It's an open ended question. The only rule is to not mention subscription at all.
No MMO has a grind. If someone is doing stuff that they consider a grind in their leisure activity then they're an idiot or a masochist. If they are doing things they enjoy and they call it a grind, that doesn't mean the game has a grind, it means the person is just repeating words he heard on the interweb.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein "Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
See my sig. As said, grind is a state of mind. That said, some activities are more widely despied than others.
No other game genre comes remotely close to this genre when it comes to making people do shit they don't like to do. You don't spend the first few stages of Call of Duty just gathering ammunition. The first few opponents of Street Fighter weren't punching bags.
If nothing else, I guess it's a good thing that there's so much hype about some upcoming games and their attempts to remove the grind. Successful or not, at least the interest is telling.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs: That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Spending 8hrs a day for a week killing the same worthless mobs so you can get a level move up the field 100ft get a new quest then camp there for a week...untill endgame...which was nothing. The reason you had to do this was because the 1 or two quests per level got you mabey 10% a level...and there was nothing else to do.
then grinding became any form of "obstical" between level 1 and endgame hampsterwheels of instanced pvp and raids for gear tokens...this included questing, pvp, anything you had to do more than 5 times (give or take)
now grinding is not recieving a full raid and pvp set within 45min of haracter creation.
Does the future hold promises of removing the character creation and naming grind is my question???
Its really gotten to the point to where i cannot wait for a game to come out with no levels no grind...just a third person shooter/melee deathmatch game...so the mass of players who want this can move on and we can start getting real mmorpgs developed again.
Spending 8hrs a day for a week killing the same worthless mobs so you can get a level move up the field 100ft get a new quest then camp there for a week...untill endgame...which was nothing. The reason you had to do this was because the 1 or two quests per level got you mabey 10% a level...and there was nothing else to do.
then grinding became any form of "obstical" between level 1 and endgame hampsterwheels of instanced pvp and raids for gear tokens...this included questing, pvp, anything you had to do more than 5 times (give or take)
now grinding is not recieving a full raid and pvp set within 45min of haracter creation.
Does the future hold promises of removing the character creation and naming grind is my question???
Its really gotten to the point to where i cannot wait for a game to come out with no levels no grind...just a third person shooter/melee deathmatch game...so the mass of players who want this can move on and we can start getting real mmorpgs developed again.
"Grind" only means "major repetition of a task/mission". This is why spending a lot of time killing the same mob over and over again, is a grind. Same can be said for repeating similar quests over and over again.
I don't think MMORPGs will ever get rid of the grind. The amount of money per ingame hour in the budget, is simply too low to allow enough variation to remove the grind.
op, I think it comes down to 2 separate questions.
does a game need grind to qualify as an mmo?
of course not. most people think this, but most people are stupid. I play shooters on modded servers up to 200 players which is more concurrent players than you see in most "mmos", and so are more massively multiplayer. For instance go look at an mmo that just came out on steam RotMG, its up to 85 players. my point is not that these shooters are mmo's per see, but that the term itself is constantly misused, to mean "a game like wow etc." not simply a massively multiplayer online game.
does a game need grind to retain p2p subscriptions?
probably. althought I think its not completely impossible to make a game that people will pay to play without repetitve grind, developers will always choose the quicker, simpler, easier route and add grind. grind is simply a cheat for lazy developers to make less content. its irrellivant that some people enjoy grind, some people enjoy cutting themselves. its no coincidence grind is pretty much non existant in buy to play games. the longer people play your game the more profitable your game is with a pay to play model and also with other mmo models like buy to win.
Note that the progression required, itself, is not necessarily vertical progression, power, superiority over others quantified by game mechanics.
If the player plays as a character. That character must be able to progress.
If the character lives in a world. That world must be able to be changed, evolve, progress.
A defining characteristinc of a MMORPG is that both the characters and the world must be organic. Players alone, interacting with each other and the world must provide a way to PROGRESS and Evolve.
It is not a static world, character or experience. Unless the specific setting or context structures itself and justify that as an exception to the rule.
Grind itself IS NOT a substract of the genre. Its not a feature. Its not gameplay.
Grind is just a bad design side effect of an intended effect: adding massiveness to the chronologic element of a MMORPG in the cheapest possible way. Like copy pasting, or printing copies of something and slightly changing them with a pen, except its done in a procedurally generated way.
In a sense, one could argue that grind gets confused with progression and thus mistakenly is seen as a staple/necessary characteristic of the genre. Wich is a false assumption.
Through the years, the essence diluted, the meaning was changed. Some of us still can track back to the roots of design philosophies of MMORPGs.
good post interesting, I think I agree. I would say progression is a defining feature the rpg genre and so by extention mmorpgs, but not all mmos.
remember you can have progression of things over than a characters stats or weapons, for instance in h&h alot of progression is of the quality of your tools and your seeds, crops and food. this sort of progression I find alot more fun and interesting than simply leveling up.
I played ragnarok online and it never felt like a grind. And people tend to consider that one of the grindiest games ever o.o
I was doing stuff and having fun while I was at it. The moment it becomes a grind is when you focus on the carrot more than the here.
I think you make a strong point here. Hmm, I'm wondering what it would be like to take away most carrots. Game makers would be forced to make the content interesting, instead of just putting a nice reward at the end, and making repetitive content the way to get it. As it stands in many games, people would not play them without the carrot.
Is it possible to completely remove the "carrot"? Probably not, but trying to minimize it might help with removing perceived grind. I think, at the very least, taking the dungeon and raid grind for gear out of MMOs, or at least reduce it significantly would greatly help with the endgame grind.
That's exactly my point. It just goes to show that grinding is only there to get in the way of having fun. Why not make the carrot the entirety of the game, that way people enjoy the game the entire time, instead of getting burnt out on the grind before they even get to the carrot.
Even if developing content to please people will be hard, at least people will leave the game with a good taste in their mouth and will be back when more content is released.
Grinding is when you have to do something that you wouldn't otherwise even consider doing in order to get access to the content that you want.
By that definition, no, MMORPGs don't need grinding. But it is easier to add than real content, so a lot of games put stupid stuff in to slow you down, so that it takes more time to play through the real content before you decide that you've done everything worth doing and quit. Or if you're more clever, you realize that the game has too much grinding early on and quit before doing all of the content, or perhaps even don't pick up the game in the first place.
Exactly! That's the point where I'm at right now. I feel like a veil has been taken away from my eyes, or like Neo looking at all the people running around oblivious in the Matrix. People are just hamsters running on the hamster real for no real purpose, aside from getting the best gear, which really serves no purpose.
Games by definition insinuates a challenge and a problem to be solved. MMORPG's are not challenging and the problems they present can be solved by those with very low intelligence. So the sake of playing it just to play it isn't enough. You need something like RvR or something else that is self-sustaining, random, and dynamic to provide a real purpose to playing the game.
People may come on here and say "having fun" is the purpose of playing a game, but how many here find grinding quest hubs fun? That's the majority of the game. The rest of the game has absolutely nothing to do with the majority of the game, such as group/raid content and pvp. The majority of the game is just there for you to grind on.
That's why I'm out of the genre for now. I took a break for 1 year before SWTOR came out, and I won't play another MMORPG until things are different and mostly new. TSW looks like it'll offer that, so I'll probably pick that up on day 1. GW2, however, looks like only a slightly evolved themepark with a suped up puclic quest system, so I want to wait to hear how people think about that game after the newness wears off. At least it doesn't require a subscription.
One could say that Skyrim was about grinding - the only way to lvl combat skills was to grind combat. However the way they presented this was very well done. At no time did I ever feel like I was grinding for the sake of grinding. All through the grinding I was having FUN because it never told me to kill 10 bandits in a badit cave. There was never a progress bar to tell me how deep into the rabbit hole I would have to go before finding out the end only has a trasure chest.
The game allowed me to grind in whatever fashion i deemed fun and let me do so without limiting myself from the rest of the game. Most people may never reach skill 100 for combat but for those that did it was never really a chore.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
MMO's need choices and if you can not make the progression fun then make it quick or you will not make a subscriber out of me.
You could even make the progression more like a tutorial for end game which is more what lvling should be like, imo.
That's pretty much what the majority of a game is since WoW came out, a tutorial for end game. In pre-WoW games, what you did while leveling up prepared you for what you would do at max level, but it also offered you a "lite" version of what you'd have at max level. For example, in DAoC you will spend several months leveling up just one character, but you do this in a group. You don't just level up by grinding on mobs in dungeons or in the open world, you also level up in the battlegrounds, which are persistent mini-versions of the max level RvR. They're open zones with castles and towers to be sieged and defended and once taken, they stay that way until someone else takes them. By the time your character reaches max level, you're intimately familiar with how your class works in a group, the ins and outs of other classes, and you know pretty much everything you need to know about the game. DAoC players were experts in not only their class, but all classes, because you spent several months leveling up with the other classes and know exactly what they're capable of and how they all complment your class. A DAoC player could make the best out of any group combination and likely succeed in whatever they were after, unlike in post-WoW games where people won't even attempt group content without a "perfect" group setup. The game starts at level 1 in those games, not at max level. Max level gameplay only improves upon what you were already doing for the past several months to over a year.
In games since WoW, you spend the majority of your time soloing quests found in quest hubs around the globe, which leads you by the nose through every zone to ensure you see every part of the world worth seeing. There are group instances along the way, but not enough to provide enough variety to grind on them solely without getting bored. BG's are there to mix things up, but they're instanced and are just CTF kind of FPS game matches. At max level, things change drastically for PvE'ers, and for PvPers the only reason to PvP is for gear. Not like in DAoC, where you PvPed to literally protect your realms castles and relics, which provided bonuses for you realm.
Only Sub games need grinding because they need to keep you in the game.
I don't even think sub games need grinds just fun mechanics.
Exactly, if a game is fun, people will stick with it anyways. Just look at the COD and BF 3 following. People play multi-player in those games until the next one comes out, so for months/years, and you're playing through the same maps everytime.
Note that the progression required, itself, is not necessarily vertical progression, power, superiority over others quantified by game mechanics.
If the player plays as a character. That character must be able to progress.
If the character lives in a world. That world must be able to be changed, evolve, progress.
A defining characteristinc of a MMORPG is that both the characters and the world must be organic. Players alone, interacting with each other and the world must provide a way to PROGRESS and Evolve.
It is not a static world, character or experience. Unless the specific setting or context structures itself and justify that as an exception to the rule.
Grind itself IS NOT a substract of the genre. Its not a feature. Its not gameplay.
Grind is just a bad design side effect of an intended effect: adding massiveness to the chronologic element of a MMORPG in the cheapest possible way. Like copy pasting, or printing copies of something and slightly changing them with a pen, except its done in a procedurally generated way.
In a sense, one could argue that grind gets confused with progression and thus mistakenly is seen as a staple/necessary characteristic of the genre. Wich is a false assumption.
Through the years, the essence diluted, the meaning was changed. Some of us still can track back to the roots of design philosophies of MMORPGs.
This is a lot how I feel, too. Progression is an important element of most games. The only time you don't need progression of some sort or another, is when you have a PvP game that manages to hook people via competition - and that just isn't for everyone. You don't see PvE games without progression.
MMOs have to focus the progression on your character, because they can't just feed you a finite story to get through. They need to give you something else to strive for. but, it doesn't have to be the same old level-up formula. It can be just about anything, as long as the player has some sort of goal that gets them coming back to the game, day after day.
The idea that the game just has to be fun sounds great, but really, it's a little more complicated that that. Fun gets old surprisingly fast when it doesn't go anywhere.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Note that the progression required, itself, is not necessarily vertical progression, power, superiority over others quantified by game mechanics.
If the player plays as a character. That character must be able to progress.
If the character lives in a world. That world must be able to be changed, evolve, progress.
A defining characteristinc of a MMORPG is that both the characters and the world must be organic. Players alone, interacting with each other and the world must provide a way to PROGRESS and Evolve.
It is not a static world, character or experience. Unless the specific setting or context structures itself and justify that as an exception to the rule.
Grind itself IS NOT a substract of the genre. Its not a feature. Its not gameplay.
Grind is just a bad design side effect of an intended effect: adding massiveness to the chronologic element of a MMORPG in the cheapest possible way. Like copy pasting, or printing copies of something and slightly changing them with a pen, except its done in a procedurally generated way.
In a sense, one could argue that grind gets confused with progression and thus mistakenly is seen as a staple/necessary characteristic of the genre. Wich is a false assumption.
Through the years, the essence diluted, the meaning was changed. Some of us still can track back to the roots of design philosophies of MMORPGs.
This is a lot how I feel, too. Progression is an important element of most games. The only time you don't need progression of some sort or another, is when you have a PvP game that manages to hook people via competition - and that just isn't for everyone. You don't see PvE games without progression.
MMOs have to focus the progression on your character, because they can't just feed you a finite story to get through. They need to give you something else to strive for. but, it doesn't have to be the same old level-up formula. It can be just about anything, as long as the player has some sort of goal that gets them coming back to the game, day after day.
The idea that the game just has to be fun sounds great, but really, it's a little more complicated that that. Fun gets old surprisingly fast when it doesn't go anywhere.
Story is a form of progression that gets people hooked and wanting to know what happens next, but for a MMORPG to have story-based progression, it needs to be able to be experienced as a group and honestly should be only be able to experienced as a group.
A good example of story-based progression is LoTRO's Books/Chapters and the first Final Fantasy. However, both games had a filler "grind" to waste time until you were of level for the next part of the story. Take away this grind and you have a much shorter game, but lets admit it, most people aren't sticking around past the first month anyways. At least with a Story-based progression game without the filler stuff, people are likely to subscribe for a month to see the next part of the story rather than never subscribing again. To be honest, a story-based progression game is probably better suited for a Co-Op game.
What about dungeon progression games? The whole goal would be to complete dungeons, which would be challenging, since there'd not only be hard monsters with varying mechanics to figure out, but also traps, hidden doors, and puzzles to solve. To reach the next dungeon, you need to complete the first. DDO works like this sort of and it's a fun game.
I think the only way to keep a MMORPG fun while retaining subscribers, without a grind, is to have a MMORPG where you can build a virtual life in it. So it'd need to mimic reality a lot more than mimicking a SPG. You'd need a large open world with plenty of places to explore, a player ran economy with a need for hunters, gathers, treasure hunters, crafters, and warriors, important resources to control and fight over, player built cities and castles that can be sieged, and a political system. A tall order to be sure, but who wouldn't want to stick around in a game like that? It sounds like a development challenge, but after the game is made, developers would need to spend less money to maintain and update it than those that create games based around doing quests and raids, because living in a virtual world provides self-sustaining content that takes a long time to get old. If developers did this, they'd really only need to refine the game, polish it, and provide life events. Create an epic world quest every month that draws you in, where the outcome ultimately changes the world. Blizzard did a good job of these events that led up to the next expansions.
Grind is a state of mind, there is no way to to avoid it, conversely it is entirely possible that it doesn't actually exist. Thats the thing about state of mind - it's subjective.
Gind - a monotonous and routine task. Last part is objective, first part is subjective. Because it it part subjective every game, or no game will have grind, depending on your state of mind.
Venge
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it is bad.
The question of the OP shouldn't be 'Do MMORPG's need a grind?', but
'Do MMORPG's need to have content that'll keep players entertained/busy for more than 200-400 hours?'
If the answer is 'yes', since MMO gamers often expect to spend more gameplay time in an MMO than a singleplayer game, then the MMO devs automatically have to resort to repetitive content, since it requires huge resources and time to have produced more than a few hundred hours of unique content. To keep players still entertained past that point means that the devs need to implement mechanics and features that are repetitive in nature.
Now, if those repetitive features are regarded as a grind or not depends on the individual MMO gamer: for example, mob grinding wasn't regarded as a grind in the early years of EQ, AC, etc, to most it was fun and part of the leveling/progression process. Only having done that for a few years and after hundreds to thousands of hours did it became a 'grind', or a mindnumbing non-fun exercise to many. Same for quest leveling and raiding, those weren't regarded as a grind at all even if the core mechanics remained the same, in the beginning those were treated as a fun activity and a welcome change of the mob grind. Same here, only after hundreds to thousands of gameplay hours did those mechanics become too much same old and not much fun anymore to many.
Same features, same mechanics, same development: in the beginning they're fun and entertaining despite their repetitive nature, only after hundreds to thousands of hours they devolve into becoming 'same old' and not fun anymore, in short a grind.
PvE suffers this harder than PvP, because PvP has the added element of human contribution to it, which can deliver randomness to the activity. That's why people can enjoy multiplayer shooters for a longer period of time than activities where other people's contribution is less present. But even there it's the same: I know quite a few shooter gamers who after years of playing MP shooters intensively noticed that it just didn't do it for them anymore. Having to be present at clan activities and games became a grind.
tldr: In short, people expect their MMO's to deliver far more hours of gameplay than singleplayer games, which means that game companies to resort to repetitive action features to extend the gameplay entertainment beyond the 100-300 hours of unique content that they may be able to deliver. Whether such repetitive activities are considered a grind (= a repetitive activity that's boring/mindnumbing) differs per person and the mileage they have. Each activity can feel a grind especially after having experienced that activity or a sortlike one for hundreds to thousands of hours, however some activities are more prone to become a grind than others. Activities that have a randomness or unpredictability to them or that are so challenging that they'll require your full attention will have a longer lifespan of being fun and not a grind as those that aren't like that. The same applies to activities that make a better use of human influence and contribution (randomness, challenge, added variation) included in the entertainment the activity provides.
To insinuate that people 'need' a grind in their game is also silly.
Somewhere between the concept of a 'time sink' and a 'grind' is pacing and repetition, and these terms should be suitable for the OP's inquiry into game design I would say.
Yes, games ought to not only have 'pacing', but to have good pacing. 'Repetition' seem unavoidable, given the shitty state of the game industry where truly deep and feature rich game mechanics are surely noneexistent, but 'repetition' can also provide familiar and necessary routines of abstraction for the gamer and is another aspect of pacing in a game.
MMORPG does not need grind. Companys on the other hand need it. Either to prolong subs or to sell items that shorten grind in a f2p model.
If you don't want money you can take out the grind. Private Servers often do it and still sustain a active playerbase. It's of course not something for the mass market.
What about dungeon progression games? The whole goal would be to complete dungeons, which would be challenging, since there'd not only be hard monsters with varying mechanics to figure out, but also traps, hidden doors, and puzzles to solve. To reach the next dungeon, you need to complete the first. DDO works like this sort of and it's a fun game.
I think dungeons only work, if there's something about completing them that feels rewarding to the player. Doesn't necessarily mean loot, but there needs to be something compelling about getting through it, some kind of reward or sense of accomplishing something. Something more than just getting through a maze, that didn't even have a piece of cheese at the end.
If that gets too repetitive, it'll feel like a grind. If it isn't rewarding enough, it'll only be fun until the player starts to feel like there's no point to it, and that can happen more quickly for some than others.
I think its amazing that randomization hasn't been utilized more, to drag content out for as long as possible. I realize it still gets repetitive, and could still end up feeling grindy, but I think less so, the more unpredictable it gets. From the dungeon layout, to the loot you get, and even what mobs you'll encounter and how hard they'll be. I don't get why devs are such control freaks these days.
Balance as the most important factor of the MMO experience is one thing that's kiling the genre, IMHO. Makes everything predictable and grindy, in a way, because you always know exactly what to expect, when its always going to be balanced.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
It's an open ended question. The only rule is to not mention subscription at all.
In my opinion, a MMORPG doesn't need a grind. Whether it be mob grinding or quest grinding, it's just not needed. Just because it's a staple of RPG's to have character advancement, that doesn't mean you need to grind for it. Who here really enjoys running from quest hub to quest hub grabbing and doing menial chores for NPC's? Who here really enjoys grinding on mobs for hours for xp?
It'd be nice to just log in and take part in whatever activity you enjoy doing. Ideally, if you're doing what you enjoy doing right out of the gate, then you'd not likely realize how long it's taking to advance to the next level.
Perhaps GW2 and TSW will solve this dillema. Maybe by making the content challenging (TSW) or random and unexpected (GW2), we'll actually enjoy ourselves in the game.
You inadvertently killed your own argument. You define grind as 'doing the parts you don't like...' Since MMOs, good MMOs I should say, are structured with many elements, some of them time-consuming and repetitive, you're going to have grind.
For example, if you like crafting... Then you're "taking part in the activity you enjoy doing." But if you don't like crafting, then all the resource gathering, etc., is a 'grind,' And any aspect of the MMO can get like that -- PvP in Eve Online becomes a grind. Harvesting mats in EQ2 becomes a grind. Running dungeons in DDO becomes a grind. Listening to tedious, poorly-written MacGuffing/Trope/Cliche' storie in SWTOR was a grind. Killing mobs to level, like in most Korean MMOs, is a grind if you don't like it.
In fact, of the five examples I gave, the SWTOR stories were the biggest, least-tolerable grind I've ever dealt with. Listening to that crap, and having BioWare steal my characters voice by voicing myside, was the biggest grind-fest I've experienced in MMOs. Yet the BioWare trolls think those third-rate stories are bee's knees and will defend that bad fan-fic writing to death.
So, what is grind? Repetitive tasks that you don't enjoy? Welcome to life... And maybe consider that MMOs aren't for you.
What about dungeon progression games? The whole goal would be to complete dungeons, which would be challenging, since there'd not only be hard monsters with varying mechanics to figure out, but also traps, hidden doors, and puzzles to solve. To reach the next dungeon, you need to complete the first. DDO works like this sort of and it's a fun game.
I think dungeons only work, if there's something about completing them that feels rewarding to the player. Doesn't necessarily mean loot, but there needs to be something compelling about getting through it, some kind of reward or sense of accomplishing something. Something more than just getting through a maze, that didn't even have a piece of cheese at the end.
If that gets too repetitive, it'll feel like a grind. If it isn't rewarding enough, it'll only be fun until the player starts to feel like there's no point to it, and that can happen more quickly for some than others.
I think its amazing that randomization hasn't been utilized more, to drag content out for as long as possible. I realize it still gets repetitive, and could still end up feeling grindy, but I think less so, the more unpredictable it gets. From the dungeon layout, to the loot you get, and even what mobs you'll encounter and how hard they'll be. I don't get why devs are such control freaks these days.
Balance as the most important factor of the MMO experience is one thing that's kiling the genre, IMHO. Makes everything predictable and grindy, in a way, because you always know exactly what to expect, when its always going to be balanced.
I agree with you about the balance thing. People put way too much effort into worrying about what the other guy is doing. I'd rather have truely diverse classes, with pros and cons to playing each one, than to have homogenized classes, where they all do practically the same thing once the numbers balance out. I'd rather have group dependency, than solo optimibility.
What about dungeon progression games? The whole goal would be to complete dungeons, which would be challenging, since there'd not only be hard monsters with varying mechanics to figure out, but also traps, hidden doors, and puzzles to solve. To reach the next dungeon, you need to complete the first. DDO works like this sort of and it's a fun game.
I think dungeons only work, if there's something about completing them that feels rewarding to the player. Doesn't necessarily mean loot, but there needs to be something compelling about getting through it, some kind of reward or sense of accomplishing something. Something more than just getting through a maze, that didn't even have a piece of cheese at the end.
If that gets too repetitive, it'll feel like a grind. If it isn't rewarding enough, it'll only be fun until the player starts to feel like there's no point to it, and that can happen more quickly for some than others.
I think its amazing that randomization hasn't been utilized more, to drag content out for as long as possible. I realize it still gets repetitive, and could still end up feeling grindy, but I think less so, the more unpredictable it gets. From the dungeon layout, to the loot you get, and even what mobs you'll encounter and how hard they'll be. I don't get why devs are such control freaks these days.
Balance as the most important factor of the MMO experience is one thing that's kiling the genre, IMHO. Makes everything predictable and grindy, in a way, because you always know exactly what to expect, when its always going to be balanced.
I agree with you about the balance thing. People put way too much effort into worrying about what the other guy is doing. I'd rather have truely diverse classes, with pros and cons to playing each one, than to have homogenized classes, where they all do practically the same thing once the numbers balance out. I'd rather have group dependency, than solo optimibility.
I couldnt agree more, which is why I love the classes in Vanguard and obviously DDO (although you cant go wrong by following the D&D ruleset faithfully).
To me, a grind is doing anything (in game or otherwise) that is not only repetative, but also little chance for a significant increase in standing. There is WAY too much "Grind" in MMOs nowadays. Killing monsters over and over does not necessarily mean its a "grind" if there is even a small chance of finding a great item.
Comments
No MMO has a grind. If someone is doing stuff that they consider a grind in their leisure activity then they're an idiot or a masochist. If they are doing things they enjoy and they call it a grind, that doesn't mean the game has a grind, it means the person is just repeating words he heard on the interweb.
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
See my sig. As said, grind is a state of mind. That said, some activities are more widely despied than others.
No other game genre comes remotely close to this genre when it comes to making people do shit they don't like to do. You don't spend the first few stages of Call of Duty just gathering ammunition. The first few opponents of Street Fighter weren't punching bags.
If nothing else, I guess it's a good thing that there's so much hype about some upcoming games and their attempts to remove the grind. Successful or not, at least the interest is telling.
A Modest Proposal for MMORPGs:
That the means of progression would not be mutually exclusive from the means of enjoyment.
Not too long ago...grinding meant:
Spending 8hrs a day for a week killing the same worthless mobs so you can get a level move up the field 100ft get a new quest then camp there for a week...untill endgame...which was nothing. The reason you had to do this was because the 1 or two quests per level got you mabey 10% a level...and there was nothing else to do.
then grinding became any form of "obstical" between level 1 and endgame hampsterwheels of instanced pvp and raids for gear tokens...this included questing, pvp, anything you had to do more than 5 times (give or take)
now grinding is not recieving a full raid and pvp set within 45min of haracter creation.
Does the future hold promises of removing the character creation and naming grind is my question???
Its really gotten to the point to where i cannot wait for a game to come out with no levels no grind...just a third person shooter/melee deathmatch game...so the mass of players who want this can move on and we can start getting real mmorpgs developed again.
"Grind" only means "major repetition of a task/mission". This is why spending a lot of time killing the same mob over and over again, is a grind. Same can be said for repeating similar quests over and over again.
I don't think MMORPGs will ever get rid of the grind. The amount of money per ingame hour in the budget, is simply too low to allow enough variation to remove the grind.
op, I think it comes down to 2 separate questions.
does a game need grind to qualify as an mmo?
of course not. most people think this, but most people are stupid. I play shooters on modded servers up to 200 players which is more concurrent players than you see in most "mmos", and so are more massively multiplayer. For instance go look at an mmo that just came out on steam RotMG, its up to 85 players. my point is not that these shooters are mmo's per see, but that the term itself is constantly misused, to mean "a game like wow etc." not simply a massively multiplayer online game.
does a game need grind to retain p2p subscriptions?
probably. althought I think its not completely impossible to make a game that people will pay to play without repetitve grind, developers will always choose the quicker, simpler, easier route and add grind. grind is simply a cheat for lazy developers to make less content. its irrellivant that some people enjoy grind, some people enjoy cutting themselves. its no coincidence grind is pretty much non existant in buy to play games. the longer people play your game the more profitable your game is with a pay to play model and also with other mmo models like buy to win.
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They just need PROGRESSION.
Progression.
Note that the progression required, itself, is not necessarily vertical progression, power, superiority over others quantified by game mechanics.
If the player plays as a character. That character must be able to progress.
If the character lives in a world. That world must be able to be changed, evolve, progress.
A defining characteristinc of a MMORPG is that both the characters and the world must be organic. Players alone, interacting with each other and the world must provide a way to PROGRESS and Evolve.
It is not a static world, character or experience. Unless the specific setting or context structures itself and justify that as an exception to the rule.
Grind itself IS NOT a substract of the genre. Its not a feature. Its not gameplay.
Grind is just a bad design side effect of an intended effect: adding massiveness to the chronologic element of a MMORPG in the cheapest possible way. Like copy pasting, or printing copies of something and slightly changing them with a pen, except its done in a procedurally generated way.
In a sense, one could argue that grind gets confused with progression and thus mistakenly is seen as a staple/necessary characteristic of the genre. Wich is a false assumption.
Through the years, the essence diluted, the meaning was changed. Some of us still can track back to the roots of design philosophies of MMORPGs.
good post interesting, I think I agree. I would say progression is a defining feature the rpg genre and so by extention mmorpgs, but not all mmos.
remember you can have progression of things over than a characters stats or weapons, for instance in h&h alot of progression is of the quality of your tools and your seeds, crops and food. this sort of progression I find alot more fun and interesting than simply leveling up.
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That's exactly my point. It just goes to show that grinding is only there to get in the way of having fun. Why not make the carrot the entirety of the game, that way people enjoy the game the entire time, instead of getting burnt out on the grind before they even get to the carrot.
Even if developing content to please people will be hard, at least people will leave the game with a good taste in their mouth and will be back when more content is released.
Exactly! That's the point where I'm at right now. I feel like a veil has been taken away from my eyes, or like Neo looking at all the people running around oblivious in the Matrix. People are just hamsters running on the hamster real for no real purpose, aside from getting the best gear, which really serves no purpose.
Games by definition insinuates a challenge and a problem to be solved. MMORPG's are not challenging and the problems they present can be solved by those with very low intelligence. So the sake of playing it just to play it isn't enough. You need something like RvR or something else that is self-sustaining, random, and dynamic to provide a real purpose to playing the game.
People may come on here and say "having fun" is the purpose of playing a game, but how many here find grinding quest hubs fun? That's the majority of the game. The rest of the game has absolutely nothing to do with the majority of the game, such as group/raid content and pvp. The majority of the game is just there for you to grind on.
That's why I'm out of the genre for now. I took a break for 1 year before SWTOR came out, and I won't play another MMORPG until things are different and mostly new. TSW looks like it'll offer that, so I'll probably pick that up on day 1. GW2, however, looks like only a slightly evolved themepark with a suped up puclic quest system, so I want to wait to hear how people think about that game after the newness wears off. At least it doesn't require a subscription.
One could say that Skyrim was about grinding - the only way to lvl combat skills was to grind combat. However the way they presented this was very well done. At no time did I ever feel like I was grinding for the sake of grinding. All through the grinding I was having FUN because it never told me to kill 10 bandits in a badit cave. There was never a progress bar to tell me how deep into the rabbit hole I would have to go before finding out the end only has a trasure chest.
The game allowed me to grind in whatever fashion i deemed fun and let me do so without limiting myself from the rest of the game. Most people may never reach skill 100 for combat but for those that did it was never really a chore.
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
That's pretty much what the majority of a game is since WoW came out, a tutorial for end game. In pre-WoW games, what you did while leveling up prepared you for what you would do at max level, but it also offered you a "lite" version of what you'd have at max level. For example, in DAoC you will spend several months leveling up just one character, but you do this in a group. You don't just level up by grinding on mobs in dungeons or in the open world, you also level up in the battlegrounds, which are persistent mini-versions of the max level RvR. They're open zones with castles and towers to be sieged and defended and once taken, they stay that way until someone else takes them. By the time your character reaches max level, you're intimately familiar with how your class works in a group, the ins and outs of other classes, and you know pretty much everything you need to know about the game. DAoC players were experts in not only their class, but all classes, because you spent several months leveling up with the other classes and know exactly what they're capable of and how they all complment your class. A DAoC player could make the best out of any group combination and likely succeed in whatever they were after, unlike in post-WoW games where people won't even attempt group content without a "perfect" group setup. The game starts at level 1 in those games, not at max level. Max level gameplay only improves upon what you were already doing for the past several months to over a year.
In games since WoW, you spend the majority of your time soloing quests found in quest hubs around the globe, which leads you by the nose through every zone to ensure you see every part of the world worth seeing. There are group instances along the way, but not enough to provide enough variety to grind on them solely without getting bored. BG's are there to mix things up, but they're instanced and are just CTF kind of FPS game matches. At max level, things change drastically for PvE'ers, and for PvPers the only reason to PvP is for gear. Not like in DAoC, where you PvPed to literally protect your realms castles and relics, which provided bonuses for you realm.
Exactly, if a game is fun, people will stick with it anyways. Just look at the COD and BF 3 following. People play multi-player in those games until the next one comes out, so for months/years, and you're playing through the same maps everytime.
This is a lot how I feel, too. Progression is an important element of most games. The only time you don't need progression of some sort or another, is when you have a PvP game that manages to hook people via competition - and that just isn't for everyone. You don't see PvE games without progression.
MMOs have to focus the progression on your character, because they can't just feed you a finite story to get through. They need to give you something else to strive for. but, it doesn't have to be the same old level-up formula. It can be just about anything, as long as the player has some sort of goal that gets them coming back to the game, day after day.
The idea that the game just has to be fun sounds great, but really, it's a little more complicated that that. Fun gets old surprisingly fast when it doesn't go anywhere.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
Story is a form of progression that gets people hooked and wanting to know what happens next, but for a MMORPG to have story-based progression, it needs to be able to be experienced as a group and honestly should be only be able to experienced as a group.
A good example of story-based progression is LoTRO's Books/Chapters and the first Final Fantasy. However, both games had a filler "grind" to waste time until you were of level for the next part of the story. Take away this grind and you have a much shorter game, but lets admit it, most people aren't sticking around past the first month anyways. At least with a Story-based progression game without the filler stuff, people are likely to subscribe for a month to see the next part of the story rather than never subscribing again. To be honest, a story-based progression game is probably better suited for a Co-Op game.
What about dungeon progression games? The whole goal would be to complete dungeons, which would be challenging, since there'd not only be hard monsters with varying mechanics to figure out, but also traps, hidden doors, and puzzles to solve. To reach the next dungeon, you need to complete the first. DDO works like this sort of and it's a fun game.
I think the only way to keep a MMORPG fun while retaining subscribers, without a grind, is to have a MMORPG where you can build a virtual life in it. So it'd need to mimic reality a lot more than mimicking a SPG. You'd need a large open world with plenty of places to explore, a player ran economy with a need for hunters, gathers, treasure hunters, crafters, and warriors, important resources to control and fight over, player built cities and castles that can be sieged, and a political system. A tall order to be sure, but who wouldn't want to stick around in a game like that? It sounds like a development challenge, but after the game is made, developers would need to spend less money to maintain and update it than those that create games based around doing quests and raids, because living in a virtual world provides self-sustaining content that takes a long time to get old. If developers did this, they'd really only need to refine the game, polish it, and provide life events. Create an epic world quest every month that draws you in, where the outcome ultimately changes the world. Blizzard did a good job of these events that led up to the next expansions.
Grind is a state of mind, there is no way to to avoid it, conversely it is entirely possible that it doesn't actually exist. Thats the thing about state of mind - it's subjective.
Gind - a monotonous and routine task. Last part is objective, first part is subjective. Because it it part subjective every game, or no game will have grind, depending on your state of mind.
Venge
i think some of them need and other no
The question of the OP shouldn't be 'Do MMORPG's need a grind?', but
'Do MMORPG's need to have content that'll keep players entertained/busy for more than 200-400 hours?'If the answer is 'yes', since MMO gamers often expect to spend more gameplay time in an MMO than a singleplayer game, then the MMO devs automatically have to resort to repetitive content, since it requires huge resources and time to have produced more than a few hundred hours of unique content. To keep players still entertained past that point means that the devs need to implement mechanics and features that are repetitive in nature.
Now, if those repetitive features are regarded as a grind or not depends on the individual MMO gamer: for example, mob grinding wasn't regarded as a grind in the early years of EQ, AC, etc, to most it was fun and part of the leveling/progression process. Only having done that for a few years and after hundreds to thousands of hours did it became a 'grind', or a mindnumbing non-fun exercise to many. Same for quest leveling and raiding, those weren't regarded as a grind at all even if the core mechanics remained the same, in the beginning those were treated as a fun activity and a welcome change of the mob grind. Same here, only after hundreds to thousands of gameplay hours did those mechanics become too much same old and not much fun anymore to many.
Same features, same mechanics, same development: in the beginning they're fun and entertaining despite their repetitive nature, only after hundreds to thousands of hours they devolve into becoming 'same old' and not fun anymore, in short a grind.
PvE suffers this harder than PvP, because PvP has the added element of human contribution to it, which can deliver randomness to the activity. That's why people can enjoy multiplayer shooters for a longer period of time than activities where other people's contribution is less present. But even there it's the same: I know quite a few shooter gamers who after years of playing MP shooters intensively noticed that it just didn't do it for them anymore. Having to be present at clan activities and games became a grind.
tldr:
In short, people expect their MMO's to deliver far more hours of gameplay than singleplayer games, which means that game companies to resort to repetitive action features to extend the gameplay entertainment beyond the 100-300 hours of unique content that they may be able to deliver. Whether such repetitive activities are considered a grind (= a repetitive activity that's boring/mindnumbing) differs per person and the mileage they have. Each activity can feel a grind especially after having experienced that activity or a sortlike one for hundreds to thousands of hours, however some activities are more prone to become a grind than others. Activities that have a randomness or unpredictability to them or that are so challenging that they'll require your full attention will have a longer lifespan of being fun and not a grind as those that aren't like that. The same applies to activities that make a better use of human influence and contribution (randomness, challenge, added variation) included in the entertainment the activity provides.
MMO games do not have 'needs'.
To insinuate that people 'need' a grind in their game is also silly.
Somewhere between the concept of a 'time sink' and a 'grind' is pacing and repetition, and these terms should be suitable for the OP's inquiry into game design I would say.
Yes, games ought to not only have 'pacing', but to have good pacing. 'Repetition' seem unavoidable, given the shitty state of the game industry where truly deep and feature rich game mechanics are surely noneexistent, but 'repetition' can also provide familiar and necessary routines of abstraction for the gamer and is another aspect of pacing in a game.
Companys on the other hand need it.
Either to prolong subs or to sell items that shorten grind in a f2p model.
If you don't want money you can take out the grind. Private Servers often do it and still sustain a active playerbase. It's of course not something for the mass market.
Pi*1337/100 = 42
I think dungeons only work, if there's something about completing them that feels rewarding to the player. Doesn't necessarily mean loot, but there needs to be something compelling about getting through it, some kind of reward or sense of accomplishing something. Something more than just getting through a maze, that didn't even have a piece of cheese at the end.
If that gets too repetitive, it'll feel like a grind. If it isn't rewarding enough, it'll only be fun until the player starts to feel like there's no point to it, and that can happen more quickly for some than others.
I think its amazing that randomization hasn't been utilized more, to drag content out for as long as possible. I realize it still gets repetitive, and could still end up feeling grindy, but I think less so, the more unpredictable it gets. From the dungeon layout, to the loot you get, and even what mobs you'll encounter and how hard they'll be. I don't get why devs are such control freaks these days.
Balance as the most important factor of the MMO experience is one thing that's kiling the genre, IMHO. Makes everything predictable and grindy, in a way, because you always know exactly what to expect, when its always going to be balanced.
When I want a single-player story, I'll play a single-player game. When I play an MMO, I want a massively multiplayer world.
You inadvertently killed your own argument. You define grind as 'doing the parts you don't like...' Since MMOs, good MMOs I should say, are structured with many elements, some of them time-consuming and repetitive, you're going to have grind.
For example, if you like crafting... Then you're "taking part in the activity you enjoy doing." But if you don't like crafting, then all the resource gathering, etc., is a 'grind,' And any aspect of the MMO can get like that -- PvP in Eve Online becomes a grind. Harvesting mats in EQ2 becomes a grind. Running dungeons in DDO becomes a grind. Listening to tedious, poorly-written MacGuffing/Trope/Cliche' storie in SWTOR was a grind. Killing mobs to level, like in most Korean MMOs, is a grind if you don't like it.
In fact, of the five examples I gave, the SWTOR stories were the biggest, least-tolerable grind I've ever dealt with. Listening to that crap, and having BioWare steal my characters voice by voicing myside, was the biggest grind-fest I've experienced in MMOs. Yet the BioWare trolls think those third-rate stories are bee's knees and will defend that bad fan-fic writing to death.
So, what is grind? Repetitive tasks that you don't enjoy? Welcome to life... And maybe consider that MMOs aren't for you.
I agree with you about the balance thing. People put way too much effort into worrying about what the other guy is doing. I'd rather have truely diverse classes, with pros and cons to playing each one, than to have homogenized classes, where they all do practically the same thing once the numbers balance out. I'd rather have group dependency, than solo optimibility.
I couldnt agree more, which is why I love the classes in Vanguard and obviously DDO (although you cant go wrong by following the D&D ruleset faithfully).
To me, a grind is doing anything (in game or otherwise) that is not only repetative, but also little chance for a significant increase in standing. There is WAY too much "Grind" in MMOs nowadays. Killing monsters over and over does not necessarily mean its a "grind" if there is even a small chance of finding a great item.