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So How Can Developers End Grinding?
Masoniclight
Member Posts: 87
This great community has plenty of knowledge of all things MMO-wise. It is always great to read the various and sundry conversations about the games we love, hate or love to hate (or hate to love). Through it all however there is one issue that seems to plague every gamer no matter what game they are playing and that issue is: Grinding.
No matter how fun or "cool" or whatever a MMO is, developers still cannot seem to find a way to end the grinding that is so much a part of Massive Multiplaying. Are we as gamers always going to have to live with "grinding"? Is "grinding" absolutely necessary in an MMO? Can't developers come up with something different? Would we as players ever truly want to play a game where there was little to no "grinding"?
What do you all say? How can developers bring grinding to an end? How can we as players help to make such a change? Do we as a community have any good ideas that should be heard concerning this issue? I'd really like to read what you all have to say about this.
Here are a few of my ideas as to how to at least lessen the grind and bring about more fun for MMO gamers:
Concept-
Do any of you remember the Top Secret project that existed a few years ago? That attempt was to gather just ordinary players together to create a new MMO. I don't know what happened to it (other than the Leader of the project decided the genre the project was going to do was a Racing MMO; at which point I bowed out) but perhaps more kinds of project like that would help create games and in that creation time perhaps come up with more "out of the box" thinking that could potentially lead to either less grind or better gameplay that would mask the grind.
Concept-
In pen and paper RPGs (and yes I'm one of those old guys), you as the GM/DM could choose to give experience points for kills only if you wanted to, but you had options to that "grind". I gave points for kills of course, but I gave more points for storyline items I had written into my quests. I gave points for my players who best exemplified their character's personas, I gave points for creative ways to solve problems, I gave points for resolving conflict without that conflict turning to violence, and many other various things I gave points for as the game progressed.
Perhaps more ideas like these could be incorporated into an MMO to lessen the grind.
Concept-
Getting rid of levels. Is that truly possible? It might be hard to imagine an MMO without true levels, character progression trees, skill trees, etc. How would you improve as a character? A good question to be sure, but the grinding begins BECAUSE you have to make the next level for the next uber power or 133t loot... maybe then the question should be: Should we get rid of uber powers and leet loot?
I am not saying these ideas are even possible or may not even wanted by the MMO gamer population at all but I'd sure like all of you to weigh in on this issue. Since grinding is something almost all of us complain about then maybe as a community we can think of ways that developers could resolve this problem.
Let me hear your thoughts!
Comments
Developers can "end" grinding by making it risky. As I have said before, mowing the lawn might be a boring grind, but mowing the lawn in a minefield is never dull.
Add some risk (i.e., a death penalty with some "sting" to it) and players will be on their toes and enjoy every gaming moment. Grinding in games with such risk can grow physically tiresome (just like anything you do for hours on end), but should never be boring.
As long as there's the daily grind in real life.. games will alwaysa have it. If they manage to remove it from games... then someone needs to call my boss and tell him how to do it too
I like this.
The very definition of what a mmo is can be quite questionable nowadays. Is a game a mmo if it has this and that or doesn't have this or that. There are just so many variables that a mmo for one person may not even feel like a mmo for another.
So that being said, I argue that the grind is what defines a mmo. Progression. Without it, you're just playing an online game. You can try to hide it and sugar coat it as much as you want, but the moment you actually make a mmo that truly doesn't have a grind, then imo the game is no longer a mmo.
I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with your idea or that there's not a market for it. Indeed I think there's a huge market for it. I'm just saying that we've nearly reached the point where we simply can't use "mmo" as a catch-all phrase for multiplayer online games. You make a game that truly has no grind, and it's simply not a mmo to me, whether that be my misinterpretation or yours.
"grind" describes repetition. The only way to avoid repetition is to constantly offer something new.
This means a few things:
pencil: I suppose you think Microsoft Minesweeper is riveting, with its perma-death and minefield gameplay. Personally I think it's rather dull. Risk changes little; it's the gameplay pattern itself which is either interesting or dull.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
An excellent point Zaxxon, but where does progression end and pure mind numbing grind begin? Is there a balance? I know some here already said that grind can never be ended but how can it at least be lessened? Or made to be actually fun? It is a difficult question to be sure.
Grind exists in MMOs bacause their developers want the players to sit and play the game for more than 1 month, for their subscription fees. Thats why EVERYTHING in a MMO takes longer than a single-player game. And that's why MMORGs, by their nature, include grinding. Grind is repetition, and repetition is there so players won't burn up all content in the first 10days.
What developers can do is not to get rid of grinding, but lessen the feeling that you are actually grinding. Plenty of content, lots of things to do and lots of ways to prgress and frequent updates are ways to do this.
1 + 1 = 2... Unless it CRITS!
The so-called "grind" is subjective and it's all about perception. Where one person thinks an MMO element is fantastic (such as repeatedly killing mobs), another person would consider it a "grind". Where one person thinks that a story arc quest system is great, another would argue that it's still grind at its core. And technically they could both be correct. Because it's all a case of whether an individual accepts that perception or not and whether or not they find it entertaining. And when all is said and done, that's all the matters: whether something is entertaining or not.
How does one classify whether something is entertaining or not?
If a book had only 2 pages, then the book may be considered not very entertaining. And if that book cost £100, then it would be considered a waste of money as well. Likewise, if a book cost £1 and was a 1000 pages long, it maybe completely boring to some. People have always enjoyed a plot story that unfolds and envelopes the reader. Therefore, a good story has to have events which unfold in a timely and cohesive manner. Likewise, a good game or movie needs to have a good plot element that can be enjoyed for what has been determined a sufficient amount of time (subject to the individuals taste) in order for its expense to be considered worthwhile and entertaining.
My point is that for a player / reader / viewer to enjoy a product and consider it as entertaining, they have to consider it as not only being enjoyable in its plot elements, but also being good value in terms of both their money and their time. Which implies progression. And all of which is subjective.
So the question shouldn't be whether devs should abolish all forms of progression. Because people enjoy it and need it. Instead, the question should be asked what other forms could progression take in an MMO, in order for it to be considered entertaining whilst at the same time allowing it to be defined within the limited structure of a computer program. And programs all relie on repetition at their very core.
And thats the problem: The human imagination has no limits, a computer program has many because it has to adhere to logic that has been preset (programmed). The moment you begin coding a game, you are imposing further restrictions and limits on it. But even if you try to create a "varied" experience there will always be some people who consider it a "grind" because the activities can be classed as similar. There's no escaping it. All you can do as a developer is try to provide a varied experience given the limitations that are imposed on the design, in the hope that the variance is considered entertaining enough.
In short, if someone considers a form of entertainment as being a "grind" then that form of entertainment is not for them. For it is the individuals perception that has led them to that conclusion and doesn't necessarily mean that there is something wrong with the entertainment. Especially if it's being enjoyed by many.
Top 10 Most Misused Words in MMO's
Perhaps if the grind actually had some effect other than giving experience points the repetition wouldn't seem so glaring.
If the creatures you are attacking wouldn't mystically reappear in the same spot then perhaps a sense of accomplishment after eradicating them might occur. A small scrap of the WILD might be captured or cleared in order to make rooms for homesteads or a military outpost or even a beet farm.
Why are you attacking them anyway? Most MMO creatures not associated with some 'quest' do nothing to you unless disturbed. They don't attack your villages or steal your beer. They remain in their lairs/camps/swamps until some treasure hunting fool decides to carve them up for some bizarre point system or for the gold pieces and gems unknowingly lining the creatures intestines. Who knew Boars carried rusty daggers and electrum?
Anyway, find some meaning in the 'grind' and perhaps it really isn't grind.
You suffer from mental retardation. Games exist to get away from the tedious grind of real life.
You suffer from mental retardation. Games exist to get away from the tedious grind of real life.
Yet games like the Sims do better then imaginable. Really, that is a horrible assessment since many people clamor for harder gameplay like food/water intake, and other things that suck in real life.
To eliminate grind though is simple, remove advancement of any kind. FPS game weren't a grind until you started caring about ladders, or until they introduced rank systems and leveling of any sort. With that in mind, how do you keep an MMO interesting if there no character advancement?
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Waiting On: GW2, TSW, Archeage, The Rapture
Minesweeper is not a good example . While it involves "mines", it involves no meaningful risk.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Let's say you have to cross a dark and scary forest, alone.
With a meaningless or insignificant death penalty, crossing through that forest is a non-issue. Indeed, it may even be in your interest to die and be teleported to or near the town you are trying to get to. (ala. WOW)
With a significant stinging death penalty, crossing through that forest will be "scary" and fun, and you will do your best to avoid dying.
Reward without risk is not reward.
I agree with a post earlier in this thread...
Grind is subjective. What one person thinks is a "miserable grind", like leveling, another player will think is a relaxing way to enjoy some time in game while he chats with friends in-game or on Vent. I actually fall into this category in L2. To me, grinding xp is what you do while hanging out with cool people, and the time just flies by.
In Final Fantasy XI, I loved xp parties - they could go for 4 hours and I'd enjoy them, so long as it was a good group and we were doing okay. Others consider leveling in FFXI to be a miserable grind.
Some people find crafting to be an annoying grind that they "have to do" just to get their crafting good enough to make profitable items. Some people make a science out of it - finding the optimum way to find the best materials at the best prices (free if possible) then working the auction house to find the best times to sell them, etc. etc. Good friend of mine in FFXI literally did not xp any jobs for like 4 months because he was so caught up in working the market, finding the most cost-effective ways to level a craft, etc. He loved it. Others can't stand it.
It all comes down to the individual. There's no way a developer can "eliminate grind" because there's no way they can control how people perceive different content.
I have this thing about that whole "the developers have to do something about it". What exactly do they have to do? MMORPGs are what they are. They're long-term online games that are ever expanding (ideally) where developing a character is a key part. Even in real life, skill is acquired through repetition.
A golfer has to "grind" to improve his game. A marksman has to "grind" to improve his shot... and so forth. But both the Golfer and the Marksman, presumably, *enjoy* what they do. If they didn't enjoy it, then they probably wouldn't bother doing it in the first place.
And maybe that's the key.
If you find MMOs to be too grindy for your liking and you can't enjoy leveling or crafting, or obtaining better gear over a long period of time.... then perhaps the best answer is not to play MMOs? There are certainly plenty of other people who *do* enjoy that kind of thing, so is it fair to say that "there's something wrong with it" because you don't enjoy it personally? I'd say not. I don't find the idea of hitting a ball across a golf course and then chasing after it to be very exciting or interesting.... doens't mean there's something "wrong" with the activity that needs to be addressed, as plenty of others obviously enjoy it quite a lot as it is.
To me, it's not about what the developers should do to "fix" the problem. It comes down to the players taking some accountability for their own time and decide, by say, deciding to walk away from something they don't enjoy doing.
and the cash shop selling asphalt..." - Mimzel on F2P/Cash Shops
I could bet my life savings on a game of tic-tac-toe. It's not going to make the game of tic-tac-toe any better.
It is going to discourage me from playing if I know a lot is on the line though, because a game of tic-tac-toe isn't worth an excessive punishment for failure. There are more enjoyable activities to partake in, which are less like walking into an alley in the wrong part of town and having a bunch of thugs waiting in ambush to shank me from behind.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
One way would be to reward players for working together. There are many ways it could be done, but it would need to be as tangible a reward, for each player, as they would get from a quest. If players had to work together they would be less likely to engage in a solo quest grind. Even if they were working together in a quest it would not be as much of a grind.
Still, the only real solution I can see is to reward players for their interactions in the game world, and if that interaction is solo questing it's eventually going to be a grind. If it's not, your developing a sandbox. Don't see any way around that.
Can't be done. No, really it can't.
There is no mechanic you can think of that won't be come a grind to someone, somewhere, after enough repetitions.
One could argue that the grind is what defines the MMORPG genre, and overcoming the challenges of the grind is the real game play.
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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Can't be done.
One man's emersion is another man's grind.
One man's grind is another man's emersion.
As long as humans have opinions independent from the other humans you will not be able to eliminate 'grind'.
Like others have said already, people have a variety of preferences, so one mans grind is another mans entertainment. So in a genre where progression is necessary (talking about the RPG part of MMORPG), there will always be a grind. However, as people have already said, the grind need not be painful or recognizable.
Take Oblivion, Risen, Dragon Age and many other games with the same mechanic. They have a dynamic way of making content viable no matter what level you are, because difficulty is scaled according to your level. This is something that seriously needs adopted to MMORPG's, because obsolete content is one of the major problems with MMO's. For instance, a new person to WoW would miss out on how many quests, 5 mans, and raids all because no one thinks they're worth doing anymore due to gear and xp being better elsewhere?
Of course, creating quality content is the next order of business that even the great WoW hasn't even done yet. "Content" in MMO's consist of nothing more than tasks or chores for players to trick themselves into thinking that they aren't mob grinding. Truely entertaining and meaningful quests take a lot of development time, so they are few and far between and usually only exist in single player games. That's the problem though. I'm of the belief that if you aren't going to do it right, don't do it at all. Well, if you're not going ot create quality content, then don't create it at all. I'd much rather a developer instead spend their time creating a world that's beautiful and dangerous, where players can do what they want and be what they want, and the developers provide a toolset, much like Dragon Age, NWN, and Oblivion where the players can create quality content as they see fit.
So if developers aren't going to create a quality quest-based game, then create a quality world where players can create quality content. So to end grinding, you must give the illusion that grinding is gone. To do this, you must hide progression and make the game entertaining. To do this, the difficulty of the game must adjust as you level, allowing you to explore everywhere at anytime, and still find a challenge; plus the developers must create quality content or just create a quality world with a toolset for players to create quality content.
You suffer from mental retardation. Games exist to get away from the tedious grind of real life.
Yet games like the Sims do better then imaginable. Really, that is a horrible assessment since many people clamor for harder gameplay like food/water intake, and other things that suck in real life.
To eliminate grind though is simple, remove advancement of any kind. FPS game weren't a grind until you started caring about ladders, or until they introduced rank systems and leveling of any sort. With that in mind, how do you keep an MMO interesting if there no character advancement?
DIfferent strokes for different folks. MMO is the genre, whereas FPS, RPG, RTS and etc are the subgenres. Just as there are multiple types of gamers in the offline environment, there will be people who prefer MMOFPS's over MMORPG's, and those who enjoy MMORTS's over the others, and those who enjoy them all for the variety in gameplay it gives them.
Its not about levels, its about content. In fact often games are not a grind until after max level. If you are gaining levels abilities skills and spells its not so much a grind. But when you get to max level and the better items are taking longer to get, and you arent getting new spells, and all there is otherwise is gaining faction which must take you 5 months to get since that is how long it takes them to develop the next content after that - thats when the real grind comes in.
How to beat that? Dont get cheap with development costs. Most gaming houses wait too long to develop new end game content. The playerbase reaches the end and it gets boring. Then the developers are under pressure to release the next content too soon so they slap something together that is mostly grind because they didnt have time to develop real content.
I like to get in a group and kill mobs with other players in a way that requires very tight coordination. Most games, like WoW have done away with this feature.
But, when you have that feature I'm not bored, I'm having fun, so even though I'm technically "grinding" , killing mobs over and over, I enjoy it because of the team work required. Turn that into a solo fest, and it's just a boring grind for me, although some players love that.
You have the mob grind. Kill mobs over and over.
The quest grind. Kill mobs over and over, but in between an NPC tells you a retarded story before you can go kill more mobs.
You have the materials grind. In EVE you mine for ISK, basically grind for money to build your spaceships.
Why repetitive tasks? Otherwise you finish the game in a week, like most single player games, and people want an only game they can play for months and years, not weeks.
The best way to get rid of the boredom of the "grind" either mob grind, quest grind, or material grind, is to encourage grouping. Groups make everything unpredictable, add a randomness to the game you won't get with NPC scripts and scripted Mob behaviors.
Making the game solo friendly just makes it a boring grind, because that becomes the path of least resistance, and normal thinking human beings don't piss in the wind, swim upstream, etc.
What exactly is "grind"? I've heard the term tossed around a lot, without a real sense of what it is. I get that it's doing the same thing over and over again, but I've never seen any activity, let alone video game, where this wasn't the case. In basketball, you grind points. In any video game, you repeat the same thing over and over. Was Megaman a grind? You jump from platform to platform and shoot things. That's it. Pacman grinds dots in a maze. Grind is one of those overused buzzwords that has no meaning. Every game involves repeating activities.
So, what activities are grind and which aren't? The closest I've been able to tell is, grind is what you don't like. And that's a very silly way to decide it, since, as has been previously stated in this threat, one man's immersion is another's grind. So, until we can come up with a more concrete definition of what grind is, I doubt we can really find a meaningful way to do away with it.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
World War II Online has no grind to speak of. Unless of course you believe that improving your own personal skill at the game 'a grind.'
An MMO doesn't need 'grind' to stay in business either. It just needs to be fun. WWII Online is fun, and that's all that matters (I left the game for reasons unrelated to gameplay).
It would never happen, but I'd like to see a fantasy MMO do away with levels and skill points all together. You'd have a dozen or so 'archetypes' to chose from. Each archetype would have a set of skills that were easy to learn but take real personal skill to master. It would almost be a FPS type of game, only with fantasy elements. You might fight for magic items, and band together with others to take over realms. But there would be no 'grind'.
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You suffer from mental retardation. Games exist to get away from the tedious grind of real life.
Yet games like the Sims do better then imaginable. Really, that is a horrible assessment since many people clamor for harder gameplay like food/water intake, and other things that suck in real life.
To eliminate grind though is simple, remove advancement of any kind. FPS game weren't a grind until you started caring about ladders, or until they introduced rank systems and leveling of any sort. With that in mind, how do you keep an MMO interesting if there no character advancement?
FPS games could be interpreted as a grind if you played them enough. What is grind anyway? I'm pretty sure it's a tedious and repetitive action that you have to repeat to get where you want in the game. That's why people accept it, because they want to get to a certain point. Yeah, developers need to have something in the way to prevent you from breezing through the game so they can make some money. The real issue is that the mechanics of the grind. Consider what grind applies to most of all: Combat. Would it be boring if the combat were risky and involving like an FPS? What if you had more control over it? What if it was up to you to dodge out of the way and land hits on your target through your skill with mouse and keyboard? I think this is the best way to deal with grind, make it fun and involving for the player. At least if you go and kill a boss monster then and you don't get the item you wanted, you still get to feel cool about the fact that you dodged so many attacks and landed so many blows with your sword.
In simplest terms, "grind" is a repetitive action that you do not enjoy, but are forced to do in order to progress your character at a reasonable pace.
For some, it's killing lots of mobs for XP to level up; (i.e. grinding mobs).
For others, it's doing lots of shallow quests for XP to level up; (i.e. grinding quests).
The only way that developers can "end" grinding is to make multiple paths of viable progression so that players of every preference can progress via a playstyle that they enjoy.
In essence, they "end" grinding by putting in more (but different) grinds.
Playing: EVE, Final Fantasy 13, Uncharted 2, Need for Speed: Shift