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So everybody hates grinding...
Joesmoe
Member Posts: 17
I know that most people don't enjoy grinding out level after level online. Sure, you all enjoy the fruits of your labor, but really, the grinding out of a level is the least fun part.
Now, what if you take that part of the game out by giving people a huge advantage over the large majority of the enviroment (as in PvE).
Now, before you say "noob, get some work ethic", hear the second part.
The multiple "advanced classes" endowed with more money, equipment, and mabye some cronies would have an advantage in the short run, but for the entire game would be forced into their one profession by whatever "family" they chose to join (i.e., raised by till the age of 18).
The second class would be the citizens, normal people who went to school until they were 18 (or whatever age of majority you chose)and then went out into the world to learn a trade. Now, they would have only limited resources at the beggining, but for their entire carreer would have more options open (like working as a mercenary, which a normal clansman would not be able to do due to family ties).
This whole system would rely on a object instead of skill based system. Either you get twinked with limited options, or you work your way up with limited resources. Thus, certain actual skills, like accuracy, running speed, or strength would be affected, but the damage you do with a gun would not be. Skills are gained by practicing whatever skill you want (the "pistol accuracy" or "rifle draw" skill would be improved by hitting anything with your pistol or practicing drawing your rifle over and over again). The rifle draw skill won't let a pro win over a newb, but in the right circumstances it could come in handy if you could draw your weapon and pop the other guy before he has his out of the holster... naturally, this would lead to more of a twitched based system, which in all aspects is pretty cool for a traditional mmorpg. Putting in pvp like EVE (you can shoot anyone you like, but you might get wasted by cops) allows people with numbers (or just one, if their lucky) to take out anybody. Really adds to the game when you can't just level up and own anybody in a open pvp enviroment.
Moving on: The reason you play an mmorpg is to interact with people in a persisten enviroment. This adds the interaction from the beggining and not simply a line of quests that you complete in order to gain levels and then go on raids with. Playing as a clansmen would put you right into the game with better resources, but a citizen (due to the object based system) could also wip out a pistola in a fight and deal out as much damage as the warrior/aristocrat on the other end of the gang fight.
In short, I really dont see why people are so opposed to more emphasis on objects instead of skills...
Comments
I don't mind grinding provided there's enough diversity in the targets to keep it fresh.
It's nice to see anyone attempt to come up with new ideas, after bringing attention to a problem. (And not leave it at just complaining about the problem.)
You need to give more examples of this idea you have. And more details. Joe buys your game, he gets to the login screen. What does he see next? What is the character creator like? What skills would he be able to manipulate at character creation?
When Joe enters the game, will he see his character info showing a level? What will he see on his character info screen after he enters the game?
What if Joe likes crafting instead... how would crafting work with your idea? Joe wants to make swords, how would that work?
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
...but that's just me...
When I played AO I never did quests till I was trying to build the Stiletto, just grinded Mobs randomly as I ran around the world... it was mad fun.
- CaesarsGhost
Lead Gameplay and Gameworld Designer for a yet unnamed MMO Title.
"When people tell me designing a game is easy, I try to get them to design a board game. Most people don't last 5 minutes, the rest rarely last more then a day. The final few realize it's neither fun nor easy."
Nah, i find grinding actually relaxin. But if u need grin with big rest times and kill same mosters 6 day to get 1 lvl, its boring and shitty then.
Mainly mean it Lineage2:p
It's nice to see anyone attempt to come up with new ideas, after bringing attention to a problem. (And not leave it at just complaining about the problem.)
You need to give more examples of this idea you have. And more details. Joe buys your game, he gets to the login screen. What does he see next? What is the character creator like? What skills would he be able to manipulate at character creation?
When Joe enters the game, will he see his character info showing a level? What will he see on his character info screen after he enters the game?
What if Joe likes crafting instead... how would crafting work with your idea? Joe wants to make swords, how would that work?
um... look at UO and project entropia.
could we please get correspondent writers and moderators, on the eve forum at mmorpg.com, who are well-versed on eve-online and aren't just passersby pushing buttons? pretty please?
By this I mean, if you plan on being a successful crafter, then grinding is a necessary "evil" of the trade...
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
John Lennon
It doesnt seem that the majority of people care about grind. Then again it could be the lack of something different. The real issue is that for the most part few things that go outside the boundaries of MMO tend to fail or are done in such a horrible way that in the long run it makes people believe that different isnt going to be any better. At the same time what people consider grind is subjective.
I played L2 for 2 yrs, i admit the lving in the game is painful but i barely noticed it due to the fun i was having. My friend tried it but he thought it was down right boring to grind for 5 hours and only get 20% to the next lv. He liked to play WoW instead and always tells me that WoW has no grind (he considers grind simply killing mobs w/o a quest system btw), yet as i watch him play WoW for about an hour i saw no difference besides the xp amount given per mob (between l2 and wow xp tables). All i saw was him doing a bazillion quests and he was happy, in my eyes it seemed like another mode of grind, the quests after all sent him to kill X amount of mobs and such. He pretty much said that the quests were varied enough to let him have fun...in the end thats what it came down to it what he and I considered "fun".
On the other hand games like EvE dont have a lv grind, but ofc if your a mission runners you will be farming mission after mission to get isk (imo another form of grind), the same could be said about complexes and mining, in effect EvE gets rid of lving grind to replace it with isk grinds. I for one dont really care, afterall i feel like a game has to give you something to work for. At the end of the day i dont feel like im grinding when i play EvE and thats what matters. I for one dont care if i grind or not as long as i know that at the end there will be a purpose to what i am doing. If i am going to hit max lv and have the best gear i better damn have some use to it.
I sometimes enjoy grinding, actually.
The term "grinding" is used a lot of different ways but it seems to:
1. negative
2. a repetitive task
3. a method of character progression
Every game mechanic ever designed for the purposes of enabling characters to progress and gain more power will eventually be thought of as grinding once a player has experienced it enough.
Put simply the very first MMO you played probably forced you to fight monsters for hours and hours. This was new to you and exciting; it only became "grinding" when you started to view the activity as boring.
The same can be said for questing in WoW. No one really grinds mobs directly in WoW instead they grind quests, or they grind raid instance, etc. The more MMOs you play the more they all feel like grinding to you because you've already performed similar tasks hundreds of times before in other games.
So the task here is to design new forms of character advancement for players to use. But knowing full well that anything you design will ultimately be viewed as boring and "grinding" once a player has done it 10,000 times.
Character advancement systems should probably follow a few simple rules to make the system last as long as possible without becoming boring and overly repetitive.
1. Time between rewards should be short
- You play a game to have fun. So I think the time between rewards should not be overly lengthly because players will get bored. You don't want it to be extremely easy though. Most game do things like double the XP needed for the next level. This creates huge gaps between character advancement at later levels and can really make it apparent to the player that the game is a "grind".
2. Rewards should be meaningful and desired
- Nothing is worse then grinding through a level to get a skill that does nothing for you. Same goes for items you can't use or wouldn't use because they are underpowered/poorly designed.
3. It should not be obvious to the player they are grinding
- Clearly this is the real trick. A good example of this is WoW's questing system. Most people don't view it as a grind even though it is to others.
I would add that I think one reason why the MMOFPS model has not been tried all that much is that it is very hard to keep players engaged if there isn't character progression, and without keeping players engaged there is no reason for them to pay to play the game. I mean, there are already plenty of FPS games that people can easily play online with other people for free, from CS to Halo to the BF series of games and on and on. Some of them even offer soft forms of character progression (as in the BF series) -- but all of them are, of course, focused on the player's manual twitch-type skills (reflexes and fine motor muscle control). I just don't see milions of people paying to play an MMOFPS when they can play BF online for free. It's a market that doesn't really exist, i think, on a P2P basis.
The End
All canceled. Waiting on Warhammer Online : Age of Reckoning.
the grinds that exist on most new mmorpgs are like living in real life. you put 70 hours at work a week so u can buy a fancy car, so u can show it off and feel good about yourself. 5 minutes later you are looking for something new.
basically you are spending time to achieve something uselesss and u get no real satisfaction in the end.
supreme majority of the designers behind those mmorpgs are part of a flawed society that has a false way of life. Its only natural their work to be flawed.
Humans want freedom. Modern life has taken away quite a bit of it. MMORPGs follows this trend too, they have taken your in game freedom.
in UO you could be free, thats why the game was good.