The Grind and misconceptions

potapithikos

I've been in MMOs since 2000... it's pretty obvious that the thing we mmo users play for IS the grind.

 

We grind for in game currency. We grind for character advancement. We grind for gear and items.

 

Be it through PvP or PvE we are grinding through content of the game trying to achieve whatever our goal is. We want progression and we want achievement and the thing that quantifies and measures both of those is the grind.

 

It's becoming more and more frequent that peolpe come in to the forums asking wether a newly realeased MMO "Is there a Grind?", "does this game have a grind?", "will i need to grind?"

 

Of course there is. It's an MMO. Some people confuse grind and think it only refers to character advancement, which is false since even games like Perpetuum and EVE which have time based advancement have plenty of grind in various other aspects.

Other people seem to believe that the Holy Grail of MMOs will be the one that eliminates the grind.

What would a themepark MMO be like with supercharged Character Advancement or with effortless Gear acquisition, how could the content even try to keep up with the pace of the players?

What would a open PvP sandbox feel like without grind for currency and crafting materials how would the player economy ever take off? without the grind of territorial conquest?

When the grind is too fast or easy... people generally begin tot complain about lack of content.

 

There is ofcourse the possibility of too much grind (Darkfall being a recent easy example). Too much grind in comparison to the rewards of your effort. This is the real problem. However with the current misguided, in my opinion, attitude that players are displaying towards grind the developers are really at a loss.

More and more games are coming out with indirect claims of eliminating the grind... or too much effort is wasted on trying to find a way to eradicate it. Too much time and brain matter wasted on trying to come up with the perfect advancement method that will be GRINDLESS or the pefect item/gear acquisition model that will have minimal grind. 

As a result of the misguided focus content suffers... or in the case of sandboxes the tools for player content... when content suffers the game's core features can't be appreciated or cease to function... which ultimately means we get crappy games.

 

Players need to realise that the MMO is really about the grind one way or another and Devs need to realise that the heart of their concept needs to have a WELL BALANCED Grind not ZERO grind.

 

My 2 cents on this... sorry for the rambling felt like putting these thoughts on text.

QuasiRain

Yup, even "quest based" MMORPG's still kinda have a "grinding" aspect to it. Quests are usually "kill 20 of this" or "kill this to collect 20 of that". Those are kinda like grinding still.

But yeah, those kinda of grinding are much better than, say, the old Ragnarok Online where you just keep killing stuff ad nauseam. It gets monotonous really fast. Perhaps that is what should be avoided, too much monotony in grinding.

Meowhead

I think it's worth noting that 'grind' has a negative connotation, as in the phrase it originally came from 'The daily grind'.

Basically, the difference between doing in game activities to improve, and grinding those same activies to improve, is all in player perception.  It may be the exact same activities, but it's how you feel about it that is used to determine if you're merely repeating an action, or that dread bugaboo of MMOs, the 'grind'.  The better a game can hide and delay the 'grind' aspect of it, the better of a job that game is doing.

The moment a game seems more like work, less like fun, and more trouble than it's worth, is that moment people are trying to avoid when they're asking if there is grind.

Yes, ideally you would still be doing things in a game... even repetitive things... but you don't want it to feel like you're working really hard and not having any fun doing it.

There are many games I can play over and over and over again, and play lots of times, and the feeling of 'grind' never crops up.  It helps if the activities are engaging and present at least some form of challenge or new content.

If I have to do the same thing repetitively, and there is no chance of me being exposed to anything new or even remotely needing to use my brain, that's my personal point of 'Now I'm just grinding'.

To help put it in context, I'll use an MMORPG example.

I walk up to a quest giver.  The quest giver explains that there is a problem with wolves, because I am playing a very generic game.  Fine.  I'll go kill your ten wolves.  I haven't killed wolves in this game, I need to practice my skills, and hey, the guy gives me money to practice.  I can live with this exchange.  So I come back.  The guy says 'Oh.  You killed ten wolves.  It turns out they are posessed by evil local badguys, because this game is EXTRA generic.  Please bring me ten wolf hearts so I can find out what is wrong with them.'

At this point in time, alarm bells are going off in my head.  Mmm... well, maybe I can look at the scenery, and I did want to see how these two skills worked together... fine.  I'll go back to the wolves and do this.  I've pretty much lost my patience at this point in time (I was just THERE, you're specifically wasting my time!), but I'll give the NPC another chance.

So I go back.  Oh hey, while I'm there, I spot Big Wolves (Did I mention this is a very generic MMO?).  Hey, that's cool, they look harder.  I'll kill a couple of those.  Darn, they don't drop wolf hearts.  Stupid heartless wolves.  Okay, I'll kill the normal wolves.  I kill 30 of them (At this point in time I'm actively angry, but hey, I'm a completionist, might as well finish my quest.), and go back.

Guy says 'Hey, thanks.  Well, I think I know what the problem is, but I need you to go kill 15 Big Wolves so I can decide if I want to send you out to get 30 Big Wolf Hearts.'

At this point in time I kick the CD drive so hard that the game ejects out at sufficient speeds to bury the CD halfway into my thigh.  Swearing and limping off, I get a can of gasoline and set the game on fire, before calling and cancelling my subscription.

Congratulations.  They showed me quite clearly that they have not conquered the problem of even REMOTELY disguising the grind, and instead that they have mastered the skill of making me feel like I am being given the run around and forced to do time consuming things (Like running back and forth between two locations repeatedly) just so I have to play longer and they can get more sub dollars from me.

By the way, if the wolves were challenging each fight, or controlled by players so I couldn't predict their actions, or I was just messing around and killing wolves on my own for fun?  Not a grind to me.  Why?  Because first case I'm thinking, second case I'm thinking, and third case it was out of my own volition, and for fun, rather than because I was feeling forced into an activity I no longer want to do.