General Discussion

Originally posted by Majestico

 Easterners do not mind putting in the hard work involved.  It shows them their status within the game, and also  they do not believe in getting something for nothing. 

Is this right, guys?  Am I finally getting it?  If so, which free2play MMO do you recommend?

I don't really think most give a ***** about their status in the game.

It's really common to drop a game when another comes out in Japan. I don't know if you could spend a lot of time in a game when you change games so fast.

If a game is 'cool' in Japan, everyone wants it and they just drop the previous game.

Also, there was very little pressure in the guild I was in from them, everyone played only 4 hours a day, not 3 , not 5,..4. So there's no real pressure of getting ahead or behind and no need to grind or stay up to get that extra lvl, item really.

Originally posted by Wizardry

I might also add that KOREA is light years ahead of the world when comes to gaming[not to be confused with development],they also have millions more gamers than the rest of the world ,so it's no wonder item malls and other marketing ideas begin over there first.

There was a huge protest on a Korean forum a year ago because RMT was introduced in a game.

You buy a chest, you open it and there a chance for an item, but 9/10 times it's nothing.

A lot of people have left that game because of RMT. I'm just saying that not everyone like RMT in asia, a lot seem to be against it lately.

Originally posted by bleyzwun

Originally posted by Caldicot

It seems like the real question here is:  Why are westerners so prejudging towards Asians?

 

I'm asian and I hate to grind.  I know a bunch of other asians who also hate to grind.  In fact leveling up in WoW was way too much of a grind for them... LEVELING UP IN WOW WAS TOO MUCH OF A GRIND FOR ASIANS!? NO WAY!

 

Edit:  btw we are all Chinese, too.  Can you believe we don't farm for gold then sell it!?  We're such an anomaly that someone should do a documentary on us!

ROFL.

Lemmeeeee guess. you use Kill Bots to farm the farmers so you can go eat Noodles :) J/K.

It's not that they like to grind.  They like the challenge

i too wonder why asian or korean people think its fun to mindlessly run up to mobs and hit it every time it spawn non stop. even the quests is mindless.

Originally posted by Freemasons

It's not that they like to grind.  They like the challenge

mindless challenge

Originally posted by Brenelael

2 reasons come to mind right off the top of my head.....

 

1.) The Asian market seems to like games that have a higher emphasis on PvP than PvE questing. They like many Westerners think that battling other players is far more gratifying then killing AI mobs even though most of their games involve endless grinding on the AI to get to the good PvP. The main difference is the PvP in Asian market games usually has some world defining meaning to it, usually in the form of Clan/Guild territorial control.

 

2.) The Asian mentality that anything worth having is worth a lot of effort to achieve. This permiates Asian society on the whole and it reflects in their games. (This is meant as a complement to Asians so please don't start accusing me of stereotyping like some asshats on this forum like to do.)

 

These seem to be the main 2 reasons although there may be more.

 

Bren

insightful post.

however if they value pvp so much why aren't pvp only games very successful there?

I want customization and freedom and lots of social tools, basically I just want a 2008 standard Star Wars Galaxies type game but with Quests instead of the boring grinding and made by Blizzard so it's not buggy lol.

First off, I don't think they grind anymore than we do.

Second, I think grinding itself is more of a Western invention than anything else.  For a lot of Asian gamers, MMO gaming is like this:

They go to a cafe, and they decide which of the games that they have an account to, which could be dozens, they're going to play.  They pick the one which is the most fun, then they play it for a few hours, usually 1-4.  They don't mind that they're not going to reach max level fast.  They just play for fun.  For them, fun may not be decking themselves out in phat endgame loots.  It's merely doing something interesting as part of a group.  Notice how much bigger widescale PvP is in Asian MMO's than Western games.

Most Asian games aren't sub-based.  It's only in the West that you have to drop a financial investment to even get your foot in the door, then an additional investment to access the service each month.  You're not choosing from a lot of games to play because you can't sub to that many at once.  So if you get bored, you might end up playing something you really don't want to.  Hence the "grind".  You're just going through the motions because you think the future of that game will bring something more enjoyable.  Or you're just playing as a timesink, which can feel equally grindy.  If you don't feel like playing, your only choices are to not play and let your subscription money go to waste or cancel and deprive yourself of even having the option to play, neither of which is really appealing until you're completely bored of the game.

Then there's just plain cultural differences.  People are more the same than they are different, but I think that, generally speaking, Asian cultures are more group-oriented while Western cultures are more individualistic.  In a lot of Western games, guilds are more a cooperative than a family.  Even in the highest-end guilds, many people will just be there as a means to an end, to get phat loot or personal protection.  To use a WoW example, look at Death and Taxes.  Once the best American raiding guild, they disbanded recently.  One of the things the GM wrote in his final letter was that too many people had joined who just wanted to pick up their weekly epics.  That's where the perception of "grind" can come in.  If your main goal is just to get in-game prestige through PvE, things will start to seem boring very quickly, even high-end raiding.  If you actually want to accomplish things as a group as your primary aim, things you're competing against others to do, suddenly the challenge can make things interesting.  That's why a lot of Asian games, even the lower-end F2P's, feature large PvP raids to take control of dungeons or other things.

They play together in internet cafes.  Gaming is a social thing where they are not sitting at home alone.  They are out with their friends in the same room laughing and playing.  The grind is not so bad when you got all yer buddies around you and lots of out of game distractions.

If you are old enough to remember the golden days of the Arcade or Video Gaming Parlors you will understand it more.  Once upon a time you had to leave the house to play video games, it was a social thing where people would compete to get the high score.

For more information on this see a movie called Nightmares and look for the Bishop of Battle story.  Thats how it was except for the supernatural part and there was always a few drug dealers around in real life.