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General: Looking up from the Grindstone
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
In her latest Player Perspectives column, MMORPG.com's Isabelle Parsley takes a look at what some call the 'grind' in MMOs and that, just maybe, it's not as bad as it's been portrayed. Whether it's collecting materials for crafting or finishing that 'kill 10,000 orcs' achievement, there is something to be said for 'grinding'. See if you agree...or not...and then leave a comment below.
LOTRO is my game of choice right now and it’s structured like most other MMOs out there: the game world is divided into zones that are appropriate for increasing level ranges, with quest hubs scattered throughout. Also like many MMOs these days, LOTRO has a ton of non-quest things to do – they’re called deeds, and they’re just like WoW’s or EQ2’s achievements. Which also means that there are always going to be more deeds to do than you can comfortably accomplish, certainly in your first pass through a zone.
Read more Player Perspectives: Looking up from the Grindstone.
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Comments
Well, the way I play lotro is that if I take a quest then I finish the quest as I sort of apply a more storied structure to my game play.
So if I take a quest to clear out a cave because the goblins there are terrorizing a town, etc, then that cave is still an issue until I finish the quest.
Heck, I killed the goblin king at lvl 65.
I did retaking weathertop at lvl 60 if I remember correctly.
In a game that is less quest based and is more about grinding and pvp then the quests don't really matter to me that much and I usually just grind with a good bottle of wine or a good beer.
er... or coffee if it is a bit too early. ; )
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
Thanks Isabelle, I have to admit I enjoy columns that discuss getting some overall perspective instead of PhD level discussion on combat mechanics. And the perspective you suggest here is not only a good one, but for those of us with families to support (i.e. we can only play after 10PM local time because a 4 year old isn't exactly going to let you raid when you want to) it's almost the ONLY good approach to take. :-)
If you think a game is getting too grindy, there's an easy fix for that, you know: quit and find some other game to play.
I'm not really against "kill 10 rats" quests, so long as it stays at 10. But kill 150 orcs?
Nice post OP yes you are correct you should enjoy your MMO experience and that it should not be a second job that you pay to enjoy. The thing about running in a virtual world is the simple fact that you dont have the consequence that you find in RL for example in most MMO's Guys play female toons most of the guys say they play a female toon is because they don't want to look at some dude running all the time. To me it don't matter im not so threatened by a pixlated ass that im going to start to question my masculinity. So It makes me wonder if Guys play these female toons because they are afraid to play dress up in RL?
Another point is that people play in these virtual worlds for hours on end is because they are lonely and may not have many RL friends so these fantasy MMO's offer them a chance to meet other ppl like them and heck even join a guild and form a fellowship. Sometimes ppl even get romantically involved and even get married. Just think two complete strangers meet in some MMO fall in love and get married. In RL they have set backs in there life that perhaps something like having or finding a partner maybe a challenge for them. But not in the virtual world.
One last reason that ppl play for hours in MMO's but not the least reason trust me I can think of a half of dozen more reasons why ppl leave RL and play MMO's is the simple fact that we have become a society driven by pleasing our self we love our entertainment. As with a gaming now being the bigger slice of the pie monetary wise even to the point were hollywood make movies of gaming titles or toons. That alone should tell you something. Trust me I grow up from playing the Atrai 2600 then a Nintendo all versions of the Nintendo that is. I owned the Sega, a Play station, and Xbox never got into many next gen consoles because at the same time I was playing computer games started out with your RPG games Kings quest etc never was a fan of FPS or RT games. then one day four years ago I came across something that was called a MMO some game called Knight Online I played that for a bit then I experienced what I did not know back then what gold spammers are and bots. That alone made me quit So I came across another small title WoW lol and even though I had to pay a subscription I did not care because it filled ever void in my soul I even lost my RL G/F because WoW at the time was more important to me then sex. So you see here are just a few reasons why we play full time well to be honest I dont like WoW much any more I almost hate it. But I know that WoW did not take away 4 plus years of my life I know I payed 15 dollars a month on a volunteer basis that took away four years of my life so it was my own damn fault.
The difference between Americans/Europeans and those from Asia Prime (excluding Asia-Minor), is really grand.
Americans know that gaming is about having fun and feeling that level of fun is rewarding enough. Americans know the difference between high stake games, competitive games and average gaming.
The problem starts with Globalization and Culture.
Majority of Asia-Prime cultures and civilization fall into the idea that in order for something to be worth it, one must undergo hardwork and hardship. This is true on all levels, including the entertainment sustained. Any game should be one that rewards the strong and destroys the weak.
Unfortunately, companies and corporations make games like this under such philosophies and easily get away taking peoples money. Its not about "fun" and all about proving to everyone around you that are doing hard work within your free time and during your career and profession, though you do not really have a voice. The only RIGHT you have is to sit down and shut up as you fulfill your work and obligation.
I like to divide Europeans into Eastern and Western Europeans, as there are vastly different mentalities. The problem in European Culture deals with the Educational Elitist that attempts to silence anyone and everyone. In many European places, only a professional within a career has a real right to speak about anything and if you are proficient and do not have a degree....Tough, you do not have a right.
Apply this to our gaming, and there are a lot of philosophies.
The greatest being that Americans KNOW that gaming is about fun, and nothing pisses of a European or anyone from Asia-Prime (and even Asia-Minor) than telling a non-American the words
"I am not playing because it is simply not fun"
It shatters the entire world apart, when opposition occurs. Its amazing the sheer amount of hostility that comes from Europeans who are a little too gaming oriented (Notice I did not say ALL EUROPEANS or ALL Asia-Prime), but many do exist....
A lot of that attitude does run off people too. You get Americans who have gotten everything in a game who will never admit a game is unfair and say they are having fun since they have everyone and have worked for everything. Its the same attitude as the capitalist elite who kill of many people and hide it as a statistic and talk about "liberty."
The majority of people who are gamers in society be them 3D gamers, or 2D gamers, card game players, etc.....Will say "I won't play unless its fun" and many do not fall into the trap of the grind. They know FULL WELL that at the end of the day...
Americans tend to leave their games for better games eventually, while most europeans and asia-pacific people will retain playing the same game for 6 - 10 years and telling anyone who doesnt play shouldn't be gaming, and is weak...
This isn't a stereotype, the last 12 games I have played that are in the MMO category and shooters have all suffered the same fate....Usually most Americans leave to other games...and Europeans (and Asia-Pacific peoples) stay behind and harass other players. Its amazing how much Europeans and Asia-Pacific people talk about DOMINANCE and HARD WORK when Americans leave, but how they never talk about that when Americans are in the game servers dominating a lot of the action.
I am part of the top leagues in MMOs and FPS games, measuring games at their infancy, maturity and old age....
The last 10 tournaments in shooters/MMOs I've taken part in during a game reaching its half life, seven of them have gone to American teams in a population of 40 - 60% Americans. At their old age, the last 12 tournaments I have been in had gone 4 to Americans (in a population of 10 - 20% Americans) and right now the player in Runes of Magic who has the strongest equipment in the game is an American who plays in a European server.
Point is that the Internet is a Borderless Community in the scope of gaming. Ultimately in the very end the developers of games, specially MMORPGs also are about thrusting culture onto people. You have to be careful and the idea and mentality and trust your gut...but many do not have the courage, will or ability to trust themselves.
IF a game is a not fun, play another game until you find any game that you love to play. Americans practice this very well, while you get so much resistance in European and Asia-Prime cultures.
This post comes from an American who plays in European Servers any MMORPG that I tend to play and understand several European Languages while I also play in Asia-Prime servers and understand the Japanese language and know parts of Korean and Chinese and I deal with the cultures and mentalities directly. ^_^
I mean to not offend anyone by my words. This post is meant as observation. ^_^ Perhaps your observations are different.
Interesting view point and no offense what so ever. Acutely you are correct but I see it not just MMO communities being social incompatible under which country you were born in. I see it as a human flaw all together. Regardless of were you are from We as humans need or feel the right to escape RL and for such humans who are drawn to the MMO world that escape comes much more easy.
Won't quote the two prior posts, but I agree with their assessment. Well written.
But why not? In lotro you will be killing 150 orcs anyway. You will be kill far more than 150 orcs.
It's the people who are driven to kill 150 orcs "NOW" that find themselves up against burn out.
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
All these lvl based games with endless amounts of quest chains are just redundant and pointless. The endless grind to lvl and then the endless grind to get gear all seems so....pointless.
Talking bout the issues..and keepin it funky.
1) Asians mostly play in social places such as internet cafes. This leads to games that do not suck up all of the attention. Immersion is less important. Games arent all about fun only, just as comics arent just for kids anymore. 2) You claim europeans are elitist, at the same time you make the impression you view yourself (and americans) as something better. This may give some a sour feeling 3) I can only talk a bit about german gamers: board games are still extremely popular in this country and there is even a large (and very influental) branch of games called german-style board games coming out of this. Computer games tend to fill a more sophisticated niche (strategy games and the like). At the same time outright war/conflict related games werent that popular due to historical reasons. That[object Window]s a difference. The elitist reason you gave, I never.ever. heard of.
If a game isnt fun, people wont play it. Just what fun is, is viewed different.
Damion Schubert (Game Design Veteran currently on SW:TOR) has put up some slides on Grind.
I haven't played LotRO, so I don't know how it works out. But the author complained of having to kill 150 more orcs to finish a deed even after doing all of the content in a zone. If you naturally get the kill a bunch of orcs deed in the process of doing other content, I'm fine with that. If you have to go grind another 150 after doing all of the real content, or else have your character at a disadvantage if you don't, then that's very grindy.
If you'd get the other 150 orcs for the deed by going to the next zone rather than staying in the previous, then the author was just being ridiculous by staying in the previous zone. But she gives the impression that that isn't the case.
Yeah sure, us Europeans and them Asians are everything that's wrong with gaming while you americans are the fun-loving reasonable bunch.
Smooth.
Funny how you end that same pile of drivel with "Oh and by the way, you may not feel offended by my massive stereotyping because i said so" caveat, real american.
for me i take my time doing 1 quest at a time to get to know whats around me and whats what then i go around kill stuff to get away from questing for a bit make some cash and xp if iam lucky talk to some one help if i can
i agree there alot of loney people out there who play mmos cuz i know iam one of them hehe once in a great while i poly have a female toon for gigles i used to do that to make my guild mates laff : ) long time ago i am a hunter on lord of the rings : ) any way thats me some time i play just to keep to my self and enjoy what iam looking at around the zone : ) iam alway looking for conversation when iam grinding
I am a gamer of the old school.
Back then you were lucky to find a quest after walking through 10 zones of snow and red(dead) con mobs.
But they were so few and far between that now Im conditioned to complete every single quest or "deed" i see. I Desperatly want to "finish" dungeons when I start them.
Now though, XP and quests are so easy to come by and its impossible not to outlevel the content before I am done with it.
I liked it much better when it was the grinding of reasonalby killable mobs that made you want to move on cause of boredom to find some dificult mobs and a group to kill them with for faster xp.That encouraged socialization. Logging on the next day, thinking I would go back to the spot I was today (now soloable, but I know it from when I grouped there) I see that someone from my group has moved on and wants me to join him there. Or Im the one that went on and I know he was a solid group member..
Having a gazzilion quests available is just a hazzle in every way. Especially if you are an old school player that equates quests with something rare or worthwhile. I wouldnt want to miss out on some special thing by zooming past. Even though I always end up realizing I wouldnt have.
I miss the slower leveling where I could stop and smell the roses (without getting 3 levels cause apparantly thats a "deed" or whatever)
When I play MMO's these days, I find myself going more with the flow of the game. If the quests are chaining nicely togther, and tend to be finished quickly, I find my pace speeding up a little and rushing thru the content. WoW is trending more and more this way, and that's not a bad thing. It can be very enjoyable espeacially in a solo play setting. But if the game has long arduous tasks, and the quest themselves grind to a hault, i find myself floundering in progression and tend to look to the other areas for enjoyment, i.e exploration, crafting, even *gasp* socializing. This can be quite enjoyable too in a diffrent way. But at the end of the day, why stick with a game that starts to feel too grindy. There's just too much good internet porn to waste time doing something that isn't fun.
Wonderfull article again ^_^
But sadly i am caught by the I pay for the 2nd job thing >.<
Since more people are reliant on me , i wish they weren´t or else i would have stopped.
I guess call me old fashion , but i still believe in duty , loyalty and honesty .
And even if i hate a game that much , am still disciplined enough to do my job .
So i guess those who are lucky and have a none responsible role in a MMO .
You dont find it fun , stop playing or paying . or go do something else fun .
I used to play lotro. It really was never too grindy unless you counted deeds. That was until MoM Mines of moria rolled out. The game changed at that point and became all about the grind. Then when SOM Shadows of mirmwood came and added skirmishes, got to grind out those marks. Now they added task since the free to play guys were complaining they were stuck leveling without getting quest packs.
The game changed from a quest based level system to a grind based system, and has been for a while. That's really to bad, a lot of those quests had some really good story telling in them.
Hahahahahahahaha you and the two rednecks saying "I support this post" crack me up. "Americans practice this very well"... do you even READ these forums, man?
And you have actually visited those places? Because I am European and many yanks seems to confuse Europe today and 200 years ago when being noble still mattered to anyone but German journalists.
And I have visited many countries in Europe, have you?
Intelligence and knowledge are important and no one would take someone seriously if he did not know the subject he talks about but that is very different. You don't need to go to a certain university to know history but you better know your subject if you want people to respect you.
There is a difference between people from Western and Eastern Europe, and there is a difference between people from Northern and Southern Europe as well. But there is a pretty big difference between someone from Miami and Nome, Alaska as well. But knowledge is respected in most places of the world, no matter where you got it from. It hasn't always been so, it have been times when only male people from noble families had the right to say anything but that was a long time ago.
Grind can be a subjective experience, but talking generally especially with MMOs, I think grind comes in due to the sub model and the traditional combat system in these games supports it.
Change the combat to fast actiony, proactive and visual suddenly I am having fun in the immediate present, not "virtuously" toiling for a reward from my concerted labours/persistence.
Speaking of doing the thing you enjoy in an MMO world, I take the example of GTA (ds version) where you can log on and whatever takes your whimsical mood you decide to do:
1) Work on structuring max profit from buying/selling drugs (lol)
2) Growing influence by doing the structured missions
3) Doing sub-games such as rampage, taxi rides etc
4) Exploring new things
5) Random play, cruising the streets with music blasting! taking out city slickers, picking locks
6) Chaotic play: Destroying the police!
MMOs should do the same and allow cooperative/pvp addtionally. Often the grind becomes intolerable with the levelling however and the lack of freedom is affected BECAUSE the actual mechanics (moment to moment) do not give fun feed-back instrincally (unlike GTA). This puts bigger emphasis on the bigger reward (at the end) is often raids also I think that suggests also that the type of reward of doing an activity and the type of player that want this reward structure?
A lot of people will put up with this in MMOs due to their social interaction nature, but that does not have to be the case as latest MMOs seem to be revealing imo.
Above is simple example of what MMOs should allow: Playing for a reward or instant adrenaline and combinations of anything in between. Too many MMOs fail at the basic level of combat mechanics but that seems to be slowly changing and/or more mechanics being added to interact/use on the game world.
@ Shinami: Interesting ideas and thanks for sharing your experiences though I think you chose too large a canvass for your masterpiece, hehe
More psychologically than culturally would be more accurate analysis though cultures follow some trends maybe. Exploring the differences between apathy/boredome/challenge/skill/reward etc...
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014633/Classic-Game-Postmortem
Deeds in LOTRO are just crazy.
They are fine in the starting areas. Kill 30/60 of something for the first state, then kill 60/120 more to get the second part (and the part that improves your character).
You can do most of these while doing quests. But then about mid way into thje game, it's 90/120 to get the first part of the deed, then another 180/240.
By now, you'll be lucky to finish the first part of the deed just doing all the quests in the area (if it's 120, 90 is doable).
In the last zone that came with SoA, Angmar, it's up to 150 and 300. Or 450 kills to get the deed.
And what's worse, you also have key abilities for your race tied to the killing deeds. For elves, it's pretty easy, goblins and orcs, you kill them right away. But for men it's Wargs and Hillmen. Wargs are fairly rare (compared to wolves) and Hillman don't start showing up in the game until you hit the late 30s.
And further, rather than being bonuses, the rewards are factored into the baseline of what a character should be when they design the quests. Don't do them and you are at a serious advantage. And don't even think about raiding.
Unfortunately, grinding seems to be the main way Turbine has of adding content to the game, rather than new areas, quests, etc. (I haven't even touched on rep grinding...)
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
Unfortunately, there is a salient point missing.
Deeds are location/region specific. Meaning you need to kill orcs of a given type or within a given region to hit the deed payout.
So unfortunately, and this is the thing that has always irked me about the Deed system in Lotro which in principle I always thought was excellent, you need to stop doing the fun progression and exploration of the world to mow through 200 trolls in the swamps of the Lost Lands to ever achieve the deed. Either you do it before you move on to the next region, or you come back at level 50 so you can steam roller them, but either way, you have to do it in that locale (to the best of my knowledge... this may no longer be true as it has been some time since I played LOTRO, still one of best MMOs out there and totally worth a try now that it's F2P).
The deed system is a great concept in making grind somewhat worthwhile. Where it erred was in setting the targets higher than anyone should be expected to delay their enjoyment of the world. Even a 25% reduction in the targets would make a world of difference to new players (again, maybe this was already done).
Actually, as a long time LOTRO player I always found it amusing when kin mates would get groups together to go 'grind some deeds' after they had spent the last week without sleep rushing through all the zones with a new alt. And then complaining about the fact that they 'had to do that' as if someone was holding a gun to their head.
Meanwhile I took my time, did all the content in each zone, explored areas where quests didn't necessarily lead to, didn't worry too much about quest 'goal efficiency' and nonsense like that and actually ended up completing many of my deeds without even trying.
Also, agreeing with a previous poster, LOTRO used to be ALL about the story and exploring a true to the spirit interpretation of the world of Tolkien. Now its really become Lord of the Grind Marks (Oh, And We Have A Story, Honest).
One big reason for grinding deeds hasn't really been touched upon yet. : Turbine Points.
By completing these deeds you are awarded a small amount of points, usually 5 or 10 which add up after a while. These points can then be used to purchase further quest packs or to enhance your characters.
If you are dead set against ever paying a red cent for LOTRO you WILL be grinding deeds on multiple characters (possibly on multiple servers as points are accumulated per game account).
It is possible, though very very tedious, to buy everything available in the Turbine Store without ever spending any real money.
Drev
"If MMORPG players were around when God said, "Let their be light" they'd have called the light gay, and plunged the universe back into darkness by squatting their nutsacks over it."
-Luke McKinney, The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming
"In the end, SWG may have been more potential and promise than fulfilled expectation. But I'd rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
-Raph Koster