It's mostly just one more benefit progression provides, and one of the core pillars of RPGs is progression, so you have slightly less progression as you remove the benefits progression provides. It's still an RPG just a little bit less so.
Yup, he made the mistake of labeling vertical progression so integral as opposed to the many alternatives that can replace it. Saw that coming, what, half a day away.
Still waiting for him to catch the irony in saying raids and repetitious quests that get shortcut to sprint to "endgame" is good yet grind is bad.
The reality very simply is that players need incentive to change tasks so that they are drawn away from overly-repetitious activities. This does not need to be quests.
As I described a while ago now, it can be as simple as making a bonus reward mechanic for the XP and loot gained from an activity that drops off over time and has to be given time to reset, so that players are pushed to cycle multiple activities for optimal play without railroading them into a specific chain of activities like quests presently do.
But it's rather obvious Axe is arguing for an opinion as usual that WoW/Blizz is great, quests are a holy grail, and anything to the contrary is obviously "objectively wrong".
Your suggestion is no better. You'd be jumping through those hoops like people do dailies and weeklies today. Well made quests are a far better solution.
[mod edit]
Post edited by Vaross on
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
Your suggestion is no better. You'd be jumping through those hoops like people do dailies and weeklies today. Well made quests are a far better solution.
And by the way: how on earth did you get so butthurt and hostile?
People claiming to inform others while presenting an annoyingly large amount of misinformation.
As for your own commentary.
"Well made quests are a far better solution." If you'd like to provide a comment that isn't blind conjecture go ahead. However, "well made quests" is a rather flimsy comment, and if it's to be taken as a quest that has meaningful narrative and unique events to allow novelty, then you are talking about a type of mechanic that is far different from a quest built for player progression or the mechanic I mentioned before.
It's a no-shit statement that something that takes time and effort to build beyond the norm would be better than the average experience provided, but are you going to invest the man hours and budget necessary to build an entire game where all the filler is of that standard?
That your diatribe to me is that it's "no better" means you weren't even paying attention when you read it, as the reason I suggested the mechanic was as an example that the standard quest chains that players use to progress in games is very simply not the integral component to getting players to experience variety with incentive through enhanced rewards being the primary factor.
Quests only work because they are providing an extra incentive to the player. You get the same results if you cull the quests and apply that bonus reward to the activity itself, be it in a manner that will drop off and prompt players to seek the next activity which will give them the biggest reward, forcing the same inevitable cycle of content you get with questing. The point here is that quests to force variety is not necessary, the rewards are, and consequently the manner in which you can push variety in games is by no means limited to filler-quests as an "ideal".
As for "hoops", you'd also have to explain what hoops you perceive to a mechanic where a player can literally do whatever at any given moment, and the only part that is necessarily different is whether or not their bonus for the activity has decayed or not.
So for an example of why I may be "butthurt" lets take your post just now. You throw out three sentences with claims that exist presently little more than conjecture and no rational explanation, and then you ask me why I might be annoyed about such things.
Feel free to take a moment and ponder out why this might cause an intelligent human being to become miffed.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The problem this creates are that quest and conveniences based around it have driven the MMO out of the RPG. Now the world and the community is secondary to the needs of the individual in a genre that doesn't do the individual well. MMORPG mechanics were crap and now are mediocre. The genre's strengths were the players interactions and online world.
nah .. players interactions are not a strength if people want to solo.
May be you are right ... the genre has no more strength left .. hence AAA devs are leaving it, and it is evolving into something else.
It's mostly just one more benefit progression provides, and one of the core pillars of RPGs is progression, so you have slightly less progression as you remove the benefits progression provides. It's still an RPG just a little bit less so.
Yup, he made the mistake of labeling vertical progression so integral as opposed to the many alternatives that can replace it. Saw that coming, what, half a day away.
Still waiting for him to catch the irony in saying raids and repetitious quests that get shortcut to sprint to "endgame" is good yet grind is bad.
The reality very simply is that players need incentive to change tasks so that they are drawn away from overly-repetitious activities. This does not need to be quests.
As I described a while ago now, it can be as simple as making a bonus reward mechanic for the XP and loot gained from an activity that drops off over time and has to be given time to reset, so that players are pushed to cycle multiple activities for optimal play without railroading them into a specific chain of activities like quests presently do.
But it's rather obvious Axe is arguing for an opinion as usual that WoW/Blizz is great, quests are a holy grail, and anything to the contrary is obviously "objectively wrong".
Yes, the irony of quest creating long term play but admittedly compromised for the desire of end game. It's no surprise that subs are no long viable for themeparks.
Quest should be for story progression. If it doesn't promote story then it should be optional and limited in number. Nobody wants tons of filler task.
Quest should not be tied directly to progression. Especially when the prize is the "real game." Now your world and story content is annoying speed bump to end game.
Axehilt is basically justifying this because mob grinding is worst and progression is required. While not addressing developers pushing their players to end game as fast as possible making the end game the majority and repetitious.
What I was trying to explain that if you have no levels in a themepark quest become something sought after along with raiding because it's not required for progression. The whole game is part of the "end game."
I also think it's a pretty sad state of affairs when you're charging your customers $60 to bypass your content.
you mean like in Eve where you can spend $28k to bypass 20 years worth of skill points?
No
I mean like Blizzard.
What is the difference? You can pay real money to bypass in-game progress for both games.
Excuse my ignorance
Does CCP offer such a service? and for $28,000.00?
CCP condones such transactions. The statement that "you can pay real money to bypass in-game progress" is correct for Eve, just that you are paying to someone else, not CCP.
Does that make it ok? Blizz took down the D3 RMAH because they don't think it is ok to buy advantages, even from other players. I guess CCP feels differently.
I don't think variety actually changes grinding. MMORPG just tend to have grind because progression is generally done by repetition. All grinds are just a large volume of something on repeat. The most hours I put into RPG lately is my Mycareer player in NBA2k15. Playing 82 games is a grind even though every game is vastly different individually. Collectively its a grind because I must play them to gain exp for my character. Just as quest become a grind because collectively I must do them and there are too many in a single MMORPG and as a whole genre.
When quest were first introduced to the progression treadmill... they were viewed as more enjoyable because it was different from what were forced to do before and it gave better exp. Again the high exp given by quest was the biggest thing for its acceptance. You just finished a game where you had to kill 8000 NPCs to level and then you're leveling off completing a dozen or so quest. It was a welcome change. The change was 10 years ago. Now there are just too many task over the years. Quest in MMORPG are things generally to control your time and leveling. They're open world task that just tell you to do something like kill or pick up something. They were numerous to be a timesink and grind. Many miss the aspect of a few solid quest + epic quest vs. billion task that don't serve purpose to narrative or generic. They also divide the player base. Quest were hijacked by progression.
Quest in single player used to be something to set you in the right direction to solve your journey. The journey of the quest was the gameplay not ends to a mean. Or it would set up a scripted event to push along the game story. You didn't have too many quest to go killed so many orcs and then comeback. You were told to go to dungeon x and find your uncle's sword to let you kill so and so.
The players decided they wanted to get passed these task faster. Developers started to refine/track the player world like a single player game around quest hubs. Before they were open world. Introduced numerous conveniences that added to this. Then instances and phasing that push solo play to try to get some of the single player RPG scripted events. Open world quest have generally been dumbed further to just be pure task. Developers focused the game, the world all around the end game to make up for.
The problem this creates are that quest and conveniences based around it have driven the MMO out of the RPG. Now the world and the community is secondary to the needs of the individual in a genre that doesn't do the individual well. MMORPG mechanics were crap and now are mediocre. The genre's strengths were the players interactions and online world.
In part you're disagreeing with me to disagree, because you say grind isn't about the amount of variety, but is about the amount of variety. (After all, what do you think "repetition" is? Exactly: a lack of variety.)
In part you're just wrong, because nobody has ever used the word "grind" to describe playing 82 different games. My definition of the word is based on how it's actually used by players. (Though in threads like this and posts like yours, certainly people struggle to pretend like grind is used in a different way than it actually is, purely to try to disagree with me.)
As for your diatribe on quests, do you also view Super Mario Bros as a repetitive grind? After all, your goal is nearly always the same ("reach the end of the level") and you seem completely unable to differentiate the gameplay details of what your'e actually doing in a game.
The reality is that when quests are done properly they force variety on players (in much the same way that a SMB player cannot "grind" World 1-1 repetitively,) and that players will stick with varied games longer than they stick with repetitive games.
We've already covered that players have always tried to advance quickly. Again SMB provides good insight since most players tried to move through levels at a good pace (if you were good enough to do a level rapidly, you did do it rapidly) and there's even a speedrun community nowadays who's probably just about perfected the run.
Even if you explained why you think this is a bad thing, it wouldn't change the fact that this is how games are going to be played no matter what.
Similarly, even if you explained why you believe being less of an MMO is a bad thing, it wouldn't change the fact that we are where we are largely due to players' tastes. There are few tangible reasons why being massively multiplayer is beneficial to a game. Conversely there are clear ways that having more players presents problems for a game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I also think it's a pretty sad state of affairs when you're charging your customers $60 to bypass your content.
you mean like in Eve where you can spend $28k to bypass 20 years worth of skill points?
No
I mean like Blizzard.
What is the difference? You can pay real money to bypass in-game progress for both games.
Excuse my ignorance
Does CCP offer such a service? and for $28,000.00?
CCP condones such transactions. The statement that "you can pay real money to bypass in-game progress" is correct for Eve, just that you are paying to someone else, not CCP.
Does that make it ok? Blizz took down the D3 RMAH because they don't think it is ok to buy advantages, even from other players. I guess CCP feels differently.
ROFL
Blizzard took the RMAH out because it was destroying their game and destroying their reputation Big Time
In part you're disagreeing with me to disagree, because you say grind isn't about the amount of variety, but is about the amount of variety. (After all, what do you think "repetition" is? Exactly: a lack of variety.) In part you're just wrong, because nobody has ever used the word "grind" to describe playing 82 different games. My definition of the word is based on how it's actually used by players. (Though in threads like this and posts like yours, certainly people struggle to pretend like grind is used in a different way than it actually is, purely to try to disagree with me.)
No, grind is repetition. Many people view doing the same few quest types over and over a grind when forced to do it. Deliever, kill and fetch are the majority of what you do packaged in some form. Many feel those quest are pointless, unchallenging and simply road bump to the real game.
Similarly, even if you explained why you believe being less of an MMO is a bad thing, it wouldn't change the fact that we are where we are largely due to players' tastes. There are few tangible reasons why being massively multiplayer is beneficial to a game. Conversely there are clear ways that having more players presents problems for a game.
We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format. It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over. EQ NPCs actually had quirks thst made fighting NPCs different. Without the avoidance of the quest grind we wouldn't have gone down this road IMO.
Used to be there were lots of common jelly beans in a bag, but only a few black licorice ones. Those were highly prized and worth waiting for.
This week I came across a different type of candy bag. Licorice beans for all! No waiting! And no need to root around for one. Just face roll as many as you like.
I suppose there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. It's just for fun after all.
But it still seems a lot more fun to me if outcome and success are not guaranteed, where there is anticipation and doubt, and where gratification must often be delayed. In games as well as in candy.
I can see your point for sure. I just hope that some content creators get on board and understand that easy isn't what everyone wants. Sure there's some people that do but most of us want a challenge and want to have to work for the things we get!
No, grind is repetition. Many people view doing the same few quest types over and over a grind when forced to do it. Deliever, kill and fetch are the majority of what you do packaged in some form. Many feel those quest are pointless, unchallenging and simply road bump to the real game.
We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format. It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over. EQ NPCs actually had quirks thst made fighting NPCs different. Without the avoidance of the quest grind we wouldn't have gone down this road IMO.
Er, do you understand that repetition and variety are opposite concepts? Repetition is a lack of variety. Variety is a lack of repetition.
This is why your insistence that you're disagreeing with me is ridiculous. You're trying to pretend grind isn't about the amount of variety, and using a word that means a lack of variety.
Disliking them because you consider them pointless, too easy, or a road bump to the "real game" is fine -- that's all subjective preference. If you want to say those things, fine. But those things aren't related to the grind discussion we've been having.
"We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format." This statement makes no sense.
"It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over." This statement is pretty shaky. Most games generally are "the same reskinned task" if you have a negative enough attitude towards them. The reality is that players enjoy a good quest system, and only in a bad quest system will things feel overly repetitive.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, grind is repetition. Many people view doing the same few quest types over and over a grind when forced to do it. Deliever, kill and fetch are the majority of what you do packaged in some form. Many feel those quest are pointless, unchallenging and simply road bump to the real game.
We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format. It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over. EQ NPCs actually had quirks thst made fighting NPCs different. Without the avoidance of the quest grind we wouldn't have gone down this road IMO.
Er, do you understand that repetition and variety are opposite concepts? Repetition is a lack of variety. Variety is a lack of repetition.
This is why your insistence that you're disagreeing with me is ridiculous. You're trying to pretend grind isn't about the amount of variety, and using a word that means a lack of variety.
Disliking them because you consider them pointless, too easy, or a road bump to the "real game" is fine -- that's all subjective preference. If you want to say those things, fine. But those things aren't related to the grind discussion we've been having.
"We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format." This statement makes no sense.
"It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over." This statement is pretty shaky. Most games generally are "the same reskinned task" if you have a negative enough attitude towards them. The reality is that players enjoy a good quest system, and only in a bad quest system will things feel overly repetitive.
because "Quest Grinding" is a term I just made up, right now. Never heard of before. You're silly.
Half of grind is subjective. A repetitive monotonous task. So any discussion saying one is objectively more grindy than another is a false statement.
The repetitive part may be objective. Variety may mean less repetitive (of course if variety is only graphical there is no variety). However if you double the variety and the subjective component triples you still have more grind.
Stupid discussion.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
My only prerequisite for an RPG is that you play a character, a hero, a nurse, a donkey etc. What's wrong with so many games is that you can only play the a role of a hero. Though in early PnP games most players usually played heroes, but those heroes were often quite different from each other. MMORPGs should come to realize this and with the technology we have in use create a wide variety of different kinds of roles, different kinds of crafts, different kinds of professions, different kinds of specializations, not just the role of a craftsman hero.
For reading here's an early AD&D non-combat proficiency list:
Agriculture
Animal Handling
Animal Lore
Animal Training
Appraising
Armorer
Artistic Ability
Astrology
Blacksmithing
Blind-fighting
Bowyer/Fletcher
Brewing
Carpentry
Charioteering
Cobbling
Cooking
Dancing
Direction Sense
Disguise
Endurance
Engineering
Etiquette
Fire-building
Fishing
Forgery
Gaming
Gem Cutting
Healing
Heraldry
Herbalism
History, Ancient
Hunting
Juggling
Jumping
Languages, Ancient
Languages, Modern
Leatherworking
Local History
Lumbering
Mining
Mountaineering
Musical Instrument
Navigation
Pottery
Reading Lips
Reading/Writing
Religion
Riding, Airborne
Riding, Land-based
Rope Use
Running
Seamanship
Seamstress/Tailor
Set Snares
Singing
Spellcraft
Stonemasonry
Survival
Swimming
Tightrope Walking
Tracking
Tumbling
Ventriloquism
Weaponsmithing
Weather Sense
Weaving
Talking about games where thousands of players exist simultaneously in a single instance and mechanics related to such games.
because "Quest Grinding" is a term I just made up, right now. Never heard of before. You're silly.
What relevance do you feel this comment has to what I said?
Quests have objectively more variety than grind-based games. This doesn't mean quests are always enough variety for people not to subjectively call it a grind.
I've described this point many times in this thread.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Wrong. A bad grind vs a good grind is subjective and I can't stand quests. Bouncing from quest to quest flying though areas is an utterly boring grind that I cant stand. Stop expecting everyone to want your trash.
Whether something is more grindy is objective; it's a straightforward comparison of the gameplay variety two games have relative to the time cost of each.
Whether something is called a grind is subjective, relative to just how much variety that player demands from games (relative to the time cost.)
Games which offer a lot of variety and no repetition are just never called a "grind". Portal (the game) wasn't ever called a grind because each puzzle was different (lots of variety) and the game was short (low time cost). Lineage 2 was very repetitive (little variety) and long (high time cost) which resulted in nearly everyone calling it a grind.
This takes the cake. What an illustratijn of how your mind works, or doesn't. GRIND is a subjective word. What YOU find as a grind, I and others may not. What I find as a grind, you and others may not. GRIND is a subjective word: Fact. It is ajudgement, which last I heard is totally the opinion of a person.
Yet here you say "More grindy is objective." How can something inherently subjective to begin with be suddenly objective by throwing the word "more" in the mix?
Yea... I think blocking is the only solution for such stupidity.
This takes the cake. What an illustratijn of how your mind works, or doesn't. GRIND is a subjective word. What YOU find as a grind, I and others may not. What I find as a grind, you and others may not. GRIND is a subjective word: Fact. It is ajudgement, which last I heard is totally the opinion of a person.
Yet here you say "More grindy is objective." How can something inherently subjective to begin with be suddenly objective by throwing the word "more" in the mix?
Yea... I think blocking is the only solution for such stupidity.
While you're getting hung up on the subjective component, I'm describing the broader objective pattern.
I'm taking the root way players actually use the word grind (subjectively), and looking at the bigger picture of how all players use the word, to see the objective pattern that the less variety and more repetitive something is, the more grindy it's considered.
If you myopically focus on individuals using the word then sure you can deceive yourself that its use is purely subjective. But I'm looking quite a bit beyond that to the larger patterns behind that usage.
So what's being mistakenly labeled "stupidity" is in fact a much deeper understanding of the pattern we're discussing. Ah well, that's how the Dunning-Kruger Effect works I guess: trying to communicate deep concepts with people whose understanding is shallow will often result in the deep comments being called "stupid". I've tried to step through it all logically for you guys (in fact it feels like I do so every single post) but some people just aren't capable of thinking at that level I suppose.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No, grind is repetition. Many people view doing the same few quest types over and over a grind when forced to do it. Deliever, kill and fetch are the majority of what you do packaged in some form. Many feel those quest are pointless, unchallenging and simply road bump to the real game.
We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format. It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over. EQ NPCs actually had quirks thst made fighting NPCs different. Without the avoidance of the quest grind we wouldn't have gone down this road IMO.
Er, do you understand that repetition and variety are opposite concepts? Repetition is a lack of variety. Variety is a lack of repetition.
This is why your insistence that you're disagreeing with me is ridiculous. You're trying to pretend grind isn't about the amount of variety, and using a word that means a lack of variety.
Disliking them because you consider them pointless, too easy, or a road bump to the "real game" is fine -- that's all subjective preference. If you want to say those things, fine. But those things aren't related to the grind discussion we've been having.
"We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format." This statement makes no sense.
"It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over." This statement is pretty shaky. Most games generally are "the same reskinned task" if you have a negative enough attitude towards them. The reality is that players enjoy a good quest system, and only in a bad quest system will things feel overly repetitive.
If all you could eat was 7 different flavors of oatmeal would yout think your diet was not repetitiousbecause you had "variety"?
No. It's stupid trying to objectively measure a largely subjective experience.
In my field people tried to do that with pain for years. We don't anymore because it is largely subjective. Any measure trying to objectify is very very flawed. It is not a deeper understanding it just becomes a flawed and inherently meaningless understanding. So worse. All you end up doing is deceiving yourself that the way you are looking at it is more objective when in fact all you are doing is removing a key component which makes the word meaningless and ends up using your own subjective criteria for a subjective experience. You deceive yourself.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
No. It's stupid trying to objectively measure a largely subjective experience.
In my field people tried to do that with pain for years. We don't anymore because it is largely subjective. Any measure trying to objectify is very very flawed. It is not a deeper understanding it just becomes a flawed and inherently meaningless understanding. So worse. All you end up doing is deceiving yourself that the way you are looking at it is more objective when in fact all you are doing is removing a key component which makes the word meaningless and ends up using your own subjective criteria for a subjective experience. You deceive yourself.
The entertainment industry is a business which strives to provide objectively more fun to players. That fun is subjectively experienced by individuals, but if we aren't thinking about the objective patterns behind that fun, we fail to produce enjoyable games.
Same deal with grind. Grind is subjectively experienced, but we can produce games which are considered grindy by objectively fewer players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
No. You don't. You produce games which you believe appeal to either a certain segment or a wide variety. You do this by finding out what people to like. You hope this also means that people find them less grind but you aren't actually measuring that. Theobjective part is simply the number of people that may find it more or less grinding that is not an actual measure of the games grinding is because a game it is a subjective experience the only number you have that is objective is the number of people that are telling you they feel it is more or less grinding
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
Comments
[mod edit]
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
As for your own commentary.
"Well made quests are a far better solution." If you'd like to provide a comment that isn't blind conjecture go ahead. However, "well made quests" is a rather flimsy comment, and if it's to be taken as a quest that has meaningful narrative and unique events to allow novelty, then you are talking about a type of mechanic that is far different from a quest built for player progression or the mechanic I mentioned before.
It's a no-shit statement that something that takes time and effort to build beyond the norm would be better than the average experience provided, but are you going to invest the man hours and budget necessary to build an entire game where all the filler is of that standard?
That your diatribe to me is that it's "no better" means you weren't even paying attention when you read it, as the reason I suggested the mechanic was as an example that the standard quest chains that players use to progress in games is very simply not the integral component to getting players to experience variety with incentive through enhanced rewards being the primary factor.
Quests only work because they are providing an extra incentive to the player. You get the same results if you cull the quests and apply that bonus reward to the activity itself, be it in a manner that will drop off and prompt players to seek the next activity which will give them the biggest reward, forcing the same inevitable cycle of content you get with questing. The point here is that quests to force variety is not necessary, the rewards are, and consequently the manner in which you can push variety in games is by no means limited to filler-quests as an "ideal".
As for "hoops", you'd also have to explain what hoops you perceive to a mechanic where a player can literally do whatever at any given moment, and the only part that is necessarily different is whether or not their bonus for the activity has decayed or not.
So for an example of why I may be "butthurt" lets take your post just now. You throw out three sentences with claims that exist presently little more than conjecture and no rational explanation, and then you ask me why I might be annoyed about such things.
Feel free to take a moment and ponder out why this might cause an intelligent human being to become miffed.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
nah .. players interactions are not a strength if people want to solo.
May be you are right ... the genre has no more strength left .. hence AAA devs are leaving it, and it is evolving into something else.
Does CCP offer such a service? and for $28,000.00?
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
Quest should be for story progression. If it doesn't promote story then it should be optional and limited in number. Nobody wants tons of filler task.
Quest should not be tied directly to progression. Especially when the prize is the "real game." Now your world and story content is annoying speed bump to end game.
Axehilt is basically justifying this because mob grinding is worst and progression is required. While not addressing developers pushing their players to end game as fast as possible making the end game the majority and repetitious.
What I was trying to explain that if you have no levels in a themepark quest become something sought after along with raiding because it's not required for progression. The whole game is part of the "end game."
Does that make it ok? Blizz took down the D3 RMAH because they don't think it is ok to buy advantages, even from other players. I guess CCP feels differently.
In part you're just wrong, because nobody has ever used the word "grind" to describe playing 82 different games. My definition of the word is based on how it's actually used by players. (Though in threads like this and posts like yours, certainly people struggle to pretend like grind is used in a different way than it actually is, purely to try to disagree with me.)
As for your diatribe on quests, do you also view Super Mario Bros as a repetitive grind? After all, your goal is nearly always the same ("reach the end of the level") and you seem completely unable to differentiate the gameplay details of what your'e actually doing in a game.
The reality is that when quests are done properly they force variety on players (in much the same way that a SMB player cannot "grind" World 1-1 repetitively,) and that players will stick with varied games longer than they stick with repetitive games.
We've already covered that players have always tried to advance quickly. Again SMB provides good insight since most players tried to move through levels at a good pace (if you were good enough to do a level rapidly, you did do it rapidly) and there's even a speedrun community nowadays who's probably just about perfected the run.
Even if you explained why you think this is a bad thing, it wouldn't change the fact that this is how games are going to be played no matter what.
Similarly, even if you explained why you believe being less of an MMO is a bad thing, it wouldn't change the fact that we are where we are largely due to players' tastes. There are few tangible reasons why being massively multiplayer is beneficial to a game. Conversely there are clear ways that having more players presents problems for a game.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Blizzard took the RMAH out because it was destroying their game and destroying their reputation Big Time
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
No, grind is repetition. Many people view doing the same few quest types over and over a grind when forced to do it. Deliever, kill and fetch are the majority of what you do packaged in some form. Many feel those quest are pointless, unchallenging and simply road bump to the real game.
We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format. It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over. EQ NPCs actually had quirks thst made fighting NPCs different. Without the avoidance of the quest grind we wouldn't have gone down this road IMO.
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This is why your insistence that you're disagreeing with me is ridiculous. You're trying to pretend grind isn't about the amount of variety, and using a word that means a lack of variety.
Disliking them because you consider them pointless, too easy, or a road bump to the "real game" is fine -- that's all subjective preference. If you want to say those things, fine. But those things aren't related to the grind discussion we've been having.
"We are at this point because of accommodation of the vast vertical leveling in the questhub format." This statement makes no sense.
"It's this way because players don't want to do the same reskinned task from 10 years ago over and over." This statement is pretty shaky. Most games generally are "the same reskinned task" if you have a negative enough attitude towards them. The reality is that players enjoy a good quest system, and only in a bad quest system will things feel overly repetitive.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The repetitive part may be objective. Variety may mean less repetitive (of course if variety is only graphical there is no variety). However if you double the variety and the subjective component triples you still have more grind.
Stupid discussion.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
For reading here's an early AD&D non-combat proficiency list:
Quests have objectively more variety than grind-based games. This doesn't mean quests are always enough variety for people not to subjectively call it a grind.
I've described this point many times in this thread.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Yet here you say "More grindy is objective." How can something inherently subjective to begin with be suddenly objective by throwing the word "more" in the mix?
Yea... I think blocking is the only solution for such stupidity.
VG
I'm taking the root way players actually use the word grind (subjectively), and looking at the bigger picture of how all players use the word, to see the objective pattern that the less variety and more repetitive something is, the more grindy it's considered.
If you myopically focus on individuals using the word then sure you can deceive yourself that its use is purely subjective. But I'm looking quite a bit beyond that to the larger patterns behind that usage.
So what's being mistakenly labeled "stupidity" is in fact a much deeper understanding of the pattern we're discussing. Ah well, that's how the Dunning-Kruger Effect works I guess: trying to communicate deep concepts with people whose understanding is shallow will often result in the deep comments being called "stupid". I've tried to step through it all logically for you guys (in fact it feels like I do so every single post) but some people just aren't capable of thinking at that level I suppose.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
In my field people tried to do that with pain for years. We don't anymore because it is largely subjective. Any measure trying to objectify is very very flawed. It is not a deeper understanding it just becomes a flawed and inherently meaningless understanding. So worse. All you end up doing is deceiving yourself that the way you are looking at it is more objective when in fact all you are doing is removing a key component which makes the word meaningless and ends up using your own subjective criteria for a subjective experience. You deceive yourself.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The entertainment industry is a business which strives to provide objectively more fun to players. That fun is subjectively experienced by individuals, but if we aren't thinking about the objective patterns behind that fun, we fail to produce enjoyable games.
Same deal with grind. Grind is subjectively experienced, but we can produce games which are considered grindy by objectively fewer players.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver