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Time over skill
Blackmoor
Member Posts: 96
in Fallen Earth
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060222/sirlin_01.shtml
I myself am hoping that FE gets about as far from the WOW game model as possible 
Comments
/sigh
Ok, first of all, this exact link has been posted by Cthulhuvong |here|.
Second, all this aimless Blizzard hate is really making our corner of the forum look ignorant. Instead of throwing around stupid phrases like "fat cat pigs" and "World of Ca$hcraft", could we please offer positive suggestions on how to fix the problems you see in current MMORPGs? WoW has plenty of downfalls, sure, but instead of whining about them like a pre-teen lets discuss solutions. Otherwise the message turns into:
"HEY, I'M A NON-CONFORMIST, THAT MAKES ME COOL AND BETTER THAN THE MAJORITY. PLEASE ACCEPT MY BRASH, SHALLOW OPINIONS IN PLACE OF ACTUAL SUBSTANCE."
So, you don't like "time spent grinding = rewards"? Lets look at how this formula has evolved...
In the original EverQuest, there was a LOT of grinding. More than any other MMO I've ever played. Once they implemented AA, you could just about grind for the rest of your life and still not max everything out. A lot of people didn't like this because it was too much of a time sink.
In WoW the grinding is drastically reduced. I know, it may be hard to imagine something requiring MORE grind than WoW, but there has been much worse. Now we have hardcore players complaining about getting to level 60 being too easy, and casual players complaining about it being too hard.
Up comes Guild Wars. Getting a character to max level (20) is pretty trivial and commonly takes a few weeks. Focus here is more on PvP combat, and many say that the game really doesn't even start until you hit 20... yet people complain about the game being too short and requiring no skill.
EVE takes a completely different approach, where skills are learned even while you are offline. The 'grind' is actually completely removed this way; however, now boredom can set in because higher level skills can take days or even weeks to finish. The focus is on total time played and not grinding skill.
What about a pure player skill system, like an FPS game? Can't win that way either, because the vocal Australian minority will complain about terrible ping rates and the fact that counterstrike nerdz will take over the game.
So, basically:
high grind = complaints about the game being a time sink
low grind = complaints about the game being too easy
no grind = complaints about the game requiring no skill
player skill = complaints about bad internet connections
I could be wrong here, but this is my assumption on the types of players belonging to each group above:
high grind = hardcore players
low grind = hardcore players AND casual players
no grind = casual players
player skill = hardcore players AND casual players
Now, of the above types, low grind and player skill attract the largest crowd, with the main difference being a grind system (RPG) has more staying power than an FPS type system. So Blizzard chose the model that gave them the largest amount of players. Yes, they make a lot of money. Are we supposed to hate them because of that?
Again, I could be off the mark here, but I believe that people who complain about "time grinding = rewards" are angry that someone who simply has more free time can be better than them, even if they don't have as much 'skill'. I hate to break this to you, but in ANY game model, people who play more often than you, grinding or not, will be better than you. In WoW, a "nerd looser" who grinds all night will be better than you. In CS, a "nerd looser" who plays all day will be better than you.
Get over it.
There is no game that can take this magical 'skill' out of you and make you better than other players. Gaming is something that requires time to perfect... you simply cannot remove time from the equation.
http://www.fallenearth.se - Your source for Fallen Earth information
You know I really can't wait to see how Icarus has developed their combat system. I keep watching the same trailers over and over and try to imagine how melee and ranged combat will work together. Im sure we've probably had this conversation before but humor me. What other mmo's have come close to the caliber of FE and how did their combat systems work?
Lead with your face and role with the punches.
Not going to apologize for posting the link again ,, since it was in a thread I read a month ago and just didn't feel the need to read again.
My point was not so much about the whole grind thing or Bliz going for the money as the fact that FOR ONCE I would like to have an MMO to play where skill actually matters more than just being a mindless drone.
Sinoth - I have to say you are a bit full of yourself in your reply. I have played EQ AC AO DAOC WOW GW PS. I know the differences between high grind and low grind and out of all those games the one that took the most skill by far was PS. EQ came after but the amount of skill needed was far less.
Most of the people I know don't have problems with spending lots of time playing. What they do have problems with is the idiotic end game grind doing raids , or just midless grinding of the same mobs for days on end. Or dealing with people who have no clue how to play the game and are at end game purely because they played x amount of hours and yet have no clue how to play their toon or the game itself.
Arguing that the grind in WOW is reduced is a flat out lie. You still have the grind in full force ,, just its at end game instead of spread out through the entire game ,, EQ has been like that for years as well.
Maybe my expectations are set to high. Based on every other MMO i have played they probably are. I just don't see why a MMO can't actually require skill , thought , learning instead of just putting in time like some mindless sheep. Why can't a game have actual content and a world large enough to keep you exploring the next horizon? Why do they always default to the same old done to death cookie cutter EQ model?
People seem to miss the fact that it isn't a grind if you are seeing new horizons , finding new things , learning how to play , and actually being immersed in the world. Instead of just mindless killing for countless hours, with the countless hours mattering more than everything else combined.
If someone has maxed out a character in both EQ1 and WoW, I find it very hard to believe they would argue grinding in WoW is not reduced. A hardcore player maxing out a character in WoW could do it pretty easily in 1 month. If you put forth the same amount of effort maxing a character in EQ1, it would take 2-3 months (legit, no power leveling). EQ1 simply requires more effort... definitely not the worst grind ever, but pretty bad. Sure, WoW still has grinding, but there is a lot less (time wise) than other MMOs.
Also, I agree about dealing with people who have no clue how to play their class... its quite possibly one of the most annoying aspects of an MMO. This usually isn't a problem once you reach mid-game. Just playing 'x' amount of hours doesn't mean you can get into a decent guild. It is very easy to tell who knows what they are doing and who doesn't. The people who don't know how to play get filtered out of the good guilds until they understand the game better.
The big question, though, is how do you eliminate the 'mindless grind' while still making the game difficult enough to be entertaining. If you completely remove all grind, a game is too easy and doesn't have much staying power. This is where I think Icarus has it right... they are concetrating heavily on the mission creation tools at their disposal. Having many interesting mission combinations would be a good way to remove the grind... even if you have to do 100 of them to progress to the next 'level' (or FE equivalent), if the 100 missions are varied, it will be a lot more tolerable. Making missions difficult could also be a solution, to an extent. Easy missions get boring fast, even if they are varied. Given the choice, I'd rather do 10 difficult missions than 50 easy ones.
http://www.fallenearth.se - Your source for Fallen Earth information
Like I said , the grind is still there , its just shifted to th end game or to the PVP. As of a few years it didn't take any longer to level up in EQ than it did in WOW. Once you hit max level then really sit in one spot and just grind away till your brains turn to mush. The grind is still there and from talking to people still playing WOW and raiding it is very much comparable to the EQ grind. IE takes months of running the same dungeon so you can gear/quest/flag up to be able to hit the next dungeon. Now if you compare WOW to L2 ,, then the grind is reduced.
As to dealing with the grind, that one is easy. Content , which comes in many forms. A large enough world where it isn't wall to wall people and whetre you actually have room to explore and see new things well past when the game is released. AC1 is a great example of how that works. The freedom of having lots of choices of what to do and what to fight instead of being put on rails and herded down the path the game designers set for you.Decent AI for mobs , so that it doesn't feel like you are on autopilot for hours on end. Quests, missions, storyline , the meat and potatoes of what i consider content (not the mailman/collect/kill quests). Things that help immerse you in the world. Getting rid of the bottlenecks like lame named mobs that spawn once in a blue moon which drop the only decent equipment or are the one key to advancing a quest.
It's a grind for me when I am forced to be in an area and/or killing the same mobs over and over and over again because its the only decent way to advance. Or when my skill as player matters not a whit because the game is set up so that I need item X just to be able to fight things my level. As to missions ,, I prefer harder ones as well ,, but looking at AO as an example that didn't matter since the missions were basically the same maps over and over again and you just ended up blitzkrieging them , that got old for me really fast and went to the realm of grind.
In summary, I think a system that balances some character progression AKA grind with some playerskill would be good thing and also marketable (despite Neocron's not so big success, which is IMHO due to poor programming quality). Hopefully FE will get it right and get the player numbers Neocron could never attract.
I don't know if anyone here has played the PS2 game Monster Hunter, but with a stretch it could be considered and MMO, thats what this game needs to be like as far as a combat system goes, maybe not exactly, but similar. I think many of us are sick of the monotony of point and click, grind till you die MMOs which seem to be a dime a dozen these days. I am praying that the great minds at Icarus can find a way to make this a true MMOFPS with experience and skills involved. That way, even the newest player can beat Ub3R-1337-Dan457 who's been playing for 10 years, has all the uber armor and weapon, but still doesn't know how to play the game. But people who have been playing longer and practicing will still have an edge. ***Puts on a Flame-Retardant Suit and waits for Flames***
Personally, I think it's not so much the grinding that matters, so much as "HOW" a company goes about making you grind. People complain about grinds being to long, simply because the grind isn't fun. It's a means to an end. Killing mob after mob after mob. You could have the most engaging combat system known to man kind, but after you killed your 15000 mutated ant in said combat system, it is no longer fun. The new trend in grinding is to make it so you go grind your ass off solo, or in a group that may as well be solo, and then prance around in your newly grinded skills/items. What needs to happen is that companies need to make the grind more of a social thing, and need to give it more substance. Structures need to be in place so that players can breed player content, because player content is always new and different. Bounty Hunters get XP from hunting players. Crafters hire bands of fighters to find a certain resource. Players get XP for simply exploring the world. In my experience Player driven content is always far more engaging than static Dev created quests. I'm not saying static stuff shouldn't be in there too, but I think it should have a healthy mix of the two.
The Millenium Lee
Grind is inevitable. Even in twitch based games with no stat growth there is grind because you are developing your own skills instead of having the computer skillup for you. Even in the barest of virtual environments ( a chat room for example ) there is a social grind to develope the social skills required to be liked or respected or notorious.
Even when you are having fun and not noticing the grind, it's still there. So as stated earlier the key is to make the grind so much fun, that it is an end instead of just a means to an end. Just think about anytime you've had fun in an rpg, yep, you were grinding. You just didn't notice. The trick (easier said than done) is for developers to pack opportunities for these moments into the game from beginning to cap. It wouldn't matter if it took 12 years to reach the lvl cap of a game if the journey to the cap was entertaining.
One of the issues I see with games is that there are not enough quests for any particular lvl to get to the next lvl. say you have 5 lvl 30 quests...and you complete them and then the next available quest is for lvl 31 players but you only have 12,000/40,000 xp. Well that sux. Now you have to slowly trudge through these hard lvl 31 quests because there wasn't enough lvl 30 quests to pull you through lvl 30 all the way.
So now you have to do boring grind killing because it's actually more efficient than struggling to complete quests too high for you. You finally get to lvl 31 and the process repeats. This is a good discussion and I have more to add but will be back later. I'm tired.
Guild Wars 2 is my religion
You can grind reputation or something for months, killing 10's of thousands of the same easy creature, and get a piece of equipment, and all of a sudden your "better" than someone who hasn't.
A game like warcraft could afford to reward skill instead of time, and people would still play because it's a pretty solid game, but they have yet to learn that, maybe down the line a game will, and thats what i'm hoping for with FE.
Keep in mind i'm not saying i dont want to work for rewards, just saying i'd prefer a week or so of hard work to months of easy work.
EQ it took me about 6 months to max out
my Bard and start the Raid&Grind.
WoW it took me 3 months to get to 60th
and fully decked out in Raid Gear.
EQ was a lot more fun socially as a
game.
WoW was a lot more fun at its base till
50th when the main 5 dungeon grinding begins.
For me, the first big step on
decreasing the feeling of the grind is removing the focus on items
making your character. Items should add to the character, not BE the
character. FE has taken care of this with their skill setup.
Next up, and equally important, the
game has to be FUN mechanics wise. This is exspecially true related
to combat. Combat should be intense, fun, and challenging. It
should not be whackamole, spam a single hot key, and watch your
mana/health bars.
World size and content additon also go a
long ways in decreasing the feeling of grinding. I'd rather be a
part of a on going and developing story, then working my way through
a world reading about its past. One new dungeon, 6 months after
release does not equate to timely or meaningfull content additon
when it comes to relieving the grinding feeling.
With the rate players are consuming
content these days, you can't treat a MMOG like a book series and
expect them to happily pound away at meaningless content for 6 to 8
months while they wait for something new. To get around this, most
MMOGs rely on raiding and item gaining to keep them busy. It works,
some people even find it fun, but is its a lame bandaid over what
could be done. Though it's still meaningless content..
Asheron's Call proved that monthly
content works in that it gives the players something to look forward
to and to do besides spending time doing the same thing. Even if you
have a major grind and long times between levels, even if the players
consume that monthly content additon in less then a week; its still
doing something different then what they'd normally be doing.
To do this though, you have to have the
tools, staff, and intent to do so in place by beta. You also have to
build your tools and game with that in mind from the start. As we've
seen, no MMOG has managed to pull off quick content addition to date
other then AC. Mostly because they try to cover that side of things
AFTER they've built the game.
All signs so far point to FE taking
this into account.
Other things have been talked about in
various threads on this forum, changes to tradeskills to add depth
and more meaning to them, various ideas on content and how to go
about presenting that content, and many more.
There's a lot that can be done to give
the player a focus on other feelings and experiences. Keeping the
those feeling and experiences fresh and new is what matters. Once
everything been has seen and explored, once everything is old hat, that's
when the feeling of grinding takes front seat. This can even happen
in the range of one level to the next, and is something to be avoided
at all costs.
So when it really comes down to the
bottom line, its all about options. Meaningfull options.. Options to
keep finding new places and things, options to fight new critters,
options to fight the same critter who doesn't always do the same
thing each fight, options to make new items.
Keep the player in a state with many
options and choices avaible to them, and I think you'll find a lot
less discussion about how much grind there is.
All signs point towards FE keeping alot of this in mind.. I sure hope so..
Datawight - Speed is Life, Glory a Necessity, Death a Given!
Basing a game on time spent playing is just fine, if your target audience is pre-adult kids and teens who have a whole hell of a lot more time on their hands than those of us with jobs and responsibilities to attend to. Also, skill based games segregate the game community by how long they've been playing. Even the most skilled gamer coming into a time based game is going to get the cold shoulder from their elders players. With a skill based game, you decide where you stand in the community the moment you install and log-on.
I personally hate the level hunting aspects of today’s MMORPG’s like >"insert
default MMORPG here"<
Sure the game should reward gamers for time spent but that comes through cool
gear and extra stuff not necessarily game affecting, stuff like cool Sunglasses
or what not.
BUT new players should be able to beat old foxes with pure skill. That’s not
the case with most of the more "Popular" MMOS out there.
At least that’s my opinion.
In most MMO's out there if I were to spend 100 hours meeting people, exploring and hunting/killing only when I needed to I wouldn't be as good as someone who sat and grinded all during the same 100 hours. Thats why I personally would enjoy a game that relied on a low grind/skill as mentioned in a previous post.
I hope FE relies on a system that doesn't hinder players who choose not to grind. It should reward people who take the time to explore and learn about the world they are playing in and those who learn what their strengths and weaknesses in their skills are and learn to enhance or overcome them.
I also hope that FE provides and keeps providing content you can do solo. While I do enjoy grouping with people I don't always enjoy having to do so to do missions/quests.
Basically they need to provide a lot of content for the casual player, who, like it or not, are the main audience for video games. However, the developers shouldn't screw the hardcore gamers over because of the casual players. (For example, Star Wars Galaxies)
In the end its about balance.
Couldn’t
have said it better my self.
Also, I am all for a combat system that would allow a "noob" to be good if they had skills. I'm not saying a newly created character with starter equipment would be equal to me but if they had decent equipment and had flat out better skills than me then they should have a good chance to kill me. It would only make me better at the game.
Mmm... in response to the article...
I don't think there's anything wrong with grinding. Even in a game based on player skll rather than character skill there will be the 'grind' of getting to know the game, and what does this button do when I press it. As already mentioned earlier in the thread - the grind of your own skills.
What I see wrong with the WoW grind is that it's based on time. People are having to outdo eachother in time spend in front of the computer... I have friends who's been online in WoW for literally days. People have lost there minds over less. Any game that encourages this sort of gaming behaviour has - in my book - passed the 'offering a fun pastime' thresshold and moved into a severe 'offering hardcore gambling and addiction'.
I played WoW for a couple of months, but as David Sirlin points out, it's not for the solo player, and I got tired of it pretty quickly. To be honest, I prefer a game where I get to decide who lives or d- ... gah... keep getting that wrong.... Where I get to decide whether I want to join a guild or not. Not a game where the decision is taken from me, and I have to join a guild, whether I feel like it or not.
Either way... I don't hope FE will be a game that's all about how long I can keep awake, or which guilds and factions I'm member of... I want to roam and explore... not be tied down and set on a single path, ending in an endless grind for better loot, continously implemented in the game with a couple of months inbetween.
So far, though, that's not what FE's been looking like. From what I've read (which will probably be something other than what everybody else has read - yay, wishful thinking *smiles wryly*) FE will have a very very large exploration factor... and I can't wait to get dusty!
"So I contend that the player stories will always be more powerful than the scripted stories that we try to tell the players."
- Will Wright