importance in games. If some guy has had some time to train combat and using a sword, naturally he'd be more effective in combat than me without any experience, but no way can he survive 10-20 hits from my sword and then kill me in a single stab with a dagger. It would be far more exciting and realistic to have all players roughly equally able to do harm, but the more experienced fighter will naturally be better at blocking, avoiding and lining up for a counter attack. Just like a structural engineer would be able to design a safer, more durable building than your average person would. Newbies and seasoned players can actually play together without penalties this way.
Get rid of the standard EXP system and give people added abilities in the task they perform often. A person building a large farm house and barn on his/her own would naturally learn many tricks for making their work easier, faster and better. A hunter who spends a large amount of time each day hunting will pick up some tricks for finding their prey faster and learn how to get close enough to avoid scaring them away. Why do you need to go find some critter your own level to gain any combat experience from killing it? Why can't you train your speed and strength from training in barracks on some wooden dummy? Players could actually stay in the same area regardless of level, hunt the same animals/monsters and help out your preferred community without getting EXP penalties.
And why would anyone need to be a certain level to use their new, shiny sword or armor? All swords are similar apart from size, so anyone should be able to use any weapon or helmet. You just hold it in your hand or put it on your head... not exactly rocket science. Just a stupid limitation for players to use a better weapon. And no weapon is 4 times as powerful as one the same size and shape but 10 levels lower. It's merely boosted for the sake of making levels matter.
If players are rewarded for doing just about anything in a game with hidden exp and dice rolls and no level system, I bet they would play - and possibly even enjoy - the game rather than playing the Excel spreadsheet or trying to reach level cap as fast as possible. Games should be FUN and EXCITING instead of boring and repetitive. Sadly, all current MMOs are really boring and all pretty much the same game in my opinion.
It seems to me we've started off with more discussion on concepts than gameplay elements or ideas. Here's what I've gathered -
Playing most MMOGs would have you grinding. "Grind" itself though, can be 1) a game's drive for your character to reach an endgame where a higher level (experience points acquired) character can have better gameplay and access to content etc. 2) the mindset of players who do this merely to reach the endgame for their character (even if the game generally is a grindfest), instead of trying more to experience other features as they go along.
So to rid of such a "grind" concept could possibly mean more than one approach. But, the main thing that differentiates such MMOGs are its contents (amount and uses), and that it actually affects a player's view of themselves grinding.
My thoughts on this, adding to what I've mentioned before, would be
Correct, add and debate to what I've said as you please...
ps. Thanks
for all comments so far