Axehilt said: It didn't work that well in the end of course, because you make way more money providing great gameplay than trying to sucker players with overly repetitive garbage, ...
...And yet your "best example" is an MMO where you endlessly raid and daily grind as the primary objective.
I sincerely hope you eventually discover the irony in this.
I don't think he does. His whole reply proves the point I was making.
But what sort of mechanic would you use to replace say the RNG for a critical hit?
I'll use boxing as an example. A fair few boxers win fights through knockout (critical hit) but it's completely luck based whether they land that crit.
More often than not throughout the fight they land blows to the head and fail at the crit, even land blows in places that would crit.
Luck plays a big role in a lot of sports so how do you replicate that luck in video games without RNG?
That's not luck though. It's deterministic.
Landing that blow with exactly that force in exactly that location to an opponent in exactly that physical state will always result in a knockout. That's the only result that would ever occur in that precise situation. It wasn't randomness that caused him to be knocked out. I don't know the exact factors which cause the brain to lose consciousness in that situation, but just because I don't know those factors doesn't mean they don't exist.
A better example is a coin-flip because it has fewer factors (it's mostly just physics.) This article is about an experiment which created a coin-flipping machine which flips things precisely the same way each time. Coin-flipping isn't random, the main factor is we aren't flipping a coin in precisely the same way each time (plus several other minor factors like wind and the imperfections of the coin.)
And that lends itself to our conversation, as the near-impossibility of training yourself to flip a coin in EXACTLY the same way each time is a perfect example of how games can work.
This also means it's already happening in MMORPGs, as I for one definitely don't perform my rotations with flawless perfection each time. This results in a lot of natural variation in my effectiveness, and would exist even if no RNG elements existed (though most of the RNG elements are fairly controlled, scheduled to happen x times per minute.)
(And arguably even those RNG elements aren't random, as if you knew the code for the random number generator and had all the factors that it used to generate a "random" number, you'd find that it's not actually random.)
iImmodium asked the question I had about turning "deterministic" into game mechanics. You have some good explanations, but no solutions. How does a programmer add "intangibles" into a game mechanic? A gust of wind that throws off "the perfect arrow shot", or a character's blink at the wrong during a dodge maneuver?
Even deterministic has variables. No human being alive can do the same thing exactly the same over and over and over. That one "lucky shot" that KO'd the boxer is not 100% deterministic. Maybe the 12 previous head shots added to the chance? Rarely is it "hit here with this much force and instant KO." Lots of other factors many times factor into the mix.
There are times when I agree RNG makes no sense. When I played D&D and the DM made me roll to coup de grace an unconscious opponent, I was like "WTF? he's unconcious and prone." Combat, however, with 2 (or more) alive and moving opponents has so many "intangibles" that is is far from "100% deterministic." So how do programmers code these variables in?
PS: I know that RNG via computer is not true randomness.
You are proving my point. I am not talking about a marathon around town. THAT is precisely why the vast vertical level progression in themeparks is a problem. Western players do not want the grind of NPC killing or questing. Its why the focus was placed end game. Nobody wants to run the gauntlet but wants the door prize.
Leveling is one form of progression. Far from required. The content is marginalized because you don't revisit it all. Once you get to end game you just repeat end game content. That's not new content.
In a levelless system most of the content is available how and when you want to play. The whole world is essentially end game. You go places for a reason and not the yellow brick road told you to or you have no where else level appropriate. The game is about obtaining new abilities, gear, and honing player skill just like a leveled one. It also opens the game up to having areas based on challenge vs. areas based on 1-6 or 35-40 in level with the same flat challenge balanced to your level.
You're still failing to describe the problem.
Western players have shown that they do want quests, because they're the least grindy option for MMORPGs.
Endgame's purpose isn't to avoid questing, but to provide grouping. I've already explained this.
Progression is one of the core pillars of an RPG. Removing the vast majority of incentive from a game is not going to cause a MMORPG to be more successful. Sure obviously one result of doing so is you'd only do things for your own reasons. But that's because the game itself would provide no reason to go do anything, and so as a result players wouldn't do anything (other than to uninstall the game and play something where their choices felt more meaningful.)
RPGs just aren't the right genre for removing progression.
As for leveling, if I've made the mistake of referring to "leveling" instead of "progression" then just reword it in your mind. Leveling isn't a core pillar, but progression is. And progression is most meaningful when big things unlock from it -- like unlocking entire new zones. So while leveling isn't the only way to gate a zone, it makes sense to gate the zone by progression because it places more meaning behind progression.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
iImmodium asked the question I had about turning "deterministic" into game mechanics. You have some good explanations, but no solutions. How does a programmer add "intangibles" into a game mechanic? A gust of wind that throws off "the perfect arrow shot", or a character's blink at the wrong during a dodge maneuver?
Even deterministic has variables. No human being alive can do the same thing exactly the same over and over and over. That one "lucky shot" that KO'd the boxer is not 100% deterministic. Maybe the 12 previous head shots added to the chance? Rarely is it "hit here with this much force and instant KO." Lots of other factors many times factor into the mix.
There are times when I agree RNG makes no sense. When I played D&D and the DM made me roll to coup de grace an unconscious opponent, I was like "WTF? he's unconcious and prone." Combat, however, with 2 (or more) alive and moving opponents has so many "intangibles" that is is far from "100% deterministic." So how do programmers code these variables in?
PS: I know that RNG via computer is not true randomness.
The solution is game depth. So typically it's a designer (not a programmer) who adds depth to a game (though the specific way programmers implement things can have an influence on game depth.)
Specific examples include every single little mistake you make failing to perform a perfect combat rotation in a game like WOW. The multitude of game mechanics (including their subtleties) which caused those mistakes to be mistakes are the specific way you create depth, which in turn removes the need for randomness.
In a shallow game where you can easily perform a perfect rotation, there won't be variance, and that's a problem. While you can patch that up with RNG, the better solution is to implement deeper gameplay.
Creating game depth isn't an easy task, and is essentially one of the core skills of a game designer. You need to have a good sense of how to produce interesting decisions by setting up a bunch of interconnected game mechanics where mastering the game is difficult.
As for the 12 prior punches before the KO punch, that's what I meant by "state of the opponent". Every time you punched the opponent those 13 times in precisely the same way you would achieve a knockout. It wasn't luck. It was a serious of deterministic factors.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You are proving my point. I am not talking about a marathon around town. THAT is precisely why the vast vertical level progression in themeparks is a problem. Western players do not want the grind of NPC killing or questing. Its why the focus was placed end game. Nobody wants to run the gauntlet but wants the door prize.
Leveling is one form of progression. Far from required. The content is marginalized because you don't revisit it all. Once you get to end game you just repeat end game content. That's not new content.
In a levelless system most of the content is available how and when you want to play. The whole world is essentially end game. You go places for a reason and not the yellow brick road told you to or you have no where else level appropriate. The game is about obtaining new abilities, gear, and honing player skill just like a leveled one. It also opens the game up to having areas based on challenge vs. areas based on 1-6 or 35-40 in level with the same flat challenge balanced to your level.
You're still failing to describe the problem.
Western players have shown that they do want quests, because they're the least grindy option for MMORPGs.
Endgame's purpose isn't to avoid questing, but to provide grouping. I've already explained this.
Progression is one of the core pillars of an RPG. Removing the vast majority of incentive from a game is not going to cause a MMORPG to be more successful. Sure obviously one result of doing so is you'd only do things for your own reasons. But that's because the game itself would provide no reason to go do anything, and so as a result players wouldn't do anything (other than to uninstall the game and play something where their choices felt more meaningful.)
RPGs just aren't the right genre for removing progression.
As for leveling, if I've made the mistake of referring to "leveling" instead of "progression" then just reword it in your mind. Leveling isn't a core pillar, but progression is. And progression is most meaningful when big things unlock from it -- like unlocking entire new zones. So while leveling isn't the only way to gate a zone, it makes sense to gate the zone by progression because it places more meaning behind progression.
Nobody said removing progression. Removing leveling is not new to the RPG or MMORPG.
We have questing as progression because WOW has questing as progression and nearly the entire genre is a progression from WOW. Players will do whatever levels them the fastest. Make NPC the fastest route to end game and NPC will be ground to dust while quest eventually go unused.
Grind is relative to % of the level given in exp given per complete of activity... and personal taste. Just because EQ had a small percentage of exp given in slow combat doesn't mean game X couldn't give a high % of exp in fast combat killing MOBs. You just have a very narrow view of MMORPG progression.
The point of having a levelless game is that you can build the world in a way that makes sense and makes all areas relevant. You can still have unlocked areas that don't automatically make older areas irrelevant. If you ever played Zelda. Link was not getting vastly more powerful. He obtain items. Many times those items allowed you to go to knew areas and counted as progression for new powers.
Nobody said removing progression. Removing leveling is not new to the RPG or MMORPG.
We have questing as progression because WOW has questing as progression and nearly the entire genre is a progression from WOW. Players will do whatever levels them the fastest. Make NPC the fastest route to end game and NPC will be ground to dust while quest eventually go unused.
Grind is relative to % of the level given in exp given per complete of activity... and personal taste. Just because EQ had a small percentage of exp given in slow combat doesn't mean game X couldn't give a high % of exp in fast combat killing MOBs. You just have a very narrow view of MMORPG progression.
The point of having a levelless game is that you can build the world in a way that makes sense and makes all areas relevant. You can still have unlocked areas that don't automatically make older areas irrelevant. If you ever played Zelda. Link was not getting vastly more powerful. He obtain items. Many times those items allowed you to go to knew areas and counted as progression for new powers.
You're talking about removing the progression-gating of zones. While sure it's not removing all progression, it is removing quite a lot of progression. Whether the progression takes the form of levels or something else, removing its connection to zone-gating is removing some progression.
We have questing because players do whatever progresses them the fastest, and if that happens to suck they're going to do the thing that sucks, be disappointed the game sucks, and leave. Fewer players leave when questing is the fastest way to level, because questing sucks less, because questing has more gameplay variety. Thus: we have a lot of games with questing (though not all of them have well-implemented questing.)
Grind isn't about the percentage of a level you gain per activity completion.
Let's imagine an oldschool game where you level up every 10,000 mob kills and the max level is 60 (so you need to kill 600,000 mobs to reach max level.)
Let's imagine a new game provides 100x as much XP, with 100x higher max level, but 1/100th as much power gain per level.
Is the new game less grindy? You're leveling 100x as often! You only need 100 kills per level!
Of course not. It's exactly as grindy as before. You still need 600,000 kills to reach max level. It's as repetitive as ever.
So the rate of leveling is irrelevant. What matters is how repetitive a game is. "Grind" describes too little gameplay variance relative to the amount of time required.
All areas in modern MMORPGs are relevant. They all provide a new place to explore and to advance your character.
Zelda wasn't an RPG. It was an action-adventure game. Even Zelda 2 (with its levels that provided gameplay benefits) wasn't really an RPG, since the action-adventure elements were more pronounced.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Nobody said removing progression. Removing leveling is not new to the RPG or MMORPG.
We have questing as progression because WOW has questing as progression and nearly the entire genre is a progression from WOW. Players will do whatever levels them the fastest. Make NPC the fastest route to end game and NPC will be ground to dust while quest eventually go unused.
Grind is relative to % of the level given in exp given per complete of activity... and personal taste. Just because EQ had a small percentage of exp given in slow combat doesn't mean game X couldn't give a high % of exp in fast combat killing MOBs. You just have a very narrow view of MMORPG progression.
The point of having a levelless game is that you can build the world in a way that makes sense and makes all areas relevant. You can still have unlocked areas that don't automatically make older areas irrelevant. If you ever played Zelda. Link was not getting vastly more powerful. He obtain items. Many times those items allowed you to go to knew areas and counted as progression for new powers.
You're talking about removing the progression-gating of zones. While sure it's not removing all progression, it is removing quite a lot of progression. Whether the progression takes the form of levels or something else, removing its connection to zone-gating is removing some progression.
We have questing because players do whatever progresses them the fastest, and if that happens to suck they're going to do the thing that sucks, be disappointed the game sucks, and leave. Fewer players leave when questing is the fastest way to level, because questing sucks less, because questing has more gameplay variety. Thus: we have a lot of games with questing (though not all of them have well-implemented questing.)
Grind isn't about the percentage of a level you gain per activity completion.
Let's imagine an oldschool game where you level up every 10,000 mob kills and the max level is 60 (so you need to kill 600,000 mobs to reach max level.)
Let's imagine a new game provides 100x as much XP, with 100x higher max level, but 1/100th as much power gain per level.
Is the new game less grindy? You're leveling 100x as often! You only need 100 kills per level!
Of course not. It's exactly as grindy as before. You still need 600,000 kills to reach max level. It's as repetitive as ever.
So the rate of leveling is irrelevant. What matters is how repetitive a game is. "Grind" describes too little gameplay variance relative to the amount of time required.
All areas in modern MMORPGs are relevant. They all provide a new place to explore and to advance your character.
Zelda wasn't an RPG. It was an action-adventure game. Even Zelda 2 (with its levels that provided gameplay benefits) wasn't really an RPG, since the action-adventure elements were more pronounced.
First paragraph - open-world RPG games generally disagree with you.
Second paragraph - that's far from the only way to incentivize players. Try being more creative.
Third paragraph (list) - lets imagine a game where you invest a silly amount of hours each week to obtain minimal if any progression. It's called "endgame raiding/dailies" and it's grindy as all hell.
The rate of leveling is important to this because "endgame" is the apparent focus rather than providing a consistently interesting user experience regardless of level. Adding more levels, short-cutting the curve on the levels, and then compressing all the viable user activities into only a few options in the long run does a lot to marginalize the game world as well as enforce a very grind-centric type of gameplay.
All areas in modern MMORPGs are relevant? Rather unlikely given the habit of staying in a zone for a remarkably short amount of time before moving on or otherwise get skipped completely as the level curve and other game mechanics (dungeon instances for example) renders them meaningless.
As for the Zelda thing, that's a matter of opinion since it's been defined generally as either an action rpg or action adventure depending on the title in question. Given the example used was noting the use of item unlocks and stuff, it'd likely be one of the titles classed as an arpg, but you seem fond of applying labels as they suit your interest, and as side this is ultimately a point of opinion not a fact-based argument you initiated, so not really my point of interest. Only commenting on the matter as you just tried to paint your opinion as the reason to discredit the point Vermillion was making rather than producing a sound argument.
"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
There is no proof that developers implemented travel as a time sink. That is simple how you perceived it to be. It that any different than me saying cash shops are just to nickle and dime people. The difference is that having a large world that isn't chocked full of content every few inches serves a purpose. That is to make the world feel large like a real world. A place you can live an explore. I'm pretty sure I could come up with a reason for all old school mechanics that have nothing to do with milking more money out of the customer, but could be perceived as such.
You're talking about removing the progression-gating of zones. While sure it's not removing all progression, it is removing quite a lot of progression. Whether the progression takes the form of levels or something else, removing its connection to zone-gating is removing some progression.
There are plenty of open world games with very few gating of zones. Bethesda games are among the most popular and remove a lot of gated content by level scaling and open ended gaming choices. This is why MMO are starting to employ scaling characters. The only problem is the rewards don't scale.
We have questing because players do whatever progresses them the fastest, and if that happens to suck they're going to do the thing that sucks, be disappointed the game sucks, and leave. Fewer players leave when questing is the fastest way to level, because questing sucks less, because questing has more gameplay variety. Thus: we have a lot of games with questing (though not all of them have well-implemented questing.)
That's simply untrue or at least unproven. Players haven't been given an option because grinding Mobs is highly unproductive or nets 0 gains in almost ever release since 2004. The questing is marginalized and many times skipped over. I don't think most players care how they level. Its all about the achievement. They will grind quest, mobs or pay for level increases.
Grind isn't about the percentage of a level you gain per activity completion.
Let's imagine an oldschool game where you level up every 10,000 mob kills and the max level is 60 (so you need to kill 600,000 mobs to reach max level.)
Let's imagine a new game provides 100x as much XP, with 100x higher max level, but 1/100th as much power gain per level.
Is the new game less grindy? You're leveling 100x as often! You only need 100 kills per level!
Of course not. It's exactly as grindy as before. You still need 600,000 kills to reach max level. It's as repetitive as ever.
So the rate of leveling is irrelevant. What matters is how repetitive a game is. "Grind" describes too little gameplay variance relative to the amount of time required.
Fine I concede its not all in the percentage. But my point was more that games like EQ's grind was a grind because of the small % per mob per level. Would you call taking 5 mobs per level a grind? Lets say it takes 10k mobs killed in EQ to level. Would it suddenly be not a grind if you had to kill 10k mobs through quest?
I would bet everything... if you have 30 quest to level that take 1 hour of running around, killing and collecting vs. 20 mobs to grind that takes 20-30 minutes. Players will pick the later. The later would be less grindy to a majority.
All areas in modern MMORPGs are relevant. They all provide a new place to explore and to advance your character.
MMORPG are not a one shot deal. If I am max level player playing a MMORPG and 99% of the game world is now useless to me it has been marginalized. With todays MMORPG if I play for a month I will spend the vast majority of my game at end game repetition over the leveling journey though the game. If I am really impatient I may have just queued up dungeons repeatedly and bought exp pots to bypass the world leveling.
Zelda wasn't an RPG. It was an action-adventure game. Even Zelda 2 (with its levels that provided gameplay benefits) wasn't really an RPG, since the action-adventure elements were more pronounced.
It doesn't matter. You can still gain progression within your character without level or vast power gains. You always make very narrow arguments to fit your viewpoint. Its like you put on blinders.
You are proving my point. I am not talking about a marathon around town. THAT is precisely why the vast vertical level progression in themeparks is a problem. Western players do not want the grind of NPC killing or questing. Its why the focus was placed end game. Nobody wants to run the gauntlet but wants the door prize.
Leveling is one form of progression. Far from required. The content is marginalized because you don't revisit it all. Once you get to end game you just repeat end game content. That's not new content.
In a levelless system most of the content is available how and when you want to play. The whole world is essentially end game. You go places for a reason and not the yellow brick road told you to or you have no where else level appropriate. The game is about obtaining new abilities, gear, and honing player skill just like a leveled one. It also opens the game up to having areas based on challenge vs. areas based on 1-6 or 35-40 in level with the same flat challenge balanced to your level.
You're still failing to describe the problem.
Western players have shown that they do want quests, because they're the least grindy option for MMORPGs
HALT!! I think quests are the worst thing ever put into mmorpgs and therefore games that require them for leveling are a grindy waste of my time (wow, eq2, etc).
There is no proof that developers implemented travel as a time sink. That is simple how you perceived it to be. It that any different than me saying cash shops are just to nickle and dime people. The difference is that having a large world that isn't chocked full of content every few inches serves a purpose. That is to make the world feel large like a real world. A place you can live an explore. I'm pretty sure I could come up with a reason for all old school mechanics that have nothing to do with milking more money out of the customer, but could be perceived as such.
So it's entirely coincidental that the first genre which made its money by subscription (time) was also the first genre with excessive timesinks? Riiiiight.
Also, here's the lead designer of City of Heroes defining timesinks. His second sentence? "It is hoped that this time investment will translate into extended subscription, but if not handled properly, this can backfire spectacularly."
Games are more successful when they focus on being fun (games/themepark) than when they focus on being 'real' (simulations/sandbox).
Besides, feeling real doesn't require excessive waste of players' time. Do you feel movies are unbelievable when a character flies in a plane to another city and the entire 3-hour flight isn't portrayed in real-time? Or are you fine accepting the 3-second travel montage because it gets you immediately to the interesting parts? It's even worse in games, where you can't simply fast-forward the video or walk away from it during the pointlessly lengthy 3-hour travel scene. In a game you have to stay there performing the travel manually. It's about the least interesting gameplay a game can offer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's simply untrue or at least unproven. Players haven't been given an option because grinding Mobs is highly unproductive or nets 0 gains in almost ever release since 2004. The questing is marginalized and many times skipped over. I don't think most players care how they level. Its all about the achievement. They will grind quest, mobs or pay for level increases.
Fine I concede its not all in the percentage. But my point was more that games like EQ's grind was a grind because of the small % per mob per level. Would you call taking 5 mobs per level a grind? Lets say it takes 10k mobs killed in EQ to level. Would it suddenly be not a grind if you had to kill 10k mobs through quest?
I would bet everything... if you have 30 quest to level that take 1 hour of running around, killing and collecting vs. 20 mobs to grind that takes 20-30 minutes. Players will pick the later. The later would be less grindy to a majority.
MMORPG are not a one shot deal. If I am max level player playing a MMORPG and 99% of the game world is now useless to me it has been marginalized. With todays MMORPG if I play for a month I will spend the vast majority of my game at end game repetition over the leveling journey though the game. If I am really impatient I may have just queued up dungeons repeatedly and bought exp pots to bypass the world leveling.
It doesn't matter. You can still gain progression within your character without level or vast power gains. You always make very narrow arguments to fit your viewpoint. Its like you put on blinders.
It's extremely obvious the the vast majority of players that excessive repetition (grind-based games) is less interesting than gameplay variety (quest-based games.) Do you honestly believe this nonsense, or are you merely disagreeing for the sake of argument? It's sad that I have to even ask, but well...we're living in a world where Trump hasn't been instantly dismissed as an obviously unsuitable presidential candidate.
Players "don't care how they level" only in the sense that they will seek the most efficient path. If that path offers shitty gameplay, they'll quit the game. (Which is why they actually do care how they level, they just don't realize they care.)
Your claim that EQ was a grind because of how much XP you got is wrong. Did you kill 15 mobs then switch to a new area? I imagine if it was anything remotely like AO you would've killed a hundred mobs or more in the same area before moving on. That's excessive repetition. That's why it was a grind.
Killing 10k mobs through questing might be a grind. It would depend entirely on the amount of variety.
A very bad quest system would be "Quest 1: Kill 10k mobs" and would be just as much a grind as EQ.
But it's pointless to discuss a deliberately terrible implementation of questing. Instead, we point to the variety of the ideal form of questing like WOW's:
Quest 1: kill 15 of Mob Type A.
Quest 2: collect Item B.
Quest 3: play this Plants vs. Zombies minigame.
Quest 4: take control of Arthas and witness how he raised an army of undead to conquer the land.
Quest 5: kill 15 of Mob Type B.
etc.
So you wouldn't actually be comparing 10k kills to 10k kills. You'd be comparing 10k kills of ~50 mob types vs. 5k kills of ~150 mob types and a bunch of various non-combat gameplay activities which added up to the same amount of time. The latter, due to its vastly superior gameplay variety, would keep players playing longer because players despise excessive repetition. Again "grind" is a word which specifically describes a low amount of gameplay quality/variety relative to the amount of time required. Variety / Time. When two games require the same amount of time to reach max level, the one where you kill ~50 mob types is going to be considered way more grindy than the one where you kill ~150 mob types and do a lot of non-combat activities.
Content is a one-shot deal. MMORPGs are content-driven games. As I've pointed out many many times in this thread: do you want to explore a new land of mystery, or do you want to re-hash some zone where you already know everything about it? There's really no contest. Normal players choose the new zone every time. So at endgame, they're sent to new zones and dungeons and raids, instead of being forced to go revisit places that are already too familiar.
The Zelda thing did matter, because we're discussing RPGs and it's not an RPG. If you want some other non-RPG game, that's fine (I enjoy all sorts of non-RPG games) but it's outside the context of our conversation.
Even if you pressed the Zelda thing: can you access the dungeon that requires the hookshot before you have the hookshot? Or would you agree that Zelda has progression-locked content?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
HALT!! I think quests are the worst thing ever put into mmorpgs and therefore games that require them for leveling are a grindy waste of my time (wow, eq2, etc).
I can no longer read your posts. I'm disgusted.
That's not how grind works. If a game has objectively less variety then it has objectively more grind.
It's fine if you don't like something, but that doesn't mean it's a grind. Words don't work that way.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Axehilt said: So at endgame, they're sent to new zones and dungeons and raids, instead of being forced to go revisit places that are already too familiar.
You just made a super-long post repeating the same mistakes that have already been addressed.
For one, rather than addressing the core point of what was said (that the game mechanics focusing on grinding a small amount of content excessively, which is exactly what raids and dailies at endgame is, is not good practice), you have instead chosen to insert a false argument and attack it instead. IT's very simply dishonest of you.
Two, you just repeated basically what had been said about EQ, and ignored the pointit was making. EQ certainly was a grind, but the offset is that if you change the scaling of rewards to favor one method of play over another, then it becomes the least "grindy" method.
Three, your quest example is flawed for the simple case that you tossed a major quest event into a regular quest grind, which doesn't generally happen. Major story events and narrative quests only happen a few times in any given zone, and the in-between tends to be quite a lot of filler quests that for the most part lack in any consequence to even pay attention to.
Instead, we point to the reality of the standard form of questing like WOW's:
Quest 1: kill 15 of Mob A.
Quest 2: collect Item B.
Quest 3: deliver item C do NPC.
Quest 4: pick up 15 of object D.
Quest 5: kill 15 of Mob B (same as Mob A but looks a bit different).
and the cycle repeats.
Mini-game style quests, narrative quests, etc, might get tossed in there occasionally, but they are few and they are not a standard part of any quest rotation save for some dailies (in which case it becomes one of the few activities you are repeatedly playing any ways).
Not to mention your still espousing a form of gameplay (with the focus on end-game) where players are repeatedly participating in a ridiculously finite set of activities as their only form of entertainment in the game. That type of gameplay is the poster-child for grind.
Four, content is fer far from one-shot. If it were only able to be consumed and enjoyed once then no game or media would have any sort of longevity. Beyond that, content has the capacity to stay relevant depending on other mechanics used by the games. GW2 may not be the best game, but the level scaling to the zones and the living story events that take place across a myriad of zones from high to low is an example of such where all those areas that you see don't lose their relevance when you level past their defined range, but instead can be visited or revisited at any time to experience the content it has to offer or special quest activities taking place, and doing so still bears meaning for player progress as well.
The Zelda thing is still you flapping an opinion about, not a factually driven statement. With persistence, character growth/progression, and narrative, Many Zelda titles past the first exist as a type of action RPG if you are going to be semantic about things.
"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 with focusing on progression is the player becomes uninterested in anything else. They become more and more focused on the reward less on the game they are playing. If you don't give them new loot, then they don't have fun.
Like if you made the best raid in mmo history, but didn't put any loot in it, would people play it?
Progression as it's being used is generally referring to anything that extends the character's capabilities/stats. Loot is technically a part of that, and is generally the primary form of progression in titles where "edngame" and vertical scaling is a focus.
Once a player hits level cap the main form of progress become gear grinding.
"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
Most people would call you elitist for wanting to have exclusive content.
I am one of the people who never got to have the best equipment or complete the best content, but the fact that there was always something I hadn't accomplished made the desire to continue playing greater.
It depends on what your goal is in game. I find these games fairly bland due to instancing allowing everyone to do everything.
On the flip side I am at a point in my life where I don't care as much about getting virtual items in game no matter how cool they are. If a game can get me immersed in some way that is the most important thing for me. Unfortunately most games are not designed to immerse the player these days. They are designed to be a min maxing style game that everyone can easily follow.
I don't mini-max either. I pick the parts of the game I enjoy and just do those. If the game doesn't allow me to that, I move on.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
HALT!! I think quests are the worst thing ever put into mmorpgs and therefore games that require them for leveling are a grindy waste of my time (wow, eq2, etc).
I can no longer read your posts. I'm disgusted.
That's not how grind works. If a game has objectively less variety then it has objectively more grind.
It's fine if you don't like something, but that doesn't mean it's a grind. Words don't work that way.
Because a game that demands player to kill 10 monster because they are attacking a village or 10 different monster because the are attacking a caravan or face ingame consquences, must have "objectively less variety" and is "objectively more grindy" than a game that has npc with a questmarker on their had demanding player to kill 10 green or red boars in a quest text telling you that they are attacking the village or caravan, when in fact they just stand around waiting to be killed. Simply because it isn't using a "quest" system like WoW.
Or thats simply you being uncreative and closeminded as usual acting ever so obtuse about any explanations and just disagreeing with anything that implies WoW and everything Blizzard did in WoW isn't offering the ultimate epitome of gameplay and fun ever, just making up yet another arbitray retarded "thats how it works and no way else" Axehilt-rule and law without any logical conclusive explanation or reasoning, that are only ever backed up by more of them or appeals to the authority of a gamedeveloper you claim to be who just knows better or books you never quote or name that supposedly all agree with you nonsense, whenever someone argues your premises.
Whoa... Someone has been talked into a corner more than once.
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been-Wayne Gretzky
I have enough things that are not fun in life. I want my entertainment games to be fun 100% of the time I am playing. If not then it is not accomplishing it's reason for existence.
Fun is only one aspect
I want to be entertained.
Aren't they different ways to describe the same thing? Is it really entertaining to sit through hours of tedium and aggravating activities so that skinner can drop you a fun cookie every 10 - 15 hours? That's not entertaining to me, but entertainment is subjective I guess. What I find entertaining I also generally find "fun". I don't find it entertaining to wait through countless hours of not fun stuff in hopes of a tiny little bit of fun here and there.
No, they aren't the same. I am willing to sit through hours of "tedium" (mining in EVE) and aggravating activities (CTA's, getting ganked, hauling stuff here and there) in order to achieve my in game goals, be it building a new Mining Capital Ship, helping the corp fuel it's POS's, or making more ISK.
None of it falls into the category of fun, or even enjoyable, they are necessary evils, ''chores" if you will that must be done to reach my goals. (just like real life I guess)
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I have enough things that are not fun in life. I want my entertainment games to be fun 100% of the time I am playing. If not then it is not accomplishing it's reason for existence.
Fun is only one aspect
I want to be entertained.
Aren't they different ways to describe the same thing? Is it really entertaining to sit through hours of tedium and aggravating activities so that skinner can drop you a fun cookie every 10 - 15 hours? That's not entertaining to me, but entertainment is subjective I guess. What I find entertaining I also generally find "fun". I don't find it entertaining to wait through countless hours of not fun stuff in hopes of a tiny little bit of fun here and there.
No, they aren't the same. I am willing to sit through hours of "tedium" (mining in EVE) and aggravating activities (CTA's, getting ganked, hauling stuff here and there) in order to achieve my in game goals, be it building a new Mining Capital Ship, helping the corp fuel it's POS's, or making more ISK.
None of it falls into the category of fun, or even enjoyable, they are necessary evils, ''chores" if you will that must be done to reach my goals. (just like real life I guess)
I am Phenomenal
I disagree: Normally while mining etc one watches videos. This is what makes it entertaining.
When you complete your in-game goal while watching videos, your brain gets a 'hit' of dopamine. This is because you have crossed an item off a list. This might be described as fun - although it only lasts for a short while.
It's extremely obvious the the vast majority of players that excessive repetition (grind-based games) is less interesting than gameplay variety (quest-based games.) Do you honestly believe this nonsense, or are you merely disagreeing for the sake of argument? It's sad that I have to even ask, but well...we're living in a world where Trump hasn't been instantly dismissed as an obviously unsuitable presidential candidate.
You're not addressing what I am stating. You have admitted before that players would choose to grind mobs if it was the fast way to level. VAST majority of quest are just organized killing. Text does not make killing any less tedious. What makes it less tedious was that more experience is gained. Previously you would have to grind billion MOBS to level. Then the put in quest that controlled the pace at which you level.
That's specifically why I addressed that all things equal most players would grind mobs because its more efficient than running errands. Even in a game like EQ people killed for their own reason if it was just easy, good loot, favored their class or whatever.
Players "don't care how they level" only in the sense that they will seek the most efficient path. If that path offers shitty gameplay, they'll quit the game. (Which is why they actually do care how they level, they just don't realize they care.)
No, they quit when they run out of content. Most quest involve the two things you said players hate which is running and killing. Run and delivery and run and kill/retrieve quest are the greatest number in MMORPG.
Your claim that EQ was a grind because of how much XP you got is wrong. Did you kill 15 mobs then switch to a new area? I imagine if it was anything remotely like AO you would've killed a hundred mobs or more in the same area before moving on. That's excessive repetition. That's why it was a grind.
No, people generally killed at places they liked the best and stuck to it unless they need something for an item or an item itself or solo vs. grouping. Maybe their class had an advantage. But the point your missing is that you could have the same amount of killing. How many unique mobs do you fight in each MMORPG? Most are just reskinned so your still killing the same NPCS over and over. Except you don't have much option outside of the quest.
Killing 10k mobs through questing might be a grind. It would depend entirely on the amount of variety. A very bad quest system would be "Quest 1: Kill 10k mobs" and would be just as much a grind as EQ. But it's pointless to discuss a deliberately terrible implementation of questing. Instead, we point to the variety of the ideal form of questing like WOW's:
Quest 1: kill 15 of Mob Type A.
Quest 2: collect Item B.
Quest 3: play this Plants vs. Zombies minigame.
Quest 4: take control of Arthas and witness how he raised an army of undead to conquer the land.
Quest 5: kill 15 of Mob Type B.
etc.
Again the vast majority of quest come down to killing something or someone and picking crap off the ground.
So you wouldn't actually be comparing 10k kills to 10k kills. You'd be comparing 10k kills of ~50 mob types vs. 5k kills of ~150 mob types and a bunch of various non-combat gameplay activities which added up to the same amount of time. The latter, due to its vastly superior gameplay variety, would keep players playing longer because players despise excessive repetition. Again "grind" is a word which specifically describes a low amount of gameplay quality/variety relative to the amount of time required. Variety / Time. When two games require the same amount of time to reach max level, the one where you kill ~50 mob types is going to be considered way more grindy than the one where you kill ~150 mob types and do a lot of non-combat activities.
A grind is a grind. 50 shades of killing is still killing. Again, most quest are not special. A large majority are simple task involving killing, delivery or retrieving. Text does not make a kill quest different. Its not a bad thing because it what players like the most I content.
Content is a one-shot deal. MMORPGs are content-driven games. As I've pointed out many many times in this thread: do you want to explore a new land of mystery, or do you want to re-hash some zone where you already know everything about it? There's really no contest. Normal players choose the new zone every time. So at endgame, they're sent to new zones and dungeons and raids, instead of being forced to go revisit places that are already too familiar.
You're ignoring the fact that many players skip the world with queues for dungeons, overleveling experience, potions/rest and other things that an average player will spend a little while leveling and quit or spend the vast majority of their game in the same end game areas. World content(the world itself) shouldn't be one shot. Look at Skyrim. You revisit the same towns and areas but quest may lead you to a sewer or you need to talk to an NPC there.
But you're not addressing how seeing the same end game zones is better than seeing a variety of zones unplayed through a mature servers world. I think developers disagree which is why we have deleveling becoming more popular.
The Zelda thing did matter, because we're discussing RPGs and it's not an RPG. If you want some other non-RPG game, that's fine (I enjoy all sorts of non-RPG games) but it's outside the context of our conversation. Even if you pressed the Zelda thing: can you access the dungeon that requires the hookshot before you have the hookshot? Or would you agree that Zelda has progression-locked content?
Again, you're making your own conclusion and arguing it as fact. Zelda is a debated as RPG, action rpg or action adventure. And the context I was bring was that we had games where you had locked content and open free world all at the same time. Not Zelda the game itself. This is why Skyrim is popular because its free form. It still has levels but has level scaling making all content relevant. You can't scale to one character in MMORPG though.
Because a game that demands player to kill 10 monster because they are attacking a village or 10 different monster because the are attacking a caravan or face ingame consquences, must have "objectively less variety" and is "objectively more grindy" than a game that has npc with a questmarker on their had demanding player to kill 10 green or red boars in a quest text telling you that they are attacking the village or caravan, when in fact they just stand around waiting to be killed. Simply because it isn't using a "quest" system like WoW.
Or thats simply you being uncreative and closeminded as usual acting ever so obtuse about any explanations and just disagreeing with anything that implies WoW and everything Blizzard did in WoW isn't offering the ultimate epitome of gameplay and fun ever, just making up yet another arbitray retarded "thats how it works and no way else" Axehilt-rule and law without any logical conclusive explanation or reasoning, that are only ever backed up by more of them or appeals to the authority of a gamedeveloper you claim to be who just knows better or books you never quote or name that supposedly all agree with you nonsense, whenever someone argues your premises.
Both Vermillion and I agree that, given a choice, players are going to repetitively grind mobs if it's equally rewarded to questing.
Is there a reward for killing those 10 monsters attacking the village? No? Well then nobody is actually going to do that and your example wouldn't happen.
So players aren't killing the 10 monsters attacking the village, they're over repetitively killing the same ~3 mob types in the farm part of the zone.
So again: objectively less variety.
Or if there actually was a reward for killing those 10 monsters, then that's a quest system. Because a quest system that's called "missions" or "quests" or "world events" or "bounties" is still a quest system.
But since we're describing actual grind games vs. actual quest games, there wasn't a reward for variety and the actual reality is less variety.
The above explanation is logical. It describes game systems and how they motivate players, and points out that without motivation towards variety players don't experience variety. Pretending like what I'm saying isn't logical is, in fact, illogical.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
You're not addressing what I am stating. You have admitted before that players would choose to grind mobs if it was the fast way to level. VAST majority of quest are just organized killing. Text does not make killing any less tedious. What makes it less tedious was that more experience is gained. Previously you would have to grind billion MOBS to level. Then the put in quest that controlled the pace at which you level.
No, they quit when they run out of content. Most quest involve the two things you said players hate which is running and killing. Run and delivery and run and kill/retrieve quest are the greatest number in MMORPG.
No, people generally killed at places they liked the best and stuck to it unless they need something for an item or an item itself or solo vs. grouping. Maybe their class had an advantage. But the point your missing is that you could have the same amount of killing. How many unique mobs do you fight in each MMORPG? Most are just reskinned so your still killing the same NPCS over and over. Except you don't have much option outside of the quest.
A grind is a grind. 50 shades of killing is still killing. Again, most quest are not special. A large majority are simple task involving killing, delivery or retrieving. Text does not make a kill quest different. Its not a bad thing because it what players like the most I content.
You're ignoring the fact that many players skip the world with queues for dungeons, overleveling experience, potions/rest and other things that an average player will spend a little while leveling and quit or spend the vast majority of their game in the same end game areas. World content(the world itself) shouldn't be one shot. Look at Skyrim. You revisit the same towns and areas but quest may lead you to a sewer or you need to talk to an NPC there.
But you're not addressing how seeing the same end game zones is better than seeing a variety of zones unplayed through a mature servers world. I think developers disagree which is why we have deleveling becoming more popular.
Again, you're making your own conclusion and arguing it as fact. Zelda is a debated as RPG, action rpg or action adventure. And the context I was bring was that we had games where you had locked content and open free world all at the same time. Not Zelda the game itself. This is why Skyrim is popular because its free form. It still has levels but has level scaling making all content relevant. You can't scale to one character in MMORPG though.
You describe quests as tedious. I'm describing things in objective terms, pointing out that with grind-based you experience objectively less variety. Most quests being kill quests doesn't change that, because they ask you to go different places to kill different mobs. Variety.
Designers always controlled the rate you level. That's not really relevant here, we're just discussing how much variety they require of players (and as we've covered many times: without requiring variety players will choose repetition, and when a game is repetitive players players will then choose a different game.)
Er, right players will quit when they run out of content. That's true. Contrast with a grind-based game where they'll quit much earlier than that because they're bored of the excessive repetition.
The point you're missing is that grind isn't just about the time something takes. "The same amount of killing" is irrelevant. The amount of variety to that killing is what matters. (And also the fact that in a quest-based game you're going to be doing a lot more non-killing things.) Don't you see that it's objectively shallower to have a game where you just pick the mob types your class kills best and only kill those mobs, than a game where you're forced to continually adapt to a variety of situations?
50 shades of killing is variety. Variety makes things less grindy. Again, "grind" is a poor variety / time ratio. (Which is why grind isn't just about the time something takes.) Players hate grind, and they enjoy variety. These are not complicated concepts to understand, why are you acting as though excessive repetition is what players want? Surely you don't actually believe that.
Why do you feel things like rested XP even matter? It's most important for a player's first character to have a satisfying, varied questing experience. But it's still beneficial if he misses some things and there is still even more variety to experience on subsequent characters. It's not as important, but it's still valuable.
As for Skyrim, I quit the game after doing ~85% of the game's static content (though the bigger factor was that stealth had utterly broken the game's challenge at that point.) Any repeat visits to the same towns you'd been to before were more or less the same as you'd experience in any quest-based MMORPG. (I was sent back to Orgrimmar for a quest for like the 200th time today.) After I fully completed the dungeons in one area of Skyrim I did not return to those areas because there was no reason to return. So the way you're describing Skyrim isn't really different from quest-based games; in fact their content is generally set up so you can't just sit in an area and grind to advance (which goes back to the "a quest by any other name is still a quest" point I made in the post before this one.)
You can scale to one character in a MMORPG, but if done too much it makes progression pointless. For example, my non-maxed characters can go back and do WOW's timewalking dungeons, because everyone is restored back to the appropriate level when doing them. Just like GW2's zones work. But if too much of the game works that way, it undermines the importance of progression (which isn't automatically a problem -- it was great in CoH -- but it definitely erodes some of the RPG qualities of 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
When we do the very same thing in most mmos with the difference being just graphics and environment, then we grow up doing that for around twenty years; I would assume any game in the genre be it F2P, P2P or B2P would be boring.
Here are my examples:
Guild Wars 2: Sure, I liked this game.... until my favorite class (Elementalist) I felt got nerfed to the ground. What did the community do? They said "Deal with it and play a different class" and even having different characters leveled up to 80, the fun was sucked out of it for me and I left....
Final Fantasy XIV: I loved the graphics and story. Went through Heavensward...but when Crafting was made almost irrelevant and I was in the mid 50s (all crafting professions) and found most guilds do not even play together... I started to get super bored at the lack of endgame..... The community said "Oh level another class and it won't be boring anymore" and I said "I am a white mage and I don't need to be anything else" (except getting the cross-class skills)...
Phantasy Star Online 2 (JP_ver. w/ English Patch) : This game is a hybrid between a WAIFU simulator (each race has at least 200 - 300 different fashions and accessories) and action oriented with an RPG interface action like PSO1. Another game where most people solo, few people play together. Even with the max team size of 100, seldom would you see a guild actually run an EQ (Emergency Quest...call them events) as a guild without almost every player pugging it out. The honor mention to this is that one can play in 15 - 30 minute blocks and get things done if time management exists. However, when I got bored.....people told me "try a different class" and I said "I've tried them all and the ones I have are my favorite.....and I have five characters too"
The Secret World: This game was good, but I found its lack of community very dishearteningly tragic. Most of the game was solo until one hit instances in which it was just boss after boss with some mechanic to overcome or everyone dies. I simply wondered about it.......then I joined cabal after cabal and found people have a problem actually communicating or talking. In fact I saw more local chat than Guild Chat in that game. Once again I was set in my ways and the suggestion given to me after feeling bored was "Oh try another setup"
TERA: Ok, so I played that game back when everyone told me that Mystic would be tough. I capped Mystic casually in 21 days and found it was such an easy, but fun class to play. I remember actually mapping 30 - 40 commands to the left side of my keyboard. I liked the High Elves. I started to feel bored, and the community there said "Hey, maybe you should try something new" and im like "I like being a mystic and don't want to be anything else!"
So here I have covered at least an F2P, B2P and P2P game....and they all have the same problems... In fact I can draw so many other examples....
I will make an honor mention below:
Guild Wars 1: This game was intended for MAX LEVEL 20 characters, and the focus was more on what a player did with their build and their eight skills... For better or for worse, I had tons of fun at being max level and not being a "God" or "Goddess" super-character, and being able to survive based on actual strategy, and each class did play differently. While the art-style is better in Guild Wars 2, I am one of those players who sees Guild Wars 1 as a much better game than Guild Wars 2 in terms of what I liked. Even today, there are still way more builds for each class in GW1 than what existed in GW2. However, after leveling all the classes to 20 and spending 1000s of hours on elementalist, I said "oh this feels boring" and the community said "Oh you should try something new"
Do you see the pattern here? Do you see how players are bored as hell, but do not want players to leave the game and offer the same advice to me regardless the model or form the game takes?
I can blame companies as well, but I can also blame the playerbase too on the part that the business model takes the form in which money is generated for a company. MMOs are made to generate money for a company. Simple as that... and with so many MMOs becoming games that can be soloed, it makes me wonder what is greater? An MMORPG, or a SINGLE PLAYER RPG?
Also, it doesn't help the dishonesty that the playerbase has towards each other. They are willing to lie to their teeth to each other to retain people in the game on a far greater scale throwing anything they can think off down my throat rather than being honest and actually saying "Yes, you actually are right....if this is going to be a long-term game, you should be able to enjoy playing your class for a few thousand hours over a long period of time and not hope to be told to try something new...afterall its an MMORPG, not a Singleplayer RPG..." Its not the job of the playerbase to retain players. Its the job of the developer...simple as that!
It seems to me that once characters reach maximum level and cant progress any further, they get bored after doing just about everything and then just sit there to be convinced by the world around them that "ITS THEIR FAULT FOR BEING BORED TO DEATH" which is never fair...
but this is the world we are heading into... No one needs to take responsibility Everything is the fault of the weak
...and the ones who have fun today become the bored tomorrow. These games have to change for the better, and until people actually collectively learn how to fight against developers (trust me, there are many ways to fight.....) all will worsen, and nothing will change....
Whether quests are tedious is a matter of opinion. I happen to enjoy questing much more than running around bullying other players in PvP. Whether they are actively participating or not, it's still bullying. I'd rather be the hero.
Comments
Even deterministic has variables. No human being alive can do the same thing exactly the same over and over and over. That one "lucky shot" that KO'd the boxer is not 100% deterministic. Maybe the 12 previous head shots added to the chance? Rarely is it "hit here with this much force and instant KO." Lots of other factors many times factor into the mix.
There are times when I agree RNG makes no sense. When I played D&D and the DM made me roll to coup de grace an unconscious opponent, I was like "WTF? he's unconcious and prone." Combat, however, with 2 (or more) alive and moving opponents has so many "intangibles" that is is far from "100% deterministic." So how do programmers code these variables in?
PS: I know that RNG via computer is not true randomness.
VG
Western players have shown that they do want quests, because they're the least grindy option for MMORPGs.
Endgame's purpose isn't to avoid questing, but to provide grouping. I've already explained this.
Progression is one of the core pillars of an RPG. Removing the vast majority of incentive from a game is not going to cause a MMORPG to be more successful. Sure obviously one result of doing so is you'd only do things for your own reasons. But that's because the game itself would provide no reason to go do anything, and so as a result players wouldn't do anything (other than to uninstall the game and play something where their choices felt more meaningful.)
RPGs just aren't the right genre for removing progression.
As for leveling, if I've made the mistake of referring to "leveling" instead of "progression" then just reword it in your mind. Leveling isn't a core pillar, but progression is. And progression is most meaningful when big things unlock from it -- like unlocking entire new zones. So while leveling isn't the only way to gate a zone, it makes sense to gate the zone by progression because it places more meaning behind progression.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
The solution is game depth. So typically it's a designer (not a programmer) who adds depth to a game (though the specific way programmers implement things can have an influence on game depth.)
Specific examples include every single little mistake you make failing to perform a perfect combat rotation in a game like WOW. The multitude of game mechanics (including their subtleties) which caused those mistakes to be mistakes are the specific way you create depth, which in turn removes the need for randomness.
In a shallow game where you can easily perform a perfect rotation, there won't be variance, and that's a problem. While you can patch that up with RNG, the better solution is to implement deeper gameplay.
Creating game depth isn't an easy task, and is essentially one of the core skills of a game designer. You need to have a good sense of how to produce interesting decisions by setting up a bunch of interconnected game mechanics where mastering the game is difficult.
As for the 12 prior punches before the KO punch, that's what I meant by "state of the opponent". Every time you punched the opponent those 13 times in precisely the same way you would achieve a knockout. It wasn't luck. It was a serious of deterministic factors.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Nobody said removing progression. Removing leveling is not new to the RPG or MMORPG.
We have questing as progression because WOW has questing as progression and nearly the entire genre is a progression from WOW. Players will do whatever levels them the fastest. Make NPC the fastest route to end game and NPC will be ground to dust while quest eventually go unused.
Grind is relative to % of the level given in exp given per complete of activity... and personal taste. Just because EQ had a small percentage of exp given in slow combat doesn't mean game X couldn't give a high % of exp in fast combat killing MOBs. You just have a very narrow view of MMORPG progression.
The point of having a levelless game is that you can build the world in a way that makes sense and makes all areas relevant. You can still have unlocked areas that don't automatically make older areas irrelevant. If you ever played Zelda. Link was not getting vastly more powerful. He obtain items. Many times those items allowed you to go to knew areas and counted as progression for new powers.
We have questing because players do whatever progresses them the fastest, and if that happens to suck they're going to do the thing that sucks, be disappointed the game sucks, and leave. Fewer players leave when questing is the fastest way to level, because questing sucks less, because questing has more gameplay variety. Thus: we have a lot of games with questing (though not all of them have well-implemented questing.)
Grind isn't about the percentage of a level you gain per activity completion.
- Let's imagine an oldschool game where you level up every 10,000 mob kills and the max level is 60 (so you need to kill 600,000 mobs to reach max level.)
- Let's imagine a new game provides 100x as much XP, with 100x higher max level, but 1/100th as much power gain per level.
- Is the new game less grindy? You're leveling 100x as often! You only need 100 kills per level!
- Of course not. It's exactly as grindy as before. You still need 600,000 kills to reach max level. It's as repetitive as ever.
So the rate of leveling is irrelevant. What matters is how repetitive a game is. "Grind" describes too little gameplay variance relative to the amount of time required.All areas in modern MMORPGs are relevant. They all provide a new place to explore and to advance your character.
Zelda wasn't an RPG. It was an action-adventure game. Even Zelda 2 (with its levels that provided gameplay benefits) wasn't really an RPG, since the action-adventure elements were more pronounced.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Second paragraph - that's far from the only way to incentivize players. Try being more creative.
Third paragraph (list) - lets imagine a game where you invest a silly amount of hours each week to obtain minimal if any progression. It's called "endgame raiding/dailies" and it's grindy as all hell.
The rate of leveling is important to this because "endgame" is the apparent focus rather than providing a consistently interesting user experience regardless of level. Adding more levels, short-cutting the curve on the levels, and then compressing all the viable user activities into only a few options in the long run does a lot to marginalize the game world as well as enforce a very grind-centric type of gameplay.
All areas in modern MMORPGs are relevant? Rather unlikely given the habit of staying in a zone for a remarkably short amount of time before moving on or otherwise get skipped completely as the level curve and other game mechanics (dungeon instances for example) renders them meaningless.
As for the Zelda thing, that's a matter of opinion since it's been defined generally as either an action rpg or action adventure depending on the title in question. Given the example used was noting the use of item unlocks and stuff, it'd likely be one of the titles classed as an arpg, but you seem fond of applying labels as they suit your interest, and as side this is ultimately a point of opinion not a fact-based argument you initiated, so not really my point of interest. Only commenting on the matter as you just tried to paint your opinion as the reason to discredit the point Vermillion was making rather than producing a sound argument.
"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
There are plenty of open world games with very few gating of zones. Bethesda games are among the most popular and remove a lot of gated content by level scaling and open ended gaming choices. This is why MMO are starting to employ scaling characters. The only problem is the rewards don't scale.
That's simply untrue or at least unproven. Players haven't been given an option because grinding Mobs is highly unproductive or nets 0 gains in almost ever release since 2004. The questing is marginalized and many times skipped over. I don't think most players care how they level. Its all about the achievement. They will grind quest, mobs or pay for level increases.
Fine I concede its not all in the percentage. But my point was more that games like EQ's grind was a grind because of the small % per mob per level. Would you call taking 5 mobs per level a grind? Lets say it takes 10k mobs killed in EQ to level. Would it suddenly be not a grind if you had to kill 10k mobs through quest?
I would bet everything... if you have 30 quest to level that take 1 hour of running around, killing and collecting vs. 20 mobs to grind that takes 20-30 minutes. Players will pick the later. The later would be less grindy to a majority.
MMORPG are not a one shot deal. If I am max level player playing a MMORPG and 99% of the game world is now useless to me it has been marginalized. With todays MMORPG if I play for a month I will spend the vast majority of my game at end game repetition over the leveling journey though the game. If I am really impatient I may have just queued up dungeons repeatedly and bought exp pots to bypass the world leveling.
It doesn't matter. You can still gain progression within your character without level or vast power gains. You always make very narrow arguments to fit your viewpoint. Its like you put on blinders.
I can no longer read your posts. I'm disgusted.
Also, here's the lead designer of City of Heroes defining timesinks. His second sentence? "It is hoped that this time investment will translate into extended subscription, but if not handled properly, this can backfire spectacularly."
Games are more successful when they focus on being fun (games/themepark) than when they focus on being 'real' (simulations/sandbox).
Besides, feeling real doesn't require excessive waste of players' time. Do you feel movies are unbelievable when a character flies in a plane to another city and the entire 3-hour flight isn't portrayed in real-time? Or are you fine accepting the 3-second travel montage because it gets you immediately to the interesting parts? It's even worse in games, where you can't simply fast-forward the video or walk away from it during the pointlessly lengthy 3-hour travel scene. In a game you have to stay there performing the travel manually. It's about the least interesting gameplay a game can offer.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
It's extremely obvious the the vast majority of players that excessive repetition (grind-based games) is less interesting than gameplay variety (quest-based games.) Do you honestly believe this nonsense, or are you merely disagreeing for the sake of argument? It's sad that I have to even ask, but well...we're living in a world where Trump hasn't been instantly dismissed as an obviously unsuitable presidential candidate.
Players "don't care how they level" only in the sense that they will seek the most efficient path. If that path offers shitty gameplay, they'll quit the game. (Which is why they actually do care how they level, they just don't realize they care.)
Your claim that EQ was a grind because of how much XP you got is wrong. Did you kill 15 mobs then switch to a new area? I imagine if it was anything remotely like AO you would've killed a hundred mobs or more in the same area before moving on. That's excessive repetition. That's why it was a grind.
Killing 10k mobs through questing might be a grind. It would depend entirely on the amount of variety.
A very bad quest system would be "Quest 1: Kill 10k mobs" and would be just as much a grind as EQ.
But it's pointless to discuss a deliberately terrible implementation of questing. Instead, we point to the variety of the ideal form of questing like WOW's:
- Quest 1: kill 15 of Mob Type A.
- Quest 2: collect Item B.
- Quest 3: play this Plants vs. Zombies minigame.
- Quest 4: take control of Arthas and witness how he raised an army of undead to conquer the land.
- Quest 5: kill 15 of Mob Type B.
- etc.
So you wouldn't actually be comparing 10k kills to 10k kills. You'd be comparing 10k kills of ~50 mob types vs. 5k kills of ~150 mob types and a bunch of various non-combat gameplay activities which added up to the same amount of time. The latter, due to its vastly superior gameplay variety, would keep players playing longer because players despise excessive repetition. Again "grind" is a word which specifically describes a low amount of gameplay quality/variety relative to the amount of time required. Variety / Time. When two games require the same amount of time to reach max level, the one where you kill ~50 mob types is going to be considered way more grindy than the one where you kill ~150 mob types and do a lot of non-combat activities.Content is a one-shot deal. MMORPGs are content-driven games. As I've pointed out many many times in this thread: do you want to explore a new land of mystery, or do you want to re-hash some zone where you already know everything about it? There's really no contest. Normal players choose the new zone every time. So at endgame, they're sent to new zones and dungeons and raids, instead of being forced to go revisit places that are already too familiar.
The Zelda thing did matter, because we're discussing RPGs and it's not an RPG. If you want some other non-RPG game, that's fine (I enjoy all sorts of non-RPG games) but it's outside the context of our conversation.
Even if you pressed the Zelda thing: can you access the dungeon that requires the hookshot before you have the hookshot? Or would you agree that Zelda has progression-locked content?
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
That's not how grind works. If a game has objectively less variety then it has objectively more grind.
It's fine if you don't like something, but that doesn't mean it's a grind. Words don't work that way.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
For one, rather than addressing the core point of what was said (that the game mechanics focusing on grinding a small amount of content excessively, which is exactly what raids and dailies at endgame is, is not good practice), you have instead chosen to insert a false argument and attack it instead. IT's very simply dishonest of you.
Two, you just repeated basically what had been said about EQ, and ignored the pointit was making. EQ certainly was a grind, but the offset is that if you change the scaling of rewards to favor one method of play over another, then it becomes the least "grindy" method.
Three, your quest example is flawed for the simple case that you tossed a major quest event into a regular quest grind, which doesn't generally happen. Major story events and narrative quests only happen a few times in any given zone, and the in-between tends to be quite a lot of filler quests that for the most part lack in any consequence to even pay attention to.
Instead, we point to the reality of the standard form of questing like WOW's:
- Quest 1: kill 15 of Mob A.
- Quest 2: collect Item B.
- Quest 3: deliver item C do NPC.
- Quest 4: pick up 15 of object D.
- Quest 5: kill 15 of Mob B (same as Mob A but looks a bit different).
- and the cycle repeats.
Mini-game style quests, narrative quests, etc, might get tossed in there occasionally, but they are few and they are not a standard part of any quest rotation save for some dailies (in which case it becomes one of the few activities you are repeatedly playing any ways).Not to mention your still espousing a form of gameplay (with the focus on end-game) where players are repeatedly participating in a ridiculously finite set of activities as their only form of entertainment in the game. That type of gameplay is the poster-child for grind.
Four, content is fer far from one-shot. If it were only able to be consumed and enjoyed once then no game or media would have any sort of longevity. Beyond that, content has the capacity to stay relevant depending on other mechanics used by the games. GW2 may not be the best game, but the level scaling to the zones and the living story events that take place across a myriad of zones from high to low is an example of such where all those areas that you see don't lose their relevance when you level past their defined range, but instead can be visited or revisited at any time to experience the content it has to offer or special quest activities taking place, and doing so still bears meaning for player progress as well.
The Zelda thing is still you flapping an opinion about, not a factually driven statement. With persistence, character growth/progression, and narrative, Many Zelda titles past the first exist as a type of action RPG if you are going to be semantic about things.
"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
Like if you made the best raid in mmo history, but didn't put any loot in it, would people play it?
Once a player hits level cap the main form of progress become gear grinding.
"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
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been -Wayne Gretzky
None of it falls into the category of fun, or even enjoyable, they are necessary evils, ''chores" if you will that must be done to reach my goals. (just like real life I guess)
I am Phenomenal
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
When you complete your in-game goal while watching videos, your brain gets a 'hit' of dopamine. This is because you have crossed an item off a list. This might be described as fun - although it only lasts for a short while.
That's specifically why I addressed that all things equal most players would grind mobs because its more efficient than running errands. Even in a game like EQ people killed for their own reason if it was just easy, good loot, favored their class or whatever.
No, they quit when they run out of content. Most quest involve the two things you said players hate which is running and killing. Run and delivery and run and kill/retrieve quest are the greatest number in MMORPG.
No, people generally killed at places they liked the best and stuck to it unless they need something for an item or an item itself or solo vs. grouping. Maybe their class had an advantage. But the point your missing is that you could have the same amount of killing. How many unique mobs do you fight in each MMORPG? Most are just reskinned so your still killing the same NPCS over and over. Except you don't have much option outside of the quest.
Again the vast majority of quest come down to killing something or someone and picking crap off the ground.
A grind is a grind. 50 shades of killing is still killing. Again, most quest are not special. A large majority are simple task involving killing, delivery or retrieving. Text does not make a kill quest different. Its not a bad thing because it what players like the most I content.
You're ignoring the fact that many players skip the world with queues for dungeons, overleveling experience, potions/rest and other things that an average player will spend a little while leveling and quit or spend the vast majority of their game in the same end game areas. World content(the world itself) shouldn't be one shot. Look at Skyrim. You revisit the same towns and areas but quest may lead you to a sewer or you need to talk to an NPC there.
But you're not addressing how seeing the same end game zones is better than seeing a variety of zones unplayed through a mature servers world. I think developers disagree which is why we have deleveling becoming more popular.
Again, you're making your own conclusion and arguing it as fact. Zelda is a debated as RPG, action rpg or action adventure. And the context I was bring was that we had games where you had locked content and open free world all at the same time. Not Zelda the game itself. This is why Skyrim is popular because its free form. It still has levels but has level scaling making all content relevant. You can't scale to one character in MMORPG though.
Is there a reward for killing those 10 monsters attacking the village? No? Well then nobody is actually going to do that and your example wouldn't happen.
So players aren't killing the 10 monsters attacking the village, they're over repetitively killing the same ~3 mob types in the farm part of the zone.
So again: objectively less variety.
Or if there actually was a reward for killing those 10 monsters, then that's a quest system. Because a quest system that's called "missions" or "quests" or "world events" or "bounties" is still a quest system.
But since we're describing actual grind games vs. actual quest games, there wasn't a reward for variety and the actual reality is less variety.
The above explanation is logical. It describes game systems and how they motivate players, and points out that without motivation towards variety players don't experience variety. Pretending like what I'm saying isn't logical is, in fact, illogical.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Designers always controlled the rate you level. That's not really relevant here, we're just discussing how much variety they require of players (and as we've covered many times: without requiring variety players will choose repetition, and when a game is repetitive players players will then choose a different game.)
Er, right players will quit when they run out of content. That's true. Contrast with a grind-based game where they'll quit much earlier than that because they're bored of the excessive repetition.
The point you're missing is that grind isn't just about the time something takes. "The same amount of killing" is irrelevant. The amount of variety to that killing is what matters. (And also the fact that in a quest-based game you're going to be doing a lot more non-killing things.) Don't you see that it's objectively shallower to have a game where you just pick the mob types your class kills best and only kill those mobs, than a game where you're forced to continually adapt to a variety of situations?
50 shades of killing is variety. Variety makes things less grindy. Again, "grind" is a poor variety / time ratio. (Which is why grind isn't just about the time something takes.) Players hate grind, and they enjoy variety. These are not complicated concepts to understand, why are you acting as though excessive repetition is what players want? Surely you don't actually believe that.
Why do you feel things like rested XP even matter? It's most important for a player's first character to have a satisfying, varied questing experience. But it's still beneficial if he misses some things and there is still even more variety to experience on subsequent characters. It's not as important, but it's still valuable.
As for Skyrim, I quit the game after doing ~85% of the game's static content (though the bigger factor was that stealth had utterly broken the game's challenge at that point.) Any repeat visits to the same towns you'd been to before were more or less the same as you'd experience in any quest-based MMORPG. (I was sent back to Orgrimmar for a quest for like the 200th time today.) After I fully completed the dungeons in one area of Skyrim I did not return to those areas because there was no reason to return. So the way you're describing Skyrim isn't really different from quest-based games; in fact their content is generally set up so you can't just sit in an area and grind to advance (which goes back to the "a quest by any other name is still a quest" point I made in the post before this one.)
You can scale to one character in a MMORPG, but if done too much it makes progression pointless. For example, my non-maxed characters can go back and do WOW's timewalking dungeons, because everyone is restored back to the appropriate level when doing them. Just like GW2's zones work. But if too much of the game works that way, it undermines the importance of progression (which isn't automatically a problem -- it was great in CoH -- but it definitely erodes some of the RPG qualities of 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
Here are my examples:
Guild Wars 2: Sure, I liked this game.... until my favorite class (Elementalist) I felt got nerfed to the ground. What did the community do? They said "Deal with it and play a different class" and even having different characters leveled up to 80, the fun was sucked out of it for me and I left....
Final Fantasy XIV: I loved the graphics and story. Went through Heavensward...but when Crafting was made almost irrelevant and I was in the mid 50s (all crafting professions) and found most guilds do not even play together... I started to get super bored at the lack of endgame..... The community said "Oh level another class and it won't be boring anymore" and I said "I am a white mage and I don't need to be anything else" (except getting the cross-class skills)...
Phantasy Star Online 2 (JP_ver. w/ English Patch) : This game is a hybrid between a WAIFU simulator (each race has at least 200 - 300 different fashions and accessories) and action oriented with an RPG interface action like PSO1. Another game where most people solo, few people play together. Even with the max team size of 100, seldom would you see a guild actually run an EQ (Emergency Quest...call them events) as a guild without almost every player pugging it out. The honor mention to this is that one can play in 15 - 30 minute blocks and get things done if time management exists. However, when I got bored.....people told me "try a different class" and I said "I've tried them all and the ones I have are my favorite.....and I have five characters too"
The Secret World: This game was good, but I found its lack of community very dishearteningly tragic. Most of the game was solo until one hit instances in which it was just boss after boss with some mechanic to overcome or everyone dies. I simply wondered about it.......then I joined cabal after cabal and found people have a problem actually communicating or talking. In fact I saw more local chat than Guild Chat in that game. Once again I was set in my ways and the suggestion given to me after feeling bored was "Oh try another setup"
TERA: Ok, so I played that game back when everyone told me that Mystic would be tough. I capped Mystic casually in 21 days and found it was such an easy, but fun class to play. I remember actually mapping 30 - 40 commands to the left side of my keyboard. I liked the High Elves. I started to feel bored, and the community there said "Hey, maybe you should try something new" and im like "I like being a mystic and don't want to be anything else!"
So here I have covered at least an F2P, B2P and P2P game....and they all have the same problems... In fact I can draw so many other examples....
I will make an honor mention below:
Guild Wars 1: This game was intended for MAX LEVEL 20 characters, and the focus was more on what a player did with their build and their eight skills... For better or for worse, I had tons of fun at being max level and not being a "God" or "Goddess" super-character, and being able to survive based on actual strategy, and each class did play differently. While the art-style is better in Guild Wars 2, I am one of those players who sees Guild Wars 1 as a much better game than Guild Wars 2 in terms of what I liked. Even today, there are still way more builds for each class in GW1 than what existed in GW2. However, after leveling all the classes to 20 and spending 1000s of hours on elementalist, I said "oh this feels boring" and the community said "Oh you should try something new"
Do you see the pattern here?
Do you see how players are bored as hell, but do not want players to leave the game and offer the same advice to me regardless the model or form the game takes?
I can blame companies as well, but I can also blame the playerbase too on the part that the business model takes the form in which money is generated for a company. MMOs are made to generate money for a company. Simple as that... and with so many MMOs becoming games that can be soloed, it makes me wonder what is greater? An MMORPG, or a SINGLE PLAYER RPG?
Also, it doesn't help the dishonesty that the playerbase has towards each other. They are willing to lie to their teeth to each other to retain people in the game on a far greater scale throwing anything they can think off down my throat rather than being honest and actually saying "Yes, you actually are right....if this is going to be a long-term game, you should be able to enjoy playing your class for a few thousand hours over a long period of time and not hope to be told to try something new...afterall its an MMORPG, not a Singleplayer RPG..." Its not the job of the playerbase to retain players. Its the job of the developer...simple as that!
It seems to me that once characters reach maximum level and cant progress any further, they get bored after doing just about everything and then just sit there to be convinced by the world around them that "ITS THEIR FAULT FOR BEING BORED TO DEATH" which is never fair...
but this is the world we are heading into...
No one needs to take responsibility
Everything is the fault of the weak
...and the ones who have fun today become the bored tomorrow.
These games have to change for the better, and until people actually collectively learn how to fight against developers (trust me, there are many ways to fight.....) all will worsen, and nothing will change....