MMOWTF: Teh Grind
Dan Fortier returns this week to talk about the endless grind of some MMORPGs.
Editor's Note: This is an edition of a weekly column by Staff Writer Dan Fortier. The column is called "MMOWTF" and will look at some of the stranger or more frustrating events in MMOs as seen by Mr. Fotier. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of MMORPG.com, its staff or management.
It's hard to remember the last time you read a forum for a new or existing MMO and didn't encounter endless rants, comments, and flame wars over that indelible aspect of the genre known simply as 'Teh Grind'. It's right up there with PvP. 'Epic loot' and "Is Guild Wars an MMO?" as one of the most debated points among fans and critics alike. Instead of taking the time and effort to dissect some of the more complex issues in games today, I thought I'd put the spotlight on one of my favorite whipping boys.
In a world full of instant gratification, it seems almost insane that millions upon millions of gamers would purposefully take on the second jobs that most MMOs have become. What makes the grind one of the most common yet most hated concepts in online games today? Will next gen MMO's continue to use this tried and true method or bend to the perceived pressure for 'something else'?
To answer those questions you have to look at the reasons Teh Grind was ever a part of these games to begin with. The original concept of levels comes from the D&D system as a way to measure a player's progress and skill at surviving the tests that the DM threw against him. Back in those days, if you did something stupid that got most of your party killed you were dead for good, perma-death style. Somewhere along the way, the goal became more important than the journey and game designers decided that people wouldn't want to play a game with any kind of death penalty. With the invention of 'respawning' and the change to an arbitrary XP system based on killing monsters without reason, the grind was well on its way into the annals of gaming legend.
The first game I can remember that introduced the concept of grind was 'Dragon Warrior' for the original NES. DW boasted that it contained over 30 hours of game play, which in the era of Ninja Gaiden and its two hours of carnage for you money, seemed a dream come true. Alas, what they didn't tell you was that 26 of those hours would be spent killing the same monsters over and over again to level up just to walk across the next bridge and not be killed in one hit by the more powerful, and slightly different colored, mobs there. Sound familiar? Sometimes I wonder if all the current MMO Developers still have a copy of it on their game shelf.
Many RPG games followed its example to various degrees, mostly for the purpose of inflating a lack of content with insane time sinks. "Why build lots of content? Players probably won't even notice or appreciate it anyway, right? Much better to just design a few areas and make it take weeks of leveling to move between them, then we won't need as many QA guys either!" We all know the rest of the story and to avoid the same pitfall with this article, I'll skip right to the good part: Why do modern online games use this tactic to this day almost without exception and why are RPGs seemingly the only victim?
The nature of MMORPGs makes any kind of large scale GM system financially infeasible and without a way to permanently die or an intelligent system of rewarding player skill other than the mindless and repeated slaughter of endless monsters. The concept of grind had become a natural evolution of our gaming styles. Combine that with a monthly fee revenue program and you can clearly see the reason that grind rules supreme. Even so-called 'skill based' game have their own version of the grind whether it's money or repetitive skill tasks, it's really only a bit of TurtleWax on the proverbial turd. All the really interesting games that appeared to change our perception of the grind failed spectacularly in virtually every other category of their design. Games like SEED and Dragon Empires, why have you forsaken me?
Many offline RPG games (like Oblivion) involving levels have done an exceptional job of pacing the player through the game without resorting to needless time sinks and provide a lot of content for a one time price tag, but you can bet that developers will only go as far as they have to. After all, it's still a business. You would think that with the incredible budgets and manpower put into making even a sub par MMO, that there wouldn't be any shortage of content to hide behind an annoying treadmill, but the trend in recent years points toward quite the opposite. It seems that more and more developers are realizing that we, as consumers, are willing to accept things that would doom a single player title. Who would buy a half finished and buggy PC game on the promise that the rest would be added later? We have been trained to accept that because MMO's are never 'really finished', it ok for us to pay for them 'half finished' as well.
Now that you have earned 'Read Vacuous Article' Level Two, I'll let you guys farm me for a bit in the forums. Gratz!
Wonderful article, and I agree wholeheartedly. Enough grind, bring back the fun to MMO's.
I think players have different opinions about what exactly a "grind" in an mmo actually is. I for one don't really mind grinding, to a certain degree, as long as there are other options for me in a game. If I am forced to grind away to accomplish certain goals, I sometimes get discouraged, but other times I get a real feeling of accomplishment when I achieve success.
Grinds can be fun for some people. A comment that I read, "bring back the fun of mmo's" seems inaccurate to me, since many, or all of the original and early mmos were based on the grind. It has only been in newer mmorpgs that questing and other forms of gameplay have become more popular.
I never felt like I was caught in a grind when I played Everquest II and World of Warcraft, because when I felt like I was, I simply switched to something else in the game. There were other gameplay options. When I played Lineage II and RF Online, I did feel the grind, and it was heavy. I tried to look to other forms of gameplay but there really were none. This is the worst part of a mmo that has a grind, because there is no escape from it.
Star Wars Galaxies, which I consider one of the best all time mmos ever (the original version), had a heavy grind within the professions. Skills has to be used to gain experience, and so my character, as a Chef, needed work. I spend countless hours grinding, but I did it in a public cantina, where other players would gather and roleplay. This made me feel as if I was actually working and not just grinding, as I played out the role of bartender/chef, and the work I did had a little more meaning.
I like the quest-grind, as it had been called, but I also miss the old days of going out without any quests, with only the desire to explore and slay creatures for experience. I think the best thing I could think of in an mmo is a mix of everything, with lots of options and things to do. I've had fun in almost all mmorpgs I've tired, but not a single one puts is all together for a complete experience, yet.
If people lack any form of imagination then yes grind does exist for a large portion of their play time, single player games are a bad example as it only one person playing it in a world of NPC's logic tells me there is not much competition between other players other then maybe showoff some fancy screenshots or share stats with others on website's. The competition factor between a single player game and an online game are so different from each other so with MMO's you need other way's what will provide competition towards other players. Now what I see with some MMOrpg's they give you that change to be part of a world that is made with the help of it's player base, meaning some games might appear empty at start but will in time start creating new city's/village's, a mmorpg needs to evolve, for such a game I want to get in a area and maybe come back in a few months and see a whole town being build, shops being opened. Patients is also very important especially if you want to play what I like to call a genuine mmorpg.
Maybe in a few years we might get closer to large city's filled with thousands and thousands of NPC's doing there daily business together with PC's but we all know that technology to create MMO's that way is still far from being perfect this goes together with the limited capacity of most systems that even though some systems have really come along way i'm betting we havn't seen anything yet. Just look at what the last 20years did in gaming so really we havn't seen anything yet, its all just starting.
Excellent article thank for writing it. Yeah I've been wondering lately why I adore offline single player RPGs like Jade Empire, Oblivion, Crackdown, etc and puke at the thought of playing an MMO these days. I can only play an MMO for only so many hours, I never make it out of free trial usually. Thus I bought my xbox 360 console.
Alas, I did realize almost all multiplayer games has some grind nowadays. BF2142 requires hours and hours if you want to unlock all your solider gear. I don't really know anyone that unlocked it without extreme hours of play. Rainbow 6: Vegas isn;t too bad but Lost Planet- they all give ya like 2-3 models to begin with (online deathmatch) and you gotta 'level up' to earn the best new outfit. After hrs and hrs of play, still havent unlocked my new costume. This is getting extreme- you cant even play a darn simple shooter online anymore w/o having to face a mind numbing grind for features that should be unlocked on day 1. The good ole days of having everything unlocked (like Quake 3, Unreal Tournament) seem dead. Everything seems influenced by MMOs which kinda sucks. Everything has Classes and Levels....
This is a very good post actually. I think the problem is a single player RPG can get away with only being 7-10 hrs long. For instance I think me and my buddy beat Crackdown in less than 6 hrs. Lost planet less than 10 hrs, etc. An MMORPG tries to have a lot more longetivity so having a lot of options is key I agree
Great article. Grind system is sometimes really unpleasant. Killing 10 mobs of the same type it's ok but when you have to kill 100 for leveling to go on the next zone.
When NPJ told us to kill 10 spiders, when you finish they told us hummm. .. i forgot to tell you to kill another 10 spiders... WHAT?!? I just spend 1 hour killing your spiders because my level was not enough high. I want to move on!! I hope some days someone will reinvent this system. I dont want a second jobs. I already have one and it's enough. I play MMO for fun and make fun with my friends and family. Not for the game editor...
Vanguard have big potential. But the game is lunch and it's like is still in beta phase... I pay 60$ for a game almost unplayable.
. and the system requirements
... I got it but the game is still unplayable... 
I hope some day my dream will come true! A great finished MMORPG!
I'm one of those players that hates the idea of XP in general. The whole reason XP exists in pen and paper RPGs is that there is no objective way to test a players skill. In chess, checkers, go, action games, FPSs, sports, you simply get better with time. Because pen and paper RPGs exist largely in the heads of players, that skill progression has to be emulated. There is no reason (apart from tech restrictions and now, force of habit) to include any kind of leveling system in any RPG. Live combat people. Non fetch-quests that are Zelda and puzzle like in nature, well designed dungeons that make you think. Skills that require player interaction rather than randomly generated output with a few modifiers tacked on. A REAL STORY.
Teh Grind is just about designer laziness. And I get that MMOs require alot of time, money and resources to put together and current technical limitations don't make everything listed above plausible. But at least some of it is.
Of course, players share the blame here. You're the one paying the subscription fees. Speak with your wallet.
You can make the world smaller (but add pathing to make it seem bigging), you can limit the number of races and classes, you can have limited customization or you can use kill X mob and fed-ex quests and grinding. The point being a dev has to make cuts somewhere or they risk running out of money and releasing a half done game or selling off their game engine to bring in some cash.
Maybe in time as the idea of game modules become more popular, overhead cost will lower and the grind will fade away. Of course all games will look and play sorta the same, but you can't have everything.
Or maybe its the 'boys' that have countless hours to grind while the 'men' have demanding jobs, wife, and kids.
The grind is something that is from both a limited budget and limited reasources, if you look at early single player games they were much the same way. Pac-man was a few mazes where the ghosts got faster every level. Space invaders was a single stage where more bullets would come every level. MMORPGs are single quest templetes where things hit harder every level. We really just need to wait for technology to catch up and make producing MMORPGs easier so less reasources must be spent on the technical aspects, and more can be spent on the design aspects.
Well a "grind" is all relative really. To me, if you never played EQ1 in 99-00, then you have no concept of what "grinding" really means.
I find that a game becomes grinding when it loses some fun value and you begin to notice it. If I am enjoying the gameplay, I won't notice really that I have to Kill X mobs or loot Y items. It's similar to watching a good movie, if you like it you won't notice it's 3 hours long while a 90 min sucky movie will seem like 5 hours.
I remember grinding my last 5 levels in DAOC pre-SI on the Trees ..and it really felt like one. (Nothing like that anymore, thankfully)
Lineage 2 (at launch) brought new meaning to the term grind.... quests seemed to be an afterthought just to make you run around and I gave up after getting my Ranger up to level 51 or so.... found myself at one camp grinding with 4 guildmates for a week....and decided enough for me....
Lately games have more quests that disguise the grind..so it doesn't bother me so much..(though once I got past level20 in VG I felt the grind coming back..so I bailed quickly)
I doubt we can ever fully get rid of the grind in MMO's....but efforts to mask it are greatly appreciated by myself.
Nice article stating in general what I posted on a specific game forum about grinding. Yes, ALL MMOs have grinding. I've play EnB, UO, SWG, Entropia, EVE, Horizons, Auto Assault, Hero and now 9Dragons and every one of them involved grinding. Of these, 3 stand out as a bit different though. Auto Assault was definitely an attempt at a completely quest-based levelling system, and it accomplished that fairly well until you got to the higher levels, when they just seem to have gotten exhausted and reverted to grinding. EVE was a grind in the sense that you needed to let the GAME itself grind out real-time hours to gain any skill. So while you may not have been grinding against monsters, you were grinding out the clock.
I have to agree with an earlier poster in that I found SWG (pre-NGE, if not pre-CU) to be the high point of MMOs to date. Yes, you did your grinding, but there was so much to do and so much support for non-combat gameplay that it was really a joy. Add in the twitch-style of space combat (Jump to Lightspeed) and you had the best (to date) combination of RPG and shooter styles. And the crafting was my favorite. No other game has come close to the depth and complexity of original SWG for crafting. So then, the question always arises as to WHY it was decided that depth and complexity were unwanted and the game dumbed down to an almost criminal level. Why, pre-CU, you could even make a viable crafter/fighter hybrid. It was the best to date, and nobody else has seen fit to even attempt to emulate it.
Now, a little grinder that doesn't try to be too much can be fun. I find Acclaim's new 9Dragons full of charm and there's a bit more variety to the grind than usual for these types of free MMOs, with a bit more variety in what you can do to take a break from the grind as well. I'm enjoying it immensely so far. You also need to make choices in the game, and I think that's what we're all really looking for: choices. Choices in gameplay, choices in skill allocation, choices in styles. Choices = added complexity = steeper learning curve, though. I'm just not sure why game development companies feel that having to work a little is such a bad thing.
The only game that I know of that doesn't put a grind into levels is hotly debated as not being a real MMORPG. That makes me wonder if we get rid of the grind, are we getting rid of what makes an MMORPG an MMORPG. (I'm referencing Guild Wars here btw) They have made the cap lower and give tons of quests and made leveling easy. Too easy some would complain, but out of all the games out right now, they have absolutely made (in my opinion) a more captivating game by not making levels nearly as important as game play and storyline.
In closing, I think with research and a million focus groups we would come to determine that one MMORPG cannot satisfy everyone without making it so flexible that it just becomes 5+ games wrapped into one box. It's my opinion that some grind is necessary. It cuts out the "riffraff" from just picking up the game, being your level in 3 days and not having a grasp of how things work and you wind up dying because of it. But, until someone really starts complaining loudly and can create a system of their own that works, this is what we have. A
People want a single player RPG they can play online. With a massive amount of people. Unfortunately, single player games don't work with a massive amount of people online, hence you have to create content that WILL work with a massive population all trying to do it at the same time. The inclusion of instanced content is a big step forward towards the more "single player" experience, but as we saw with Dungeons and Dragons online, too much instanced content in a supposed massively multiplayer game ruins it.
MMO's are a genre with its own strengths and weaknesses. I think people who complain about the grind are either A)playing a eastern developed game like Lineage 2 or B) unaware that they are not playing an offline single player game.
If you remove the grind, which would create an "end" point in a game, all you now have is a co-op game. Like playing Halo 2 co-op with a buddy and beating it. Remove the grind and you'd just have a co-op game with a frick'n huge player limit.
Now what do single player games do to keep people playing after they "beat" the solo content? Multiplayer. According to the definition of "grind" used by most, any and all multiplayer gaming is a grind. BF, Halo, CS etc. People may not think of it as a "grind" because it's more "involved" gameplay because it's "twitch" gaming. Hence, why most all MMO's have PVP, to give players something to do, something more "twitch" and competetive to enjoy in a true multiplayer experience.
People rush through the great, storied content to get to the "end game" only to realize they have to do the same thing more then once. Ever if you have 50 dungeons and 30 raids and 100 different PVP things to do, you'll end up doing the same thing over and over if you keep playing over a long enough period of time. Then you come to MMORPG.com or the game's forums and complain about the "grind."
What makes every multiplayer encounter different is the people you play with/against. Want to remove the grind? Play with people whom you really enjoy playing with and you have a good time with. You'll then hear yourself saying "what grind?! I'm having a great time."
Hehehe, reminds me of a quote by Charles Bukowski after his character in the film Barfly was told it takes nothing to be a drunk. His reply was that it takes endurance to be a drunk...and endurance is more important than truth.
i did play awfull grinding games ( AO back in the days before SL, Lineage 2 ...) but i still had fun and played them for several years, Although i admit i wouldnt like to see games with such a time sink as L2.
my 2 cents
QFT! Anything that is fun is not a grind - when it stops being fun, it becomes grind. Playing "peek a boo" with my nephew is fun for ten minutes, then becomes grind. Doing the ol' bump & grind is not a grind even though it has grind in it.
As someone who was in the SEED beta, I have to say that the grind was stiil there. There was "no combat" and no monsters to fight, but in the halls spawned broken machinery that had to be repared. The process was exactly like attacking spawned mobs that weren't actualy mobile. You didn't take damage back, but your tools did. You didn't risk death and xp loss, but you risked overstressing a tool and loosing that asset if it broke.
The developers' vision for the game was inspiring. Unfortunately they lacked the resources in time, money, and experience to see it truely happen.
I think the entire argument is ridiculous. One poster here said something along the lines of "what happened to all of the games where everything is unlocked like Quake 3 and UT" That post sums up exactly why I can't stand this "argument" anymore. Those games are alive and well - those are first person shooters.
Maybe its just that young people have no frame of reference and perspective, but Dungeons and Dragons PNP was VERY MUCH a grind game. By the time the NES came around, the idea of getting exp and leveling to build stronger characters to 'save the world' was an ANCIENT concept. Does no one remember Ultima, or Bards Tale or even the original "skill based" RPG Alternate Reality?
If you are so fixated on "hating the grind" either 1) the genre isnt for you or 2) you are mainly frustrated that you are feeling inadequate since MMOs are multiplayer. Both of those point to a problem with the player. You simply arent going to get an RPG of any kind where, right from the get go, EVERY player is capable of taking on EVERY challenge the game has to offer and "twitch skills" are all that seperate people. Those games are HERE. Play Halo. Maybe they need to make a fantasy Halo and then all of the people that claim to hate grinding can go play that. My guess is they will complain about that too b/c most likely they will be middle of the pack players (as most of us are) and games like that can really only rely on PVP (I mean how fun is PVE with NO hierarchy of skill???)
People seem to be claiming they want Golden Axe or Gauntlet MMORPG - I dont buy it. I would really like to hear how you can eliminate "the grind" and yet somehow still have an RPG environment where you start as a weak youngster with big dreams and eventually end up a mighty dragon slayer defending the kingdom. WoW has got to be the easiest game I've ever seen in terms of hand holding you to max level and yet people STILL complain.
The point is to ENJOY the world and content as you make it through each phase of your characters "life". If every step of the way all you are doing is fixating on how much you hate the fact you have to level (and not allowing yourself to enjoy the sights, the quests, the new areas) then of COURSE you are sabotaging your own experience. Once again, if thats the case, the RPG genre (ESP the multiplayer RPG genre) is simply NOT FOR YOU. A lot of people simply cant stand the fact that they have "so many levels to go" and they are "so low level" and so they blame the fact that leveling is part of the game. This is completely wrongheaded thinking but is very typical in our "entitlement society" as the author of the article made reference too. These games have a HEAP of content at EVERY level. Just enjoy the level you are at and ignore the lvl 90s running by and you will be a LOT happier. Its a good philosophy for life in general. Do you fly into a rage when you pass by a multi-million dollar mansion or see a new Ferrari?
Someone may make that fantasy Halo I theorized above and you might then find you love it, but that would just prove the point that the RPG genre is not for you. Unless we're going to agree now to redefine "RPG" to include every possible other genre, the idea of character development and advancement (which MUST include "a grind" by definition since you cant possibly just start out with a fully developed and advanced character day 1) is part of the package.
Yeah you missed my point entirely. What I was saying is that even first person shooters now have grind. If you have not played BF2142 then you no doubt have no clue what I'm talking bout. Read my post again
[edit] forgot to respond to your other point. Anyone that says eliminating 'grind' cant be done has absolutely zero imagination. You can have an MMO totally based on something like Unreal Tournament but simply make it massive multiplayer and have unlocks. You just have to make sure you balance the content carefully against progression. Guild Wars comes really close to this model- I hit lvl 20 on all my toons by doing all the missions only (pure storylines). I experienced 0 grind. It's not 100% MMO but close enough for most of us. So yeah, its totally possible but its HARD especially if you want to charge a monthly fee. Guild Wars overcomes all of this though and has hopefully paved the way for more 'bold' business ventures from publishers. I salute the Guild Wars. So many of these guys that say grind is inevitable have not played Guild Wars obviously!
Fanbois proclaiming how great a game is even though 75% of the promised features is killing this genre, and killing the PC industry. We are already seeing less and less games coming to the PC. And I'm willing to say 90% of these games aren't worth looking at.
has been tryed before.. do you realise what this suppose ?
the answer have already been posted in sevarls posts above... and you point out too the MAIN reason people complain about grinding in your post (oyou reference to GW lvling).
The grind, in most of the games, is an issue BECAUSE people aim for the last lvl and dont take time to even enjoy the world between lvl 1 and whatever lvl max is. for instance take WoW ( since it kinda became the mmo "reference" :() how many people dont even know why they have to kill XX spiders.. how many people just quest-grind to get to 60 ( 70 now) withotu even bothering reading the quests ? yet the same people complain about the quest grind but they have no idea why they been asked to do so.
its jsut a matter of play style , and people whilling to rush the max lvl right ahead but yet complain because its too muhc of a grind while they didnt even bothered with what the game have to offert are jsut not playing the right game imo.
most of the mmorpg's out ther give options , you are not forced to grind.. you decide to do so.. the only one that doesnt give you much of an option that come to my mind (P2P) is lineage 2 most of others dont have that. ( i played a lot of different but not EVERYONE so might have a few more)
Blaam you have a good point but Guild Wars absolutely does not have grind. You must not have played it. You can create a max level character from the start and jump right into pvp! Please, please play Guild Wars people before you try to diss it lol
If you choose to go PvE route you can stick to the main RPG storyline complete with cutscenes. You hit level 20 automatically upon completion. No grind whatsoever. I know, I did it with 3 toons.
All I can say is , The Burning Crusade!
Yep wow, the grind master of them all has finally fixed this. I just hit level 58, finally after all of that grinding. This weekend I got to venture into Outland for the first time. It's very cool (could use better graphics, but still very cool). What's really great about Outland is the lack of grind. The game is just plain fun. Rewards for quests are 10000xp plus uber gear. It makes the game fun again. I really wish they would revamp Azeroth and make it play like Outland. Outland is just plain fun and I never feel like I'm grinding at all. I went from 58 to 60 in one day just doing quests and now have all new gear to go with it. No more buying crap at the ah for to much money, it's all handed to you in Outland.
Thank You Blizzard for this wonderful expansion :)
i actually did :) played during beta.. didnt like it.. bought nightfall and had lot of fun with my heros.. so i bought the 2 first addon and did all campains ;)
i was jsut pointing at what was said about getting to lvl 20 in a week and have fun, too me it reflects well what happen in mmorpg's in general i means rush themax lvl like if only the high lvl content was worth it and THATs what takes away lot of fun un a MMORPG imo ;)
ps : i ll jsut add that nightfall has lot of grinds farming titles is a pain and you have to od it if you whillling to lvl up some important titles that give you a huge hedge in the elite areas (spent a month grinding it off jsut to have the pleasure to be able to do it with my derviche and my heros ;))
SWG was mentioned so I need to add that Pre-NGE Galaxies was kinda dependent on Grinding. It had multiple xp pools to feed the varied skill based professions. Scouting xp was different from Pistol xp, though earned simularly. Why was grinding acceptable (to a degree) in SWG? Large groups made for interesting conversations. The odds were high for it with groups up to 20 players. Most of the time, the Loot/Resources gathered had a value and there was always a chance to score something useful (i.e. Legedary Weapons). The intensity to grind was high also when xp was traded for Jedi xp during the Village Unlock period for Jedi. I found grinding most fun when there was a quest goal attached such as the Padwan or Knight Trials. The only grind in SWG that about killed me was the Crafting Grind. Grinding for (Force Sensitive) Master Crafter just about did me in. Why was this tolarble? These were forms of Achievement that were very rewarding for gameplay. This would still be true if Jedi was not a starting profession and a alpha class in the NGE.
The public has spoken, however, and Sandbox MMO gameplay do not make the big bucks. In truth, what MMO is a 2nd rate smash hit compared to WOW? Nobody else has come close to hitting those numbers. I think the question is more than what did Blizzard do right but why hasn't anyone repeated Blizzards success?
I agree that grinding is much of a solution to content when enough can't be developed. I would also say that any content in (payed for) expansions that award high xp is a built in mechanic to sell the product. There is good and bad with grinding and having alternatives to any system or sub-system can't be bad. Variety is the spice of life. Though the game has troubles, I think Vanguard did something great to add the Negoiation (Political) system in as an alternative to fighting.
Yesterday when I was talking to my friend I had mentioned that if an MMO got rid of "how much XP I need to level bar" the feel of grind may be more untoticeable. When playing an MMO I notice people saying "how much more do you need to level". People are constantly looking at their level bar and I find that too and as I get higher level I'm looking at it and watching it slowly creep up and it gets boring. Without the level bar and you just level, it may seem a little less of a grind. In real live you don't have a level bar for when you get your next raise or when you get a promotion.
Another thing that kind of makes MMO's feel grindy to me is the fact that you go to an area and see the mobs just walking around in a 10 food area. I played the free Ryzom for a bit and the thing I found kind of neat is that the mobs would migrate, and if you stand in once place a mob may just come up to you and watch you, sniff you and maybe try to get your attention. This made the game more realistic which made it more fun, which made it seem less of a grind (reason I stopped is because I like playing games with certain friends and they didn't really care for the game).
The idea behind Dark and Light really got me interested when reading about it in early beta (now I hear its one of the worse games ever made). A game with a full eco system, plants dying and new ones growing, migrating mobs, changing land areas, it seemed exciting when reading about it. I think like making a game more realistic would make a game seem less of a grind. Make a game where you have to hunt your prey, you have to seek them out a bit. You may only be able to do that quest in certain seasons because they prey may not be there in the winter time....which means you have to make a game with seasons. The grind may be a major part of any MMO but the idea is to mask it and make it interesting.
Maybe the next gen of MMOs will be different. With computing power getting stronger, and broadband connections getting better and more people having them, I can see a whole new MMO. I have high hopes for Star Trek online and Stargate Worlds, I think these games will be a HUGE change in the way MMO's are played (or so I hope). Right now Pirates of the Burning Sea has potential, we'll have to see what happens. David Perry's secret game (which I'm going to try and work on and hopefully win the directorship) has great potential. Hopefully games will get more intelligent, have more options and be more realistic. I think then people will think less about the grind.
And that, I think, is where grinding becomes the evil that most people hate. When what you're doing is fun and/or voluntary, I don't think people mind so much, especially if there are other choices of gameplay available for you to choose at any moment. But when the grind is forced upon you and you have no choice in the matter, it becomes very noticeable and the fun factor drops dramatically.
Without jumping on a WoW-bashing bandwagon, I'll give props to Blizzard for making an enjoyable game with plenty to do (even without grinding) from 1-59. Then you hit 60 and there's nothing much to do other than grind for gold, grind dungeons and raids for "phat loots" and grind various reputations for whatever rewards. After doing beta for several months for The Burning Crusade, that was the final straw for me. Mostly the same quests I'd already taken several characters 1-60 through, and a bazillion more reputations to grind, many of which are required to get attuned to a raid instance. 60-70 was pretty much a joke, even casual players were reaching 70 in a month or less, then back to the grind.
Content takes a vastly larger time to create than to play through unless it is based on some kind of grind. This is the root of the whole problem. It simply isnt physically possible for a company to produce content at the rate which even casual players will progress through it, grinding aside.
There is only one reasonable answer to this issue: Player Driven Content.
There are very few examples of this design style in MMOs and there are zero examples of it being pulled off with the polish of some of the npc driven MMOs. Ryzom Ring is one example where players design their own content and Lineage 2 is one example where players drive the content through a complex PvP system (when you arent taking part in the horrible grind.)
This is the ONLY way to solve this problem and it appears that, at the very least, Warhammer realizes this and is designing their game to be driven by PvP.
Hopefully more companies will realize this soon.
And lets not forget roleplaying, there are MUDs built completely on roleplaying with very little "game" holding them together. Granted, this is more difficult to pull off with a graphical UI but not impossible and with a little more "design" in the game design process and more frequent content updates as well as creative quest building these problems would be solved. Just look at the latest PS3 game LittleBigPlanet, that's some interesting multiplayer stuff going on there. Yes 70 person raids might be gone out the window, but a 6-8 person team would be perfect for really interesting challenging quests. Just a little brain sweat would be required on the part of the developers.
I think you've really nailed it here about what Grinding really means: boring repitition. It's also one of the reasons that grinding is something for which different people seem to have different tolerance levels and interpretations of: some find slaughtering endless spiders cool and fun.....for a while at least......while others (myself included) begin to question the point of our actions after spider #10 and the quest objective is complete.
Soooo....I'd say that grinding by definition is really best defined as, "The threshold at which a MMO player is no longer enjoying the experience of the game, and/or is finding the game process so repetitious as to instill boredom."
Killing monsters need not be boring.....but if the game treats the process of kill-loot-earn xp-reapeat in to something which is like a chore, then the designers do them a disservice by failing to spruce up the way that their game can be played. I think there's plenty, even at the high-end levels of a game, that can be done to keep a player's interest and avoid boring repetition.
One thing, for example, that I think some developers miss the boat on is the fact that people do this stuff for reward.....so why not reward more often? Leveling in WoW, for example, always generates a new talent point and a bunch of advances,,,,,but what if leveling in WoW happened in smaller stages. If, instead of getting all those increases after 600,000 xp, what if every four bars of experience acquired you "mini leveled" and gto 20% of the total advances leading to the next level....effectively a quarter level's worth of experience earned and paid for. I know it would probably work to motivate my tired, addicted brain....
DDO does this, I think with it's achievement system.....but it doesn't really work, because the bonus is too little and takes too long even to get that. In fact, of all the MMOs I've played, I think I found DDO the most tedious to advance in, partially because I know how the paper and pencil version of D&D plays (and it is nothing as tedious as DDO), and because there simply isn't enough content in the game to escape grinding....you have no choice but to repeat dungeon after dungeon, over and over, to build up that exp bar.
So far, I think games like EQ 2 and WoW manage to balance advancement very nicely in their early levels (1-20), although with EQ 2 I haven't tested it past that point (check back in another week, heh). If they could only sustain the momentum on up to level 100.....sigh....
ROFL! Lets not forget the inane reasons for some quests: If I kill 150 rabbits to get that lucky rabbit's foot to drop....that's a hell of a lot of unlucky rabbits! Hah!
You make an excellent point. I have played WoW two years and refuse to grind for rep and faction standing....but am alarmed at all the quests and stuff I miss out on because I know, absolutely know, my tolerance level for the grind prevents me from ever wasting precious air-sucking living time on something so stupid. I might as well run in circles for a few hours, at least I'll get exercise.
So yeah, if the game actually requires you to grind to have a chance of advancement......baaaad sign.
I like the way you think. Unfortunately, I think it'll be a while yet before IPs like those you mentioned get fair treatment.....shortly after Star Wars Galaxies gets fixed, or we all experience a rectal emergence from winged primates......
I agree with you. I played the face of mankind beta and they tried to make a player driven mmo, but they skimped. The only missions people were able to make were "secure an area" if you were playing a cop and "take over an area" if you were playing a bad guy. Now I hear they're making NPC missions because the game tanked so bad. To rely on just players to make missions may not be a good idea because even though there are a lot of people with good imaginations out there, its hard to come up with good quests in the spur of the moment...unless you lead the people in the right direction. Give the people enough options to make good quests themselves. I never played Ryzom Ring, it sounds interesting though. I'll be cool to see the future of MMOs, one can only tell what may happen. It takes just one really good idea to sprout up many others.
The first MMO was a revolutionary thing and now the games are getting more expensive. Game developers are scared to make a drastically different game and have it tank so instead they keep adding minor changes here and there testing to see what we like and what we don't.
Maybe if game developers had forums not just on the specific games but on what people would like in a game and they read it, they would get a better idea of what the mass' want. Right now they have a few people reading their forums and most people have the same questions but the devs don't really promote bringing out ideas, using imagination. I was beta testing Matrix Online and I saw people give ideas but the devs didn't say anything about them. They would answer the questions about PvP and such, but when someone came up with an idea for the game it just went seemingly unnoticed....same with Face of Mankind. This is why I think the David Perry Top Secret challenge might be good. It'll show that the masses have good ideas and maybe devs will listen or even hire unknowns to direct video games. I know for years I've had ideas for games and would have loved the money to direct one myself.
Wolfrider certainly recalls correctly. Content, or rather the lack thereof, is the real reason for Grinding in Role-playing games. In your classic D&D days, the game designers would craft modules that 5-6 people would sit around a table and play from start to finish in around 6 hours. When the first RPGs go put on the early computers, designers ran into an awful shock-- the content of a D&D scenario was playable in about 20 min solo on the computer! Thus a 100 hour game was potentially equal to 300 D&D scenarios!!!
Now obviously there was not an entire monastery of designer monks hidden away cranking out all those scenarios so "filler" HAD to be added to soak up time.
Might and Magic I designed by the famous Jon Van Caneghem was the first to smack its forehead on this factor in 1988. Jon crafted this huge gaming map, it was designed to overawe everyone in its size and hence prompt people to buy his first game. So the map was in all the advertising months ahead of release. The Jon had to fill the empty map with "something"! ROFL, that turned out to be an incredible challenge. One city was only a few squares in one grid section on a map that was something like 12x16 grids. And then he had to populate that city with buildings, people, vendors, and quests. All in all a very daunting project that could have taken years to make it meaningful or even relevant. But in the always driving need to publish so you can eat, the game had to ship. So, 80+% of that huge map was totally empty, just random monster encounters. The grind here was time filling, not character related. Alas, the size of that map so captured public imagination that every RPG afterward was judged on how BIG was their map or how many 100s of hundreds of hours were needed to finish the game.
Now the real problem here is not just time, it is what to do in that time. :)
Computer game designers almost never talk about the thing that none to date have solved; the dreaded Middle Game. They know really really well how to do the intro levels of the games, and many have clear vision of the big blowoff at the end that they have in mind as a payoff to the players. Yet how to get the player from say 12th to 30th level? Grinding became the default no-brainer answer.
I have to say personally I like the thoughts you've wrote on the subjects casual gameplay, the grind, etc. MMOWTF..exactly
I've been wanting to put my 2 cents in on the subject as well. Granted this is 21'st century entertainment, and it is evolving. I've been playing for many years...suffice to say...many years..lol. Ok, I had an Atari pong when it came out and was mid teen years. moved up to Intellivision with the audio adapter for B-17 Bomber. ( bandits...6 o'clock ). Fast forward, to the time of DOS and the PC, and became quite intimate with Sierra games Kings Quest series. I don't personnally know her but know of her, and I must say Roberta Williams probably has an interesting sense of humor add to the games a phrase of " odds bodsskins". Fast forward some more to delve through various other titles like Return of the Mummy and misc other rpg's. Bare with me hear as my quick trip down short term memory lane brings me to some 8 or 10 years ago when my then 12 year old daughter came to me with a horrific story of being killed in a game she was playing by some ruthless daughter slaying PK'r. You can imagine my outrage by this. Retribution was the least of what I had in mind. Someone was going to pay dearly in an unsavory manner for even remotely suggesting my one and only beloved would suffer harm . I was instantly immersed into the wonderous, fantastic world of....Diablo. My mission was clear...I would save her at any and all costs, forsaking anything I might need to go through to learn what it would take to max level and forever in that realm be a true hero and Pallidin. I met some good friends to quickly show me the ropes. I explained I would thwart any and all comers. NO ONE would harm my child ever again. 5 YEARS later, victim of several pk's, body poppings, and countless lost duels I found true love of my first MMORPG. Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction is and always will be part of my history, indulgence in escapism, and investment of entertainment, and at 45 years of age and the current rate of what the industry is become, my most loved game of choice.
I've built up my system to handle anything avialable to date. I anticipate great things from hype, ( thanks alot marketing geniouses ) from the names and titles to come. I've ground ( grind plural ) in L2, DDO, Horizons, Oblivion, Ferentus, RYL, Last Chaos, WOW, GW, Dungeon Siege, paid useless homage to DnL and being subjected to It's bogus billings, fell into the bogus unfinished hype of Vanguard ( lvl 20 orc dreadknight ) , LOTRO ( jury still out, Turbine has progressed since DDO ) and then lastly scored a beta key to try NCSoft's Dungeon Runners...hmm wierd they jacked and plagerized my beloved Diablo in an off sort of way. Go ahead and call me the disgrundled gamer, but as I see it a day late and a dollar short of what they should've done with the potential of L2. ( long live the memory of Hellsfire alliance ) . But I digress... occasionally...
I have a career. I have alot of spare time. I also have cash to throw at 21'st century entertainment, 50" big screens are the shit. When dissatisfied or bored or a good new movie comes along, I find that entertaining as well. The similarity between movies and games is astounding, it's the way our history of entertainment is, and will be going for some time. Both have a mix of interest to the masses, but you cant alway please everyone all the time. You don't have to subject yourself to something you find objectionable. But the classics should get the respect they deserve. The patronage of the following should prove that, and it does. So my long winded point is: During the time we invest / spend for our entertainment / escapism should be reciprocated in the return for it. When I run off to ( fill in the blank, name of world you enjoy ) I DO NOT want to think of car, mortgage, utility, taxes or any other real worldly responsibility. I DO NOT want to remember I work to Iive and choose freely not to live to work! I want to escape, to be alone and conquere or siege opposing wrongdoers with an alliance. I want to be GODLY. I want to have riches beyond imagination. I want to find the mystical magical powerful sword / armor of ludicrous potential . FFS it's a fantasy, let us have it so that is should be just that. I don't know what to tell all the people that want to simulate real world hardships, grind, and mediocrity in there gaming experience...maybe try getting a job?
You were able to relax and chat with friends and new people a like. WoW has no community because grouping only exist for instances. I hate the immature kids that roam WoW. I see why they are there as the game is easy and you do not need an attention span to play it. The levels fly by and you can solo the whole game. MMORPGs should be about coming together to accomplish things. That was the beauty of EQ. The only ones that hated EQ are the ones that are antisocial or just arrogant jerks that really couldn't handle being in a social environment. EQ was nice as it weeded out these people early on. You are a jerk equals no leveling for you. At higher levels you didn't see too many WoW children.
Quest makes the game feel to mapped out. I prefer a big world where you go out and decide what you are going to kill. I don't need npcs telling me to hunt rats. Just put loot on monsters and chances for decent items to drop off certain creatures and let people group up and decide what monsters die by there swords that day. It is freedom people. For people saying games are grind what do you want? To be max level in a week? Where is the accomplishment in that? Why buy a MMORPG that you blow through in a week? To me it sounds lazy and just like everything else now days ... everyone wants instant gratification. I am sorry the best things in life are things you work for.
sorry! Are you defending Da Grind because gamers should be more imaginative when they grind? i.e. if one plays in a style that makes grinding fun it will be????It is acknowledged by most people here that Da Grind is one of the worst aspects of mmorpging and any one who says take WoW for instance is like saying well if you eat food, Macdonalds is a really good example of eating food....it is poor game design - pure and simple. WE know why - due to the limitations of the games industry and market forces. So what if WoW is popular. It does not justify grind. Macdonalds is popular but I would not take a date there unless she was retarded. (YES..i am saying playing WoW is for retards by the way! }:). Good gaming..online or other wise is about having agonistic, aleactic, ilinx and hopefully mimicry entertainment (I quote my games lecturer here!) I can't tell games designers to stop making easy money off of the 6 trillion idiots who grind to level 60 (i got to 15 before recognizing what a turd WoW is) but as a paying customer I would like the games designers to recognise that they have to stay one yard in front of the herd to keep making money - pioneers such as myself and my illustrious scriber Dan are suggesting at a higher echelon of gaming experience and remedies to the malady that is DA GRIND. N.B. I loved the guildwars journey to level 20 because there was a point to the story line....ascending among one of them and did it with about 6 characters -although the first time was the best. Sadly I spend most of my time grinding on D&D online so I am as big a bitch as any one for sucking up DA GRIND. so point taken I have stylized my play to enjoy the grind some what! But i still think perma death would take it to the next level - e.g. give more meaning to the gaining of experience points/staying alive is the chief goal and not hiting a certain level be it 20 or 70! make killing x number of monkey spiders a seriously worthy experience as your charcter's life is on the line (mimicry)
If anyone has played Rubies of Eventide you would know they have some awesome ideas there but also some major issues. Let me just extract what they are doing right. Rubies have wonderful character development. This is because you as the player do it. They give you the points from leveling and you place them where you want. Sure you can really gimp yourself but it is all up to you. You have complete freedom. You can create a pure melee character and give him all points in magic if you wanted. Would it be a good idea? Heck no, but you can do it!
I love this freedom and I wish it would be mimicked out there in the MMORPG world. Unfortunately Rubies is also plagued with a original battle system which is horrid and limited content. For the people talking about grind, think about what a MMORPG is. The game is about interacting with people. You guys are losing yourself in trying to be the best or have the best gear, be top level the fastest. All these things is why you feel the grind. Quest and solo are removing why EQ was such a fun game. It didn't have all those quest to remove the freedom to choose what to do. The players socialized, they talked about what monsters they were going to hunt. They hunted in parties mainly and it was the most fun I have ever had in a game. Was it because of the awesome content and flashy graphics thrown at me? No. It was about the community and the fun I had playing with them. The players made thier own content and it was better than anything WoW could offer. WoW feels like they are leading you through a stale static game. EQ felt like a breathing living world where you could do anything.
I say less content and more socializing. Throw us a world out there with creatures and secrets, let us find them not some quest giver. Make each class have seperate skills that complete a party to kill monsters. It requires coming together to take down the baddies. People are missing what made this genre.
They have already made it. It is called Dungeons and Dragons Stormreach online. Still as it has been mentioned in this thread it is not currently an option to avoid DA GRIND - except in certain experimental games like Real Life and possibly skills based games like Project Entropia (you can actually travel to a nightclub on a satalite planet and dance to real djs (who own the satalite planet and charge you accordingly but it is possible to play the game with no attempt at enhancing character skills=no grind just pure pleasure). EQ is on a par with the monstrosity that is WoW...solo grind fest brought to us by Gary Gygax and the Asians! I only say this because I don't need/want/like to work and grinding is an experience closely related to that other human pastime called "a job". These are my personal opinions and I actually don't really mind if people want to play grindy games that mimic their grindy jobs - although I thought EQ was an online game for housewives and kids with ASBOs?
"Fun" is pretty subjective, but whenever I get to the point in a game where I don't se any way to advance besides doing activities that I consider to be a "grind" I put it down, MMO or offline RPG. If you aren't having fun in any game, or any hobby for that matter, it's time to move one.
And I don't know how the hell some posters got the idea that if you don't like "grinding" you secretly want an offline RPG, but that's completely bogus. First of all tons of offline RPGs have "grinds" that I've never been able to get past. Dragon Quest is a perfect example. Never made it more than a third of the way into any of them. Having 90% of your playtime consist of mindlessly killing over and over again for no other reason than to see some skills improve or a level bar move a bit is an archaic and lazy design convention. It shouldn't be tolerated in any game, online or off imo.
Quests tend to make the grind a lot more palatable to me. A deep engaging plot even more so, but that may be a standard MMOs may never be able to reach (although many games have chains of quests that together do tell an interesting story). You can argue that questing (or fighting your way to the bottom of a puzzle filled dungeon to get your next cut scene, for that matter) is merely a candy coated grind (a turd with wax on it, in the words of the OP). But I am pretty damn sure that it takes a hell of a lot more skill and planning to fill a game with quests than it does to fill a empty field with monsters and say "here you go, kill these guys until your butch enough to take down those slightly stronger guys over there."
There are other ways of making the grind more entertaining. For example, leveling via PvP. I have leveled toons entirely via PvP before, and it's a very nice change of pace. There are also some games that give you alternate advancement routes. For example leveling purely as a crafter in EQ II. I'd love to see developers do better than this, but so far it seems like quests, PvP, and alternate adavancement routes are about as good as it gets.
Conversly, For everyone that thinks "being forced to grind" = totally sweet MMORPG....there's this free MMOPRG called MANGband.
mangband.org/
There is literally nothing to do in the game but kill stuff, get loot, and chat. You'd probably really like it. It also has all ASCII graphics, so you can also get a big hardon about detailed graphics being a crutch for those that lack imagination. As for me, I'll do the best I can with my current "waxed turd" of choice, and hope that something better comes along eventually.
The problem I see is that the MMO's forget why we are playing online. Interaction with other players is the key.
People are willing to spend insane amounts of time and energy in these games because the pay-off is bigger. All the other players can see the results, and benefit from them or even die by them. Hardcore and PVP players are the extreme proof of that. But casual players like me start asking questions after a while. Why am I spending so much time on this? What's the point? What am I getting out of this? The fun factor starts slipping away. Being online with people around the world to kill rats for X hours a week gets old.
The game that has the right mix of leveling mobs, content, sandbox activities, immersive story, and social elements will be the next gen MMO :) A game we can "play" and not "try to level".
I'm keeping my eye on "Fallen Earth".
And Yeebo, great post! Also love your Turtletamer Avatar, I'm currently an Accordian Thief.
Many mmorpgs don't have anything worth taking your time on, and the more interesting things, like raiding, or the various forms of pvp can't be done until max level. Since the concept of "endgame" is such a focus for developers they tend to not do a very good job of making the experience from lvl 1 to w/e max level is very interesting or compelling. The quests are extremely shallow, they lack continuity, or something that might tie them all together. The focus tends to be on the rewards that a player can gain from the quests, such as items, money, exp, instead of focusing on how the player can affect the world in which they exist in depending on what choices he/she makes from the very beginning of his/her life.
We have to say goodbye to this sort of thing if we ever want to see something different. If ever there could be a game where there was no such thing as a level 60 thief, but simply a guy with some training and skills and items that are not uber in any way, who tries to steal stuff using his basic skills and items and MAINLY his ability to assess situations, find an opening, and think on his feet. But of course what would the guy be stealing? There would have to be a real economy in place based on private player property in the larger context of player controlled political factions, etc. etc. etc.
In other words, a game where the goals were set by the players, opening up countless situations and things to do OTHER than grinding against mobs for arbitrary returns of xp and loot. If such things didn't exist, there would be no grid.
Fear not those that enjoy the grind and the shiny loot. There is NO shortage of such game mechanics, so I'm not sure why you'd even waste your time in a discussion about something different.
Thats why i play EVE online.
I dont need to grind mobs/quests/reputation to be good.
Just fly around all day, pirate/pvp fun alone, go hang with my m8s on abit of hunting or mining escorting and get nice cash or equipment without feeling its like a JOB.
It still has the best economy, graphics, comunity and content of any game out there.
You want to trade or build or handle diplomatic relations or PVP or just PVE and have fun doing it.. its the game for you.
Its a game for the smart and more mature people i could say and those who HAVE the most free time wont get the best things like in most MMOs out there.
Sure alot of peeps say its a difficult game and they dont understand it. But if u have patience and give it a week then you will discover the greatest MMO out there.
Well sure if u want a BIG SWORD and endless beating on mobs this isnt the game for ya.
Although we got the HUGE ships and the BIG cannons :p and the biggest virtual world out there. Everything is on one server and everyone is in there. FUN.
Great article btw. and its very true that most MMOS feel like a job .. you need to play alot to be GOOD and the fun factor goes away.
EVE success is that there is no leveling. and the skills u need to train can be trained in time you dont have to be online. smartest thing i saw yet in a game.
I just have high hopes for Star Trek online. hopefully it will deliver. but if S.F. isnt your thing you'll have to wait for another game and hope it doesnt have DRAGONS in it AGAIN.
I couldn't agree more that MMO's are now becoming peoples second jobs. However I don't mind grinding under the right circumstances, hell I love it. Before and after the release of SI for DAoC(pre-Moderngrav) I had so much fun grinding with groups, it didn't feel like a grind mainly because there was always people around to group with and the community was amazing so I never focused on the amount of XP I was getting. There where also many places to level in DAoC, we could kills some mobs in a camp then run to a dungeon. Not to mention DAoC used a forced grouping model for there game, so grouping was the fastest way to level.
I prefer a forced group grinding system to WoW's solo/group quest system. All I ever do is focus on my exp, WoW's system is just forced grinding and feels more like grinding then DAoC did.
Anyway, I hate admitting that I've accepted the grind of an unfinished game. I feel ashamed almost. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 12 times, shame on me. But I guess if these developers could at least disguise this grind in unique ways (such as questing). DISGUISE YOUR GRIND BETTER!! PLEASE!! And I believe that more and more people are starting to not play these unfinished games at their release. There are a lot of games that head for the toilet like StarWars and Matrix cause they truly are unfinished and they expect people to pay for this. I play WoW and I know there are gliches in the world but at least they are not anything extreme. I think it really only has graphical unfinished business.
But I'm getting off topic here...if there is someone out there that can create a new game style for the MMORPG then I tip my hat to thee. And count me in for your game title!
Is it a grind or not?
MMOg's are all about developing a character, making it stronger so that you can explore more areas and aquire more wealth in game. Unfortunately this is considered a grind because more often than not the game design is such that it is, indeed a grind.
Level games have made grinding an accepted part of gameplay. Leveled zones, where you grind out quests and critters so that you can level and proceed to the next zone to grind. Each time going back to the trainer to get your abilities, and turning in quests, to be led to your next destination by new quests and a new grind. Usually with spare critters there to kill just to make up any points you may need to get your next level in that zone.
So that's the level game, and the level games have defined the grind.
Skill progression can also be considered a grind, but not usually the same way. In fact in skill progression games you don't call it a grind, you call it training (or at least I do). Mainly because you are developing a particular skill, and not your overall level. It's fine tuning character development, or developing your character in a more realistic process.
It's not neccesary to design zones of advancement where quests and critters have an overall value designed for level progression and world exploration, but one where critters can be more widely dispersed in difficulty, and quests alone can insure content consumption by design (the trail of breadcrumbs).
In this way the "grind" is disguised as something else. Yes it is still a grind in skills, but one that has much more variety and does not seem so repetitive as in level games. If it does resemble repetition, then the developer is to blame for a lack of imagination.
In skills you choose what to grind, where to grind, and when to grind... and in having that freedom. It really does'nt seem like much of a grind at all. More like farming out your choices in loot and experience from spawns. A freedom of choices in areas to go to, and quests to pursue, that meet your specific needs in character development, or the template you have chosen to pursue. Usually many choices that offer the same experience, but with different tactics and adventure. So much less like a grind.
UO was like this, it was a skills game, and without the feeling of a grind at any point in character progression. It was a constant adventure. I think when UO became more of a grind is when too much control was given to players in skill gains with locks and arrows. Prior to that, there was more motivation to develop characters naturally.
Grinds are more associated with level games, because that is the nature of the beast. You must grind to progress. Can it be done in more creative ways? Can zones not be designated for particular character levels and offer more variety and random events? I feel they can, and feel this would remove much of the grind I associate with level progression.
I just feel level games make grinds more apparent or noticeable. Make playing more like work and less like fun. Unfortunately most designers have chosen the level formula AKA EQ/WoW, as it evolved from pen and paper. Rather than computing skill gain as per activity, it's computed mainly by a combination of skill + level, your activity is restricted by class choice and what weapons and abilities are available. Again Less freedom, or fewer options, making it more repetitive, more of a grind.
I've given up on level MMOg's
I'm sick and Tired of the grind...
Grinding doesn't seem quite as bad in D&D because if you pay attention the story and world is tailored more towards you being a hero and if you have a good DM you should feel closer to your character. Each level is like a birthday and each level is remembered as something important like the Vast Infinite Dungeon of Doom where the party killed the Great Dragon of Blah blah blah. Too often, most MMORPGs fail to give "life" to their creations like a DM would for PnP D&D. I am 21st lvl in Vanguard. In those levels I enjoyed infiltrating an enemy camp and doing a test to prove my worthiness to my tribe in a dungeon that was more than just random mobs. That's less than two levels worth of quests out of 21. Everything else has been kill 20 Hobgoblins or kill 15 Ants or collect 20 Halfling hearts or just for a little variety, Take this letter/sack of potatoes to someone in the next town etc. Very little story is conveyed and even quests become so monotonous after a while that you end up grinding just so you don't have to figure out where 20 Fire Beetle testacles are.
A DM only has a voice as a tool and good ones tend to do so much more than an entire company does with visuals, sound, and technology. Quests are a viable way to hide the grind but it's pretty obvious to see the shallow kill and delivery quests as being as big of a time sink as grinding mobs. Dungeons also become a cave of ants, a castle of skeletons, a cave of rogues, a castle of rogue knights with very little lore or thought put into most of it. Most games definitely feel like the developers always bit off more than they should and sometime in beta 4 they woke up and shoved 20 more trash mobs of various levels in the game, 10 more dungeons with no lore, and 200 more quests of kill 10-20 "insert random trash mobs" here and deliver this to "point A".
By definition, my idea of a 3rd generation game is to break this pattern.
You forgot to mention the jedi grind itself.. the mother of all grinds. (A finished jedi template was about 11millon xp) For me in PreCU days it was worth it even tho it was hard as hell, it was the path leading to the alpha class and most respected by my opinion. U had to stay "hidden" from NPC and Players or else ud get on the bounty hunter terminal and if killed ud loose up to a weeks worth of grinding xp. At preCU launch i lost 2 million jedi xp cuz of bug when gaining only about 500-1000xp i per kill it kinda hurt a bit.
Alas playing as Bounty Hunter myself most of the time I had it coming
Wumi - PreCU Bloodfin
I think you are mixing up two issues. Certainly questing is an effort to add some interesting wrinkles and to guide players so as to avoid the tendency for killing everything that can be targeted. The greater issue is the requirement for constant repetition in the first place. Grinding refers not just to killing things, but to activities in crafting and harvesting as well. Quests can provide alternative directed goals, and can be more or less hand-holding with respect to helping players along.
I find that many players are not tolerant of any ambiguity or difficulty at all with respect to finding things. I see shouted requests all the time about where to find such-and-such or so-and-so, sometimes in spite of the fact that waypoints are given and the items or NPCs sought metaphorically "glow in the dark" with "look at me" graphical cues. What this means is that many players prefer the certainty of grinding along a steady and certain path to taking a chance on the undiscovered or unknown. I think this speaks to player motivation, which tends to be more strongly oriented toward achieving defined goals and surpassing other players than discovering things that few others have at the risk of achieving nothing at all. There are several more discussions capable of taking off from that point, so I'll leave it be.
I agree with your point about players having to create situations, but I think the game should create the launching point for the players to do this. The reason is so that all players are on the same page, so they know what's possible to do in-game, and so they know how to do it.
Using your thief example, let's say the game made a market where there were NPC's and other players with stalls, and the items for sale were actually sitting on tables. Players can walk by and see what's for sale without having to click on the box-over-the-head deal, and have the real danger of their items being stolen. The thief has the real danger of being caught. (Now that I think about it, Fable did this exactly.) This scenario would give cause for players to hire a guard, or hire a bounty hunter, and maybe a crime and punishment system. It could lead to a lot of non-combat content.
You made a great point there. I wonder if those players prefer it that way or are so overexposed to that style of questing? Probably both. I also wonder if they would appreciate a more creative, interactive gameplay if given the choice.
People are choosing to quest in newer games because the quests generally offer more experience, but the quests in newer games are really tasks and they are a form of grinding. In newer game you just run thru these tasks ignoring the text because it really is unimportant since all the questgivers are easily identified by icons or glows, there is no problemsolving required since everything is spelled out in detail, and minimaps direct you where to go and whom to see.
In old school EQ1, killing mobs offered more experience than quests usually, and because of all the random rare spawns, there was value in hunting in the same zone for a long period of time. Periodically you would discover a new rare spawn or figure out placeholder triggers. There are still rare mobs in N Karana I never saw after 4 years of playing. That type of design made hunting interesting and less of a grind, because of the unexpected. It was like a real world and made the game immersive.
I'd agree with this, especially at 30, 35, 40, and 45 (and later, 59). L2 can approach that (or so I've heard).
I think grind is way too subjective, personally. It's become cliché. It's the buzzword used to describe anything a person doesn't like in a game. Like most buzzwords, it has become meaningless because it's used so often and in so many different ways in reference to so many different things. It's kinda like urban slang terms. Once one of them emerges from the mouth of a suburban soccer mom, it needs to be replaced. From hearing the term tossed around various forums, it seems to me that if the game isn't as "easy" as a WoW or Guild Wars, it's "a grind" which to me is asinine.
I've found that I'm pretty much immune to so-called 'grinds'. If the end goal is worth the effort (to me), I'll jump through the hoops necessary to get it. My problem arises from those games who incorporate what many people consider grinds....with no payoff. Like, what's the real motivation to get to 50 in City of Heroes? It's the end ("gratz! You win! Now roll another character and do it again!"), unless Zergidon....err Hamidon is something worth 'grinding' for (and that's attainable before 50).
I think it's problematic when 'the endgame' is truly 'the end of the game'.
No disrespet to the Elder Jedi. Yes, that was a very mounumental grind.
An interesting condition created by the early Jedi/BH TEF system, I had friends in a city that set traps for BH hunting thier Jedi. They were, of course, on ventrilo and were based on Dantooine to grind. If one of thier Jedi was under attack he would run to their Cantina which was a safe zone. When the BH arrived in town, the whole guild would pour out and jump him. Standard attack was ban, kill the vehical, then kill him. The town was in a very isolated section of the planet forcing the BH to walk 1000s meters to the starport. As I understand, this tatic was the first condition that ended up nerfing the TEF to just the Jedi and BH involved.
Most feel that forums carebears killed the TEF. Not really true. TEF was killed with those Asian regulations against PVP. Big MMO companies could not afford to alienate themselves from the East Asian markets if they didn't change thier games. TEF may have been real fun but it was just not cost friendly for a big company. WOW's population is about 3 million Western subs and 4-5 million in the East (Asia). Think how that would have impact Blizzard if WOW had a TEF that they removed. Ah, TEF = Temporay Enemy Flag for PVP combat.