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Do MMORPG's need a grind?
nate1980
Member UncommonPosts: 2,074
It's an open ended question. The only rule is to not mention subscription at all.
In my opinion, a MMORPG doesn't need a grind. Whether it be mob grinding or quest grinding, it's just not needed. Just because it's a staple of RPG's to have character advancement, that doesn't mean you need to grind for it. Who here really enjoys running from quest hub to quest hub grabbing and doing menial chores for NPC's? Who here really enjoys grinding on mobs for hours for xp?
It'd be nice to just log in and take part in whatever activity you enjoy doing. Ideally, if you're doing what you enjoy doing right out of the gate, then you'd not likely realize how long it's taking to advance to the next level.
Perhaps GW2 and TSW will solve this dillema. Maybe by making the content challenging (TSW) or random and unexpected (GW2), we'll actually enjoy ourselves in the game.
Comments
Just because you dont like it, it does not mean it is not needed, there is only that much content a company can churn out per year.
The ultimate definition of grind is:
I dont like to do this - grind
I like to do this - FUN
But yes, ideally a game should offer several activities with a balanced reward system offering the same rewards, some more action based, some less, some more grindy, some less.
There was some poll lately on tera eu forums and surprisingly, from a sample size of just several hundred people, 25% did not want to have grind, 35% wanted to have grind all the time, and 40% wanted to have grind as an option, say over the weekend, after the sunday lunch, you do not want to raid or pvp, you just want to sit in your chair and relax mindlessly killing something for reputation
Flame on!
What sort of gameplay would you suggest to get rid of the grind?
Any gameplay in the history of gaming can be called a grind. Just depends on how you look at it.
IMO, an MMORPG wouldn't be one without advancement. I don't know how someone would get rid of a grind without also getting rid of advancement.
I define grind as doing same or similar things over and over, doesnt matter if it is quests or killing mobs.
The only way to get rid of it, as i see it, is a linear themepark, or straight single player.
Some sort if grinding is unavoidable in an MMO. But i could be wrong.
i would say that mmorpgs do need a grind, simply because making a content is a lot more work then burning through it playing.
only other possibility is if you dont count doing e.g. dungeons again and again. then it is possible to "avoid" grind by giving players some simple enough dungeon building tool, so you have always new dungeon to go to created by someone else
I think the grind part is always nice and great to do if its really that high rewarding and you got way more cool things to do after it, if you just grind to do more grind then its gonna bore you to the end, and you are gonna stop playing the game, but in my case ye, i do love grinding.
/shrug...
I like grind... as long as it's the right kind of grind that is.
I enjoy chilling out and spending some time in a nice group or solo killing stuff, AS LONG as what I am killing gives me the chance at a 'meaningful' reward.
For instance, killing mobs in a dungeon room in EQ where a named popped for several hours with a group was good because we got to chat, grab some XP, and had a shot at the drop. Good times
Imo yes.
It just have to be 'right kind of a grind'.
Gridning some stupid tokens in instances to get armor to be able to grind higher tier instances to get enough tokens to get armor to .... you get an idea = bad grind for ME.
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Hunting tough bosses to get some ingridient / item or gathering enough wood to build a house for myself in game = that I like.
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After all "grind" is SUBJECTIVE. Some ppl will find some activity a grind and other same activity will be fun.
That's WHY we need mmorpg's that are DIFFRENT FROM EACH OTHER and not dozens of carbon WoW coipies.
Cause not all people will love same kind of mmorpg. Whatever devs will do - there will always will be ppl that like ertain mmorpg and ppl that hate certain mmorpg.
WoW was abberation , simply cause it was mainstream start and for most of WoW's players it was first mmorpg so it was PHENOMENOM.
Now cause many ppl playing mmorpg have experience with at least 1 previous mmorpg - they don't want to go on 'compromise' as much - and this will result that no ONE mmorpg will ever be able to gather that much of diffrent people and keep them - so no mmorpg will have again so big playerbase advantage over any other mmorpg's on the market.
Time for diffrent mainstream mmorpg's for diffrent players. Fortunatelly devs are starting to do that with upcoming titles , it is still VERY shy and playing 'safe' but you can see 'wind of change'.
Besides in order to get best / rarest osmetic items / oufits in GW1 you also had to GRIND. It will be same in GW2 imho.
Not that it is bad or anything.
Well said.
Even IRL is a grind.
If it's not broken, you are not innovating.
People are right in that grind is in the eye of the beholder, but I just assumed that we all agreed that killing mobs ad naseum for no other reason that to get xp is grinding, just as is running from quest hub to quest hub doing menail chores is grinding. Both are things that I "thought" most of us only do because they're the best way to gain xp, items, and currency.
I think that when determing grind, we have to look at what the purpose of the game is. For example, if the entire purpose of the game is to war with and conquer the enemy player faction, then allowing us to take part in it at level 1 and we can gain xp that way would not be a grind, or else you're playing the wrong game. Same with raiding. Why force a person to solo quest grind to max level if the purpose of the game is to get the best gear, such as through raiding? Shouldn't then the game be about grouping mainly as you level up to build the requisite player skill and knowledge to be a good raid member?
Personally, I like to group in MMORPG's, so grouping in almost all its forms isn't grinding to me unless the game only offers grouping the instanced dungeons, where you have to grind one until you're of level to grind the next one. In DAoC, except when I played too much, I never felt like I was grinding, although most post-WoW players would consider what we did grinding, just as most of us Pre-WoW players consider questing a grind. If both are grinds, I'd rather grind with other players than to grind alone.
RPG's are based around character advancement, so there's the risk of repeating something to advance. If you randomize the advancement process, you're no longer repeating things to advance. For instance, if you're exploring the world, doing whatever you want to do, you are essentially exploring the world at random, all the while you're "just so happening" to get xp doing it. PvP is a great randomizer, because you never know when, where, and who you'll be fighting and for what reason. I generally don't like pvp, but I can't imagine a grindless game without it. Specifically RvR based PvP.
QFT!!!
I work 10 hour shifts, and all that time is spent almost non stop walking and doing the same activity. I was just thinking "boy I hate this grind," lol.
Not just one grind, they need several grinds. The more the better. (skills, crafting, reputation, whatever...)
People cry for less grind and then wonder why they get bored of these new MMOs in 2 weeks.
Progression through grinding is what makes you hooked, what makes you keep wanting to play...No grind = no longevity.
All entertainment, to one degree or other is a time-waster, even the very best Art, is by the act of looking upon it & appreciating it's qualities a time-waster.
Wasting time is only much more than a squandering of your life if you gain something from it, did it make you think, feel, laugh etc.
Do MMO's need grind, of course they do the thing that makes that grind enjoyable or not is how much you get enjoyment from doing it, every single action can be described as a grind because it is a subjective term as soon as you get away from the raw mechanics of your actions.
Grind - is reductionist, if something feels like a grind to you there are 2 reasons, one is that the action is not entertaining you, the other is that you cannot be entertained by that action, a bit of a philosophical twist but it applies.
I'll rephrase the initial question by asking another.
Does anyone here like killing a camp of mobs over and over again until you're strong enough to move on to the next camp of mobs. Rince and repeat until you're max level. And then what?
Does anyone here like going to a town, gathering up all the quests, doing them in the most efficient manner, turning them in, getting sent to the next town; rinse and repeat? Considering that none of those "quests" would make a good adventure in a fantasy novel, I wouldn't even call them quests. That's why I call them chores or tasks, depending on the quest. When a "guard" sends me off to do his job, that's a task. When a villager sends me off, me being a badass warrior, to pick flowers, that's a chore.
If you're not doing the above two activities for the sake of doing them, because they're fun, then it's a grind. You're obviously doing that grind for some purpose. For what? To be max level? For what? To raid or PvP? If so, then wouldn't a grindless game involve cutting out the above examples and instead have the game start with the activity you're grinding through the levels to get to?
If you agree, then think of it this way. Those who honest to god like to raid, probably like to do so for the challenge group content offers and the cooperative aspects of playing with other people against enemy AI. Wouldn't those people be happier playing together as a group and tackling group content from lvl 1 to max level? I think the public quest system is on the right track for this group.
What about for PvPers? Those who grind through a game doing activities they don't enjoy, only to get to max level so they can start having fun pvPing. Wouldn't these people be better served if a game has RvR from lvl 1 onwards?
That way everyone is doing their preferred activity from start to finish. Developers don't have to worry about rushing out content, because these groups are content doing what they love. Future updates only need to expand upon these features already in the game.
i have no interest in the standard Mob grind, this however is one of the reasons im attracted to TSW like i am.
Because i can.
I'm Hopeful For Every Game, Until the Fan Boys Attack My Games. Then the Knives Come Out.
Logic every gamers worst enemy.
I haven't quit every MMORPG since WoW came out because there was less grind. I quit because the grind I had to endure was more than I could stomach. To me, doing chores for NPC's all by myself, for weeks on end is just pointless. to what purpose? I'm a group gamer. In most games, you have to grind quests for 20 levels before you can finally get into some serious grouping. I usually don't even make it that long, because I CANNOT stand questing. I loathe it that much. I did like WAR for that reason. WAR allowed me to que up for a warzone as soon as I finished creating a character, and if I didn't want to do scenarios or play in the RvR lakes, I could do PQ's. I never had to worry about questing to max level.
But I understand that hooked feeling. I got that feeling in DAoC and SWG when grouping with others. I just wanted 1 more bar of xp before I logged off in DAoC, or I just wanted to unlock the next box in my profession.
maybe that tells me that without RvR to look forward to, or some type of community world building activities to do, or a OPed class to unlock, I just don't see the point in it all.
I prefer that to running around 80% of my play time grinding boring quests, at least you're in the action all the time when you farm mobs. (btw it's not the mobs you're grinding, it's XP, skills or whatever you gain from killing those said mobs).
Then what? Well if it's a half decent MMO, you'll have other grinds waiting for you at "end game". Enough to keep you hooked for years.
I agree, grinding XP through quests is most probably the dullest form of grinding because you spend most of your time travelling, in other words being passive.
After reading the recent article on TSW, I finally got excited for a MMORPG release since before Vanguard was announced. The promise of non-linearity, building your own deck of skills, and intellectually challenging content is very exciting. If everything is true, then TSW will be the first non-comformist to the genre since WoW released. Anything released post WoW, I feel, has taken too heavily from past MMO's that most of us have played to death already.
While I would like to see an MMO maker move away from the standard level progession type of game play, I'm hard pressed to think of what it could be replaced with that wouldn't make the game feel too easy, and more importantly, too short. (And before someone throws in a comment about skill based leveling, you are still "grinding" skill points from 1 to whatever cap is.)
About the only alternative mechanic I've seen in recent MMOs was allowing you to level reasonably well on BG PVP alone and frankly I think that feature was one of the biggest detractors of games such as Warhammer Oline and SWTOR as players who took this route hit level cap very fast then found themselves with nothing to do.
I think the so called grind is just one of the inherent weaknesses of the MMO platform. When the biggest primis of the game seems to be time spent in it, the journey really is the destination.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
There's that and there's the over populated zones with monsters every step of the way. So you're pressing the same 1,2,3,4 hotkeys to kill 1 mob every 10 seconds to get to your next objective. Game worlds these days are too populated with aggressive monsters. People are sick to death of logging in and constantly fighting, probably because there's no challenge in fighting, and we've all mastered the current combat model (spamming hotkeys in appropriate rotation). That's why you see people stealthing through mobs if they're able or skirting them to get to their objective, instead of killing them.
That's my point, it all feels very formulaic after so many years. Every MMORPG needs a purpose that is defined by the developers, and they need to stick to their guns. If the purpose is to build a virtual life in that world, then the developers needs to build the game around that idea. Give players the tools they need to build a life in that game, such as RPing tools, city building tools, political systems, strong crafting, and a player ran economy. Oh, let's not forget proper PvP tools and objectives to add conflict to the world so things don't get stale. That's just one example.
But grinding to gain xp, to gain levels, to grind something or a few somethings later is formulaic. For example, how many games on the market use the WoW formula (ie. solo questing to max level, with a dash of BG's and Instanced Dungeons to spice things up a bit, with a hint of simplified crafting, and Arena's and Raids at the end as icing on the cake).
I have to agree with this too (although I usually enjoy mob farming to a certain degree).
I recently quit Lineage 2 because of this. In that game, until you reach high levels (which can take forever) the only thing there is to do is farm mobs for XP.
I think the key is having several parallel grinds so you can switch whenever one gets boring or too repetitive.
Either that or having multiple grinds mixed into the same activity. For instance, if the mobs you're farming also happen to drop rare but extremely valuable crafting mats (just an example) then chances are you'll be able to stomach the farming way longer.
I always wondered why MMORPGs never had a leveling system that was based on performance. For example, someone picks up a quest, a timer starts and the computer AI measures how effective the player is using his available DPS, energy pool and HP as well as measuring is death to kill ratio. If it becomes obvious the player is performing well, he can get the option of picking up a new "training" quest to gain a level.